Voting should be fun. It’s a serious responsibility but I think we take it too seriously.
Ernie DaykinCraig Speirs
For example, Ernie Daykin and Craig Speirs are running for Mayor of Maple Ridge. They would both be good, but I feel a certain pressure to endorse one or the other. I could let this dilemma stress me out, or I could celebrate the fact that we have two strong choices for Mayor. It’s a good problem to have.
Of course, even while we’re being positive, we should not ignore the temptation to vote negatively–I mean against someone. I could vote for Ernie or Craig based on who I think more likely to defeat someone else I don’t support. It’s no fun, and it discourages people from voting, but it’s a reality in our current first-past-the-post system. (That’s my plug for voting for Proportional Representation in the referendum this fall. Check out Fair Vote Canada for more info.)
Maple Ridge City Council -vote for up to 6 Councillors
Now, let’s get back to the positivity. On City Council this time we have a lot of turnover (Kiersten Duncan is running again which is good) so we can elect a lot of new faces. Yay! Let’s choose some good new people.
Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows School Board -vote for up to 5 Trustees
Our School Board choices are similar. It would be good to keep some experienced trustees, but there’s only one remaining, Mike Murray! Fortunately, he is also a good trustee, so that’s an easy vote. Otherwise, I’m voting for Elaine Yamamoto but I don’t know who else, yet. That’s three more people I need to choose. Wheee!
Take the pressure off.
You’ve heard that, out of the three levels of Canadian government, Civic Elections have the most impact on your life. It strikes me that they can also feel the most overwhelming. Too many names and no parties to help us categorize them!
Does it feel like you can’t make an informed choice? Many people do and, as a result, many don’t vote. In 2014, only 31.26% of eligible voters turned out. Most of those people probably take the time to research the candidates, but I suspect a lot of them turn out over one particular issue–a concern or fear–and vote for people promising action on that file. It’s not a good way to pick well-rounded and collaborative decision-makers.
To put it simply, in 2014 only about 10% of the people on the voters’ list (about 5600 people) were needed to elect our Mayor. What I worry about is that if one of the candidates this time around manages to convince 5600 people that we had better build a wall around the city, they could win. Scary thought.
I don’t think the antidote to this is to make people feel guilty about not voting. I think we need to lighten the load. Let’s see if we can make choosing fun.
Oo! I know! How about Real change?! Real change is super fun! But not that Real Change that the same old people keep promising, but real real change delivered by really different people with different backgrounds. Let’s see what some really different councils could look like. How about this one:
The “Diversity is our Strength” Council
This is the council for anyone who wants to see some colour at City Hall. The fact is, current and past councils have been awfully…er…white. We know that the best way for any organization to address concerns of a diverse community is for that diversity to be represented in its leadership. With that in mind, vote for these fine people:
Tam, Peter
Johar, Bhupinder
Dozie, Onyeka
Priebe, Kevin
That’s Peter Tam, Onyeka Dozie, Bhupinder Johar and Kevin Priebe. (I’m including Kevin because, even though he is rather pale in colour, he uses a wheelchair to get around). What a great set of perspectives! Simplistic approach? Yes! But what an easy way to choose people who’s life experience is very likely to include compromise and overcoming obstacles!
The “Diversity is Our Strength” School Board
Let’s look at the trustee candidates. Oh, dang, everybody looks pretty white except:
Trudeau, Colette
Yamamoto, Elaine
That’s Colette Trudeau (Metis) and Elaine Yamamoto (her grandparents were Japanese pioneers in this area). I guess we need to encourage more visible minorities to run for stuff!
Does voting on the basis of appearance seem weird to you? Think of it this way. It’s been shown that employers tend to hire people who are similar to themselves. As voters, we are essentially on a big hiring committee. Let’s consciously hire for diversity to broaden the quality of discussions at the table.
The “Smash the Patriarchy” Council
This is the council for those who recognize that 50% of us are female and that ratio has never been expressed in our local government. We’re learning more and more about the obstacles women face and how much harder and more cooperatively they have to work to get anywhere. Can we make an all-female council? Why not? There are a bunch of more-than-qualified women running:
Summer 2018 is almost over–I mean I go back to work next week–and we have made some real progress on the house.
A bunch of stuff we did for ourselves, but there were some things we needed help with.
This was the back porch in April 2017.
Remember that post Seeking Carpenter? I needed help building a landing and stairs for the back porch. Well, we found one and he proved once again that way back when we first started our project, we had no clue how to hire people! (To be fair to ourselves, the whole renovation industry needs an overhaul, but I’ve explored that before.)
This time, instead of a) waiting for a large, reputable home-builder (like HW Construction, whom I recommend if you can snag them) to find time to fit our tiny project into their busy schedule or b) signing our lives away to a mid-sized “Renovation Contractor” (maybe one with glitzy marketing materials, a glitzy web-site, glitzy questionable “awards”, lots of positive reviews everywhere from people you can’t actually get ahold of on the phone and a long list of lawsuits to their name) I hired a guy from the neighbourhood.
His name is Craig Pinsent and I can totally recommend him so give him a call:
The plan for our back landing and two sets of stairs.
The project I needed help with was two concrete pads and a set of stairs off the back deck. I put the call out to the Hammond Neighbours Facebook group and got a bunch of names. Here are the companies that people recommended that I didn’t hire so please give them a try and let me know how it goes:
Paulus Construction, Steve Paulus 604-209-9433
FB & IG, who specialize in outdoor living areas, decks, fences etc. Call Ryan at 604.202.6468
Sam Orchard from Knotty Boys Construction
Art Giroux (especially about the concrete part)
Kencrete Contracting (the concrete again)
There were a few other names but I’m pretty sure those are the people who I talked with directly. Some came out and visited. All of them seemed pretty good.
I hired Craig Pinsent who lives here in Hammond. I could tell he knew what he was talking about and I liked the arrangement he suggested. I’m not really an easy client to work with because you have to listen to my crazy ideas and tell me where I’m wrong and where I’m right. It’s time-consuming and a lot of people just want to quote the whole job and be left alone to do it the way they know how. Craig was very patient and taught me a lot.
Craig helped me with the concrete and built us a handsome landing and stairs. He charges $30/hour and he’s worth more. I’ll get into more detail in another post–with more photos, I promise.
Incidentally, Craig also passed me on to another guy to put a vinyl deck on the back porch. His name was Perry and he also did a great job. More about that coming soon. Also the company that sold us about a cubic meter of concrete, mixed on the spot, was Pro-Mix Concrete.
I want to say that I think Craig and Perry are part of a class of trades people that you should be seeking out when you have a smaller renovation. Quite often they are retired, but retired or not, they’ve all had long and varied careers in their trades.
In fact, we have several people in the neighbourhood that fall into this category. I’ve noticed a few common characteristics:
-They love getting a job done right and getting paid a fair price directly.
-Maybe they’ve worked for other companies, maybe even owned a company, but they don’t like the bureaucracy or the paperwork or maybe the dishonesty they encountered and now they want to keep things simple.
-They like it when you are happy with their work.
-They don’t want to bother advertising so they get jobs via word-of-mouth.
-If you want them to do a job the wrong way, they won’t take the job (especially true of Craig).
-They stand by their work.
-They give advice freely even if it means they make less money because you do it yourself, having taught you how.
-They are pissed off at the companies who give the renovation industry a bad name.
I remember talking to a few of these guys way back when we hired our disappointing general contractor, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around hiring a person who had no employees. Our project just seemed too big. One or two said they would bill by the hour and I thought that was crazy because we had a very fixed budget.
I thought a splashy web-site and materials meant a company was committed to keeping a strong reputation. Unfortunately, the opposite often seems true. Good marketing often seems to mean that’s where the company’s skills lie and they put less care into the actual work. I mean if they are good at marketing, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are good at building. How many carpenters do you know who know how to build a web-site?
I thought a costed-out estimate protected us from going over-budget. However, it’s not uncommon for a company to give a quote with no connection to reality just to get the gig, and then explain away the inevitable cost over-runs. Unethical? Yes, but all too common.
If you read my post about how we chose a contractor, you may remember that I was discouraged when one guy said he had been called in to fix mistakes made by another company. That sounded an admission to being involved in shady practices. Now I understand it happens all the time. (In fact it happened to us. Our “rescue contractor” was HW Construction (thank you Ryan!). Having an independent structural engineer, Chiu Hippmann Engineering Inc., also saved our bacon–thank you Carlos!).
Working with Craig Pinsent, I can see that the most important things you need are experience and expertise. If there’s something he can’t do, he’ll tell you, but he probably knows someone who can. Could Craig and I have done a better job managing our project from the start? It’s hard to say. I’m sure it would have been challenging for both of us, but at least I could trust him!
As I’ve said before, a huge unexpected obstacle to turning our older homes into forever homes is the renovation industry. Home owners need to be able to trust that a company will meet the minimum standards and, um, be honest.
Too much to ask?
Concrete, landing and stairs!
Next time, I’ll get into details on how Craig and I prepped for the concrete and how he finished it and built the landing and the stairs. Needs railings, but looks good so far, amiright?
If you have any thoughts about how we can help homeowners hire the right people, please comment and share this article. Thanks!
When I finally have time to clear Leanne’s computer enough to download all the photos and videos I’ve been taking for the last six months, half of the posts are going to be gratitude posts.
There are so many individuals, companies and tradespeople who have been so generous with their time, labour and expertise that it is overwhelming, but I want to do them justice and give each of them a gorgeous, sloppy thank you post full of photos and video of their awesomeness.
While we wait for that day to arrive, here is a short time-lapse video that I took on my iPhone.
That is the brand new Master Bathroom and I am stapling down radiant heating pipes to the subfloor. The space on the right side with no pipe is where the bathroom vanity and sinks are now. We don’t need heat there. At the bottom of the screen is the border where the floor starts to slope down toward the shower drain.
The next step was to cover the pipes with sand mixed with cement and then tile it.
The result is a heavenly warm floor underfoot in the bathroom. The thermostat calls for heat, and hot water circulates through the pipes. The concrete and tile serves as a thermal mass, spreading the heat out evenly and retaining it for hours.
These days, if you can’t find the cat, she is probably lolling on this floor like a rug.
On the topic of gratitude, there is a lot to pack into this 17-second video.
Thank you to Richard of Meadow Ridge Plumbing and Gas who let me borrow his modified nail-gun, supplied the radiant pipe and staples and taught me what to do. He and his company have done all our plumbing and heating, but also helped us save money by showing us how to do some of the most tedious tasks ourselves.
Thank you also to Ron, our neighbour and tile expert. He convinced me to put the pipes into the floor, (“I can’t see why you wouldn’t”) and we are so glad we did. He also helped us with the next steps, including installing the beautiful tile floor.
There will be more sloppy blog kisses for Ron and Richard in the future.
Thank you to everyone else who has pitched in, too! You are not forgotten. Do not worry. You will get your kisses.
Do you recognize these people sitting on our porch?
In 1922 when Carl, Leanne’s grandfather bought this property, there was one house on it with two rooms. Two rooms for his wife Lempi, Lempi’s mother, Lempi’s two daughters, and Carl. Quickly they built two front rooms onto the house.
If you would like to see a map of Hammond in 1912 click here.
By 1923 they had built a larger house next door, inspired by another Finnish family’s house in Webster’s Corners, a neighbourhood on the east side Maple Ridge. The big house is often called the Whitehead Residence, but we’re calling it Hammond Forever House these days.
The first house–we call it the Little Yellow House–was added on to again at the back when the municipal sewer was built. By 1937 both houses had the same footprint they do today. This is a page from the Statement of Significance we created as part of our Heritage Revitalization Agreement with the City of Maple Ridge.
Carl built other houses on the block and rented them out to men who worked in the mill like he did.
Lempi passed away and Carl married Leanne’s grandmother Anna. They had two children together: Julie, Leanne’s mom, and Jim.
Jim’s initials are carved in the side of the house and his BB gun pellets are embedded in the door of the garage. Apparently he was quite a scamp. Recently, he turned up some photos from the days when Carl’s first wife Lempi was still alive. These are from her photo album.
The first thing Julie noticed was that in one photo there is a doorway and small porch on the south side of the house.
1930s?
2011
That door doesn’t exist today. We don’t know who the people on the porch are. Do you?
Carl is on the left and Lempi is sitting third from the left. Do you recognize anyone else? This could have been on a beach in the lower mainland or in Chase, BC, where Carl and Lempi met before they moved to Port Hammond.
We have not had time to research who, what and where the rest of the photos depict, but I thought I would share them nevertheless. If you know any of these people (or dogs), please let me know! Click on the photo to enlarge it.
Sticking it to the man by saying no to fossil fuels!
Are you sick of paying taxes? Are you going to stick it to the man by voting “no” in the Provincial Transit Plebiscite that’s just begun?
Well, I think you should reconsider who the man is and how you can stick it to him.
Leanne and I just got our ballots in the mail today. Are we having trouble making up our minds? No, we’re voting “YES”.
The oil tank lurks in the basement under the fireplace…
On March 6, 2013 we bought 1100.7 litres of furnace oil at $1.2490/litre for a total $1443.51. That was over two years ago. Average that out over 24 months to about $60 per month for heating alone.
Oh, but we should note that we haven’t turned the furnace on since June, 2014. That means that our average monthly fuel bill for the last 10 months has been…$0.
We will never buy fuel oil again. If all goes well, we will never buy fossil fuels of any kind (including natural gas) to heat our home. It feels fantastic.
That’s our way of sticking it to The Man. Score 1 for us!
To me, The Man is not my government. As a Canadian citizen, I like to think I have some part in my government and so it is partly me. The Man right now is fossil fuels. That is due to how certain we are that they are the main cause of the planet warming and the climate changing with dangerous (and expensive) rapidity. By burning oil and gas we are pulling carbon out of the earth that has been locked there for millions of years and pumping it into the atmosphere.
An extension of The Man is all those in the industry who are pushing for irresponsible extraction and using tactics a la Big “smoking doesn’t cause cancer” Tobacco to convince the public everything is fine. Unfortunately, Canada subsidizes the multi-national corporations that make up the oil industry with hundreds of millions of dollars directly and, as reported on The Tyee, “The International Monetary Fund estimates that energy subsidies in Canada top an incredible $34 billion each year in direct support to producers and uncollected tax on externalized costs.”
The batteries are under my butt.
So, I also stick it to the man by riding an electric scooter to work or, if I’m too wimpy to face the weather, I stick it to the man by taking the infrequent C44 shuttle bus. I’m working up to cycling but I’m not there yet. If I may, I’d like to take another point for not driving much. That gives me 2.
I would be able to stick it to The Man more effectively if those community shuttles were more frequent. (See where I’m going with this?)
Let’s check in on our scoreboard:
James: 2 The Man: 0
We’re not paying for oil anymore, but we did bump up our electricity bill a bit. We use an air conditioner (with a heating function set to 20 degrees) in the kitchen and a space heater in the kids’ bedroom at night. I feel fine about that because BC’s electricity comes mostly from sustainable hydro-electric power. I believe that’s another point for me.
Yes, we consume electricity and wood, but no gas and no oil
James: 3 The Man: 0
What is more, BC Hydro is a publicly owned corporation, so really I am using my own service instead of a private, multi-national corporation such as an oil or gas company. I don’t think that’s a point, that just speaks to who The Man is in this scenario and who he isn’t.
Unfortunately however, efficient as it is, the insert has still been polluting the neighourhood with particulate-heavy smoke.
James: 4 The Man: 0 Neighbours with respiratory illness -1
Hmmm, burning wood also releases greenhouse gasses–You can argue that those gasses would only have been trapped in the wood for a few decades anyway and that it’s better than burning fossil fuels but still I say
James: 4 The Man: 0 Neighbours with asthma -1 The Environment -1
Finally, in my last post I showed you the mountains of ash that we’re producing–several times the trash we normally produce. Take another point off the Environment which leaves us with
James: 4 The Man: 0 Neighbours with asthma -1 The Environment -2
If we just look at The Man and I, I seem to be doing OK. However, since I live in the environment and so will my kids for decades to come (not to mention all the costs of climate change) and since I care about my neighbours and help to pay for their healthcare, I think I should include their score with mine. If we take those three points away from my score we get
James: 1 The Man: 0
Great, we’re barely breaking even! How frustrating! Makes me want to vote “no” to something!
Leanne and I are about to embark on our renovation which I hope will win back those lost points. Our house will no longer burn anything. We will shift to using much less power by dramatically improving the building envelope and what little power we use will be electric (hopefully–if we can pay for the heat pump we want!).
That is how we will stick it to The Man and we are applying for a $150K credit line to do it! I would rather pay up front now than pay The (oil) Man for decades to come.
The Man is not the Provincial government who collects the PST. It’s not the Mayors or Translink either. The government is us and we are the government. When we pay taxes we chip in to a fund because we can’t buy this stuff as individuals. It’s buying bulk. It’s working together. It’s being adults.
How many decades have our governments listened to statistics and research telling them the value of public transit, how it is good for the economy; how it is good for the environment; how it gives people more time with their families, increases health while reducing health costs and makes people happier?
How many decades have we debated how to fund transit in British Columbia?
Of course it is the Provincial Government’s job to decide how much tax to collect and what to do with it and they should have simply made this decision themselves, but remember the Harmonized Sales Tax?
After that adventure, can we blame the BC Liberal Party for passing the buck to the Mayors’ Council? “It’s their plan, not ours!” Well, I can, but as much as I would like them to simply get on with governing, I can see that making the Mayors ask the question makes political sense.
Bundling the federal sales tax (GST) and the provincial sales tax (PST) into one sales tax (Harmonized Sales Tax) is a good idea. How much money do we waste on redundant administration of two separate taxes? Unfortunately, the BC Liberals kinda sorta specifically promised not to do that. People don’t like it when you say one thing and do another. There was a referendum and many people voted against the HST not because they hated (or knew much about) the tax, but because they felt tricked into it.
They wanted to make a point. The Anti-HST campaign managed to convince them that the government was The Man and they wanted to stick it to The Man so now we are stuck with an outdated, inefficient tax system and less in the public purse for things like, oh, say, transportation infrastructure.
This is how smart people end up voting against their own interest.
It’s interesting to me that the point of voting down the HST was to send a message to the BC Liberals but in the subsequent Provincial election we voted them back into power. Did we feel like we had punished them enough by killing the HST? I think we had it backwards: we should have kept the HST and reduced the number of Liberals in the Legislature.
“But James,” you say, “I feel taxed to death. I feel stretched to the breaking point. Why would I vote for higher taxes?”
I hear you, but it’s not taxes that are squeezing us. It is the way our taxes are being used. Now we have a chance to be heard. Buying transit infrastructure in bulk is a great idea and it will relax the squeeze on everyone in the region. It will even save you money–in gas and in time (because time is money).
It will also stick it to The Man.
In our system, when oil and gas companies ship more fossil fuels and when car manufacturers sell more cars it adds to our GDP. In simplistic terms, we like a nice big GDP, even though we know those things will cost us dearly in the long run.
To borrow from thestoryofstuff.org if we measured the economy in terms of “better” and not simply “more” things would be different. In that case, our economy would be more like the happiest countries on Earth: Denmark, Norway, etc. We would pay more taxes (and corporations and wealthy people would, too) and we would use that public money for smart things like better healthcare, better education and better ways to move people around, not just cars.
The right wing groups The Fraser Institute and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (based in Saskatchewan) are telling us to vote “no” against our best interest. They clearly represent regressive policy and the oil and gas industry. Of course these groups don’t want more transit! They are standing up for their narrow short-term, self-interest. That’s their job. Future generations be-damned.
Let’s look at this plebiscite for a second.
The 0.5 percent increase in the Provincial Sales Tax only applies to goods and services that are already taxed under the PST.
It will go directly to the Mayor’s plan which is clearly laid out and based on decades of study.
0.5% means 50 cents for every $100 spent on PST taxable stuff.
It amounts to an average of 35 cents per family per day.
If you want to reduce that amount, you can buy less. Buying less means less waste anyway.
If you live in Maple Ridge like I do, you have the option of avoiding the tax by spending $5 in gasoline to drive to Mission to buy stuff. But make sure you plan to spend more than $1000 in Mission because otherwise your $5 in gas will cancel out your $5 in savings on the Transit tax. ($5 is 0.5% of $1000)
If you are planning to buy a brand new car for $20 000, you could save a whopping $100 by driving to Mission or further, but wait, no, they closed that loophole. You pay the tax based on where you register the car, not where it is purchased (sorry Mission car dealers!).
What other major purchases are you willing to drive out of town to buy so you can avoid paying that 0.5% extra? Jewelry? Appliances? Furniture? Well, if it makes you feel better, go ahead. Do please remember that we are already subsidizing the oil and gas industry and driving more is hardly sticking it to them is it? I would rather shop locally and pay a tax dedicated to improving congestion, health and the environment than spend more money on gas and make those things worse.
As I see it, the only way a reasonable person can be convinced to vote against funding transit infrastructure is if we believe Translink is corrupt and/or the government is corrupt. Few on the no side are using that word, but that is the implication when every mistake, delay, or bad decision Translink has ever made is trotted out with the catch phrase, “throwing good money after bad.” It’s an easy story to sell and a psychologically attractive one, too –especially when we’re looking for a Man to stick it to.
But this is not Egypt, Syria or North Korea. Our government is not corrupt. Translink is a publicly accountable body and information on its operations, budgets, successes and failures are freely available.
Someone commented on Facebook that comparing us to other cities in North America isn’t saying much and that systems in Europe are much better. Well, those systems are in countries with higher taxes. I would like to get me some of that so I am voting yes.
I’ve heard people say they will vote no because the service sucks in their area (in Maple Ridge it’s not great) but that’s an argument for proper funding not against it. Vote yes.
So just who are we sticking it to if we vote no to the Mayor’s plan? Ummmm…
-people who commute on congested roads
-people who need transit because they don’t drive (like kids and seniors and lower income citizens)
-parents who will have less time to spend at home with their families
-businesses whose customers will stay home instead of fighting traffic
-future generations who will have to deal with the costs of climate change and air pollution
-municipal governments who will struggle with growing populations and inadequate transportation infrastructure
-provincial governments who will have to pay for the health affects of smog and stress as well as try to improve congestion without dedicated cash to do it
-federal governments who will have to increase transfer payments to provinces to deal with these costs on top of their own responsibility for disaster relief due to increasing extreme weather events
-and people like me who want to take transit to reduce my carbon footprint.
Who else can you think of?
Are we sticking it to the Provincial government? No, they will be unaffected.
Are we sticking it to Translink? No, Translink will not be affected, either.
Voting no is cutting off our noses to spite our face.
In the mornings there are two classes taught by another instructor and me. The students are originally from China, Iraq, Romania, Taiwan, Czech Republic, Iran, South Korea, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries, too. We teach English that is grounded in Real Life Tasks.
We also connect students to their community. For example, in September, students went on a field trip to a 91 year-old Canadian heritage house in a historic neighbourhood: mine. As I mentioned in my post Student Assignment, I asked my intermediate level students for advice on the house. How is that for a Real Life Task?
Here are their responses:
Yesterday, we visited James’ house. It was very interesting because I haven’t been to an almost 100 years old Canadian house. I loved his wood panels in the dining room. He should keep it like it is now that will give his house a lot of character. I think it would be a good idea to have all the bedrooms upstair and in the main floor he would change the lay out of the kitchen and put there an island and where his bedroom is he could have a family room with big windows looking at his big back yard.
Also he could build a suite in the basement for rent and he would have an income to help him with his mortgage.
These are some of my ideas. I know that renovations are stressful but at the end of the day his house will be so beautiful that everybody will love it.
Thank you for your ideas! I will think about your idea of putting all the bedrooms upstairs. The stairway is quite narrow. Here is another student:
It’s really a big challenge among spending less money, protecting the earth and making life more convenient, how we can do is the best. It’s no correct answer and it’s hard to take them all. I have no ideas about this, but I think you can google some research or information. In addition, you also can meet some professional persons to ask them how to do. Then you can get some choices. According to your needs, budget, you can make the best choice. I think it will take you a lot of time to solve this problem but it’s worth for your future life. It’s pity that I can’t give you good advice. This topic is very interesting. I want to know the way you choose finally, so I’ll keep following your blog. I look forward to your new posting.
Thank you, I will soon be sharing a lot of the advice we received from professionals. Next:
Thanks for having us to your home. It was an awesome field trip. When I came to Canada, I found every house is beautiful and special. I like to see houses when I take a bus or walk on the street. It’s very different from Taiwan. I also like to visit other’s house because I can get some new ideas of indoor design. For me, this kind of house in Canada I don’t know how to maintain and fix. Many things I should know and learn. I like your home’s feeling because it looks like people live here and they’re happy. I don’t know how to say, but it the house is very clean and everything is in order and very organized, I think it’s like a hotel, not a home. I also like the original wood. We can’t use these when we buy a new house. You have a great house. I look forward to seeing your forever house.
Yes, our house certainly looks lived-in!
Few days ago, I did visit in James home and I’m sharing my feelings about his house. James house is good example of ancient heritage. Its hide a lot things inside. It belong to the ancestors. I did like to visit there. It was different experience but it is only thing, I noticed that it could good attraction for future if it will be neat and tidy the whole house. There was a lot thing in his house, its attracted me his kitchen and windows. It represents how people spend life few years ago.
Some students want me to clean, others don’t.
The tour of your house was very interesting and I must tell you that I was so curious to see a Canadian house. In my opinion you have to renovate and extend the house because you need more space in the kitchen and one bathroom upstairs. You have a big and beautiful yard and so do I. I really appreciate that you and your family want to keep the house and renovate it, beside selling it. It would be easier but I think you want to keep it because the house has history in your family. I like your neighbourhood and I think it’s a quiet zone and also safe for kids to play outside. I live on the main street and it’s not safe at all and neither quiet. I hope we can sell our house and buy another in a different neighbourhood.
Good luck!
It’s not easy to make major changes in an old building, so we have to plan for that very well and know from where you have to start.
I think we have to start from the infrastructure then go up to the other places, floor, walls etc. We have to ask a professional person or company to do that and don’t do it frivolously because it will cost more money and maybe we won’t like the result. One day I had a problem in the hot water pipes so we needed to change all the pipes and before that we had to remove the concrete floor and change the pipes then replace new concrete pieces.
But the company had another choice. They put all the pipes outside around the house and cover it by a special insulation so that cost us more than 70% off.
That’s why I said we need professional company or engineer to plan for that. Planning for everything is good way to do.
Thank you. We are certainly doing a lot of planning, but not mush doing so far!
Dear James,
I appreciate your interest to make the house bigger and more comfortable but there are a lot of problems in your house that aren’t easy to fix, so my opinion in: please sell your house and buy a new one. I think it’s easier and better for you and your family.
Think about that and listen to me, if you have money or not changing is better. The renovation costs much money and I’m sure that the new house will be different in many things for example stairs size, kitchen’s decor, bathroom, heating system, so you can choose your dream house.
I know an Egyptian lady, I was impressed all around her house when I visited. There are four bedrooms, three bathrooms, big kitchen and dining room, living room, sitting room, it looked like a small heaven where all the elements of comfort while the land area was smaller than your house as well as there was a very nice backyard. When I compare between her house and yours I think that radical change is the best way to live in twenty-first century and you still young.
Good luck.
Thank you for saying what many people are too polite to say.
You have a big house, but with many problems. My opinion you have to change more things. First of all dining room change the table with another small one and change the paper wall to white colour paint. When I saw your kitchen I liked but you need smaller table and remove the book’s shelf.
The big problem in your house bathroom. I think you have to change everything in it. Upstairs need to remove many many things especially the toys and clean it. The basement need to remove all things and clean it very well.
Very important point is the heating system, you used fire place in the living room, In the living room, kitchen, bed room and upstairs you can use gas heating system or electric heating system. You can choose which one you like, and which one is cheap and easy. Finally you have to choose first if you have money you can ask a designer or decoration company to give you many solutions to help you.
Seconds sell it and buy another one.
That sounds exhausting!
There you go! That is what a diverse group of new immigrants to Canada thought after the first exclusive tour I have conducted of Hammond Forever House. You can find some student responses on other posts, too, such as the Fossil Fuels post and the Solar Panels post.
Would you be interested in a tour of Hammond Forever House, too? Please let me know!
If all the houses in the neighbourhood could be retrofit tomorrow so that they generated as much energy over the course of a year as they use, I would be a happy man. However, that goal is going to take a little more time and a lot more blog posts.
Let’s start with what everyone can do to their houses right now–an old-fashioned do-it-yourself insulation and sealing.
The house before we moved in. That tree on the right was hit by lightning and fell down a few months later.
When we bought the house from Julie the mother-in-law in 2007 there was no insulation in the walls, there were lots of leaks everywhere (especially in the basement) and the attic spaces had minimal insulation, too.
The oil furnace came on about every 20 minutes in an attempt to maintain a constant temperature. The thermostat was set at 20 degrees Celsius (68 Farenheit) day and night so the sound of the fan and the warm air coming out the vents was nearly constant. That is how fast the heat was escaping the house.
The furnace is far bigger than it needs to be because the house used to retain heat so poorly.
In the attic spaces there were maybe two inches of the original rock wool insulation—quite crumbly after 90 years. On top of that, there was some added more recently by the in-laws with reclaimed material that was on its way to the landfill. In one space there was some vermiculite (don’t worry, we had it tested and it contains no asbestos). In another there was crumbled styrofoam pieces and in another there was some pink fiberglass insulation.
The north upstairs room – now the boy’s roomThe south upstairs bedroom in 2007, looking north down the stairs. Notice the awkward closet and the fan.
The upstairs bedrooms were seldom used by the most recent tenants. The north bedroom still had layers of wallpaper to help keep the warmth in and the draught out, but in the south bedroom the wallpaper had been removed. The daughter of one tenant had decided to strip the walls and paint them a deep blue. Unfortunately, the result was the wind whistling between the slats of the ship-lap boards.
The north upstairs bedroom in 2007- now the girl’s room. Even Julie the mother-in-law remembers the sound of the wind whistling in the walls and, of course, the train.
The basement, with it’s cold, poured concrete floor and foundation walls and uninsulated wooden walls on top of them, was like a wind tunnel.
A peak downstairs in 2007
How much was all this costing us? Well, we arrived in October 2007 and one month later filled the oil tank for $765.14. Two months after that, in January 2008, we filled it again for $850.66. In August we filled it again for $1972.59.*
In 11 months we spent $3588.39 on furnace oil alone or $326.22 per month. How much is your heating bill?
Clearly, we needed to do something and in 2008 we did.
Dave the father-in-law offered to do two things before passing on the house: paint it and insulate. There was a lot of other work we did to make the house comfortable when we first moved in and my parents and in-laws pitched in, but these two things were the most expensive. It is another example of how people of my generation cannot afford homes without the help of the previous generation.
We had other help, too. We had the Federal EcoENERGY program and Provincial LiveSmart BC program. They reduced the cost of the retrofit significantly (savings which we passed on to Dave who footed the bill). I will tell you all about how they worked, but both of these excellent programs have been eliminated, first by the Federal Conservative Government and next by the Liberal BC Government (even though they create jobs, stimulate the economy, reduce GHG emissions…sigh).
Without this help, we might still be listening to that furnace a-blowin’ all day and all night. How many well-meaning people buy an older home these days only to be overwhelmed by the costs of giving it the love it deserves?
As I mentioned in my post the Empty Tank Challenge we spent $1443.51 to fill the oil tank on March 6th, 2013 and we haven’t filled it since. If we can make it to March, 2015, that will be two years without buying oil.
Those 11 month in 2007/2008 that cost $3588.39 covered one winter and oil was cheaper then. From March 2013 we have been through two summers and one winter and paid $1443.51. We saved $2144.88 and counting by insulating the house. Adjust that number to reflect current higher oil prices and you’ll see we’re saving even more.
If you retrofit your house your savings will likely be less depending on how well your house is insulated and what kind of heating unit you have, but the longer you stay in your house, the more sense it makes to retrofit it now. The polar bears will thank you, too.
In the coming posts I will get into details of how and where we insulated and what it cost.
*One final note before I go today, notice how the price of oil keeps going up? Well, the price of solar panels keeps going down and sunlight is free. I think a lot about that. Now here are more “before” photos:
Trucks were often parked in the back yard
The old analog BC Hydro meter
Note the covered cold cupboard holes next to the back door.
The north side
Wood on the front porch
The garage was an unused workshop
The house before we moved in. That tree on the right was hit by lightning and fell down a few months later.
I use the word sustainability a lot because it covers a lot of ground.
The office before
Is our reliance on fossil fuels sustainable? No.
Is the rate at which we consume and discard stuff sustainable? No.
What about how we spend our time? Is the pace of our lives sustainable?
Leanne and I each work part-time. We make less money than we could because we believe it is important to spend time at home in our community and especially with our kids who are 6 and 8 years old.
Out of sight out of mind
I know many people work full-time and I don’t know how they do it. Even with less rigorous work schedules, we still end up with junk piles accumulating in our house. We have a long history of creating a “room of doom”. We don’t mean to, it just happens.
Eek! Draw the curtain!
I was so happy when we created an office out of the old pantry. I thought it would be a highly efficient workspace. There are cupboards to store office stuff as well as food and kitchen stuff. There is a linoleum covered countertop.
Unfortunately, it was also out of the way, so if there was anything that we needed to get out of the way, it would be stacked carefully in the office. It would stay stacked for about 20 minutes and then one of the cats would climb on it and knock it over. Then it would be spread all over the floor.
To clean this mess up, it takes a special occasion. Last week I had three: 1) two classes of students, all new immigrants to Canada interested in learning about Canadian houses, living, heritage, etc., were coming to tour the house, 2) the neighbourhood was having a give-away-your-stuff weekend called Hammond Treasure Days, and 3) I really want to find some information for the blog that is buried in there.
I had a small window of time. I attacked it with enthusiasm. My goal was nothing less than a clean, clear, mopped floor. As I worked I had a vision of a new layout where I could actually use the desk. After months of sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop, I am typing at the desk in the office with the window to the backyard in front of my face.
Note: To find out what a Statement of Significance is, go to this page where I introduced it. To read all published pages of this document, click on the “Statement of Significance” link in the Categories menu on the right. Enjoy!
Note: To find out what a Statement of Significance is, go to this page where I introduced it. To read all published pages of this document, click on the “Statement of Significance” link in the Categories menu on the right. Enjoy!
