Home Renovations - Useful Tips On Additions And Renovations

 

You are renovating your house because you want it to feel more pleasant and attractive. But, What kind of additions and renovations can you find for your house? How do they differ from other projects? What should you expect? Impact Homes will try to provide answers in this blog for homeowners, builders, and interior designers in Victoria, BC. You'll learn the most important things a designer needs to know about their business. It may seem like just a few bits of information, but each is an essential part of your finished product.

Renovations and additions call for a distinct set of skills and familiarity with project design for different projects. There are many good reasons to enhance and renovate your place. It is a good idea to comprehend a few crucial factors if this is your plan.

Some projects could be straightforward and merely call for expanding the current area. Other initiatives, like remodelling an existing space or expanding it with a makeover, will be more difficult. Regardless of size, the design process is mostly the same, and to produce a high-quality set of drawings, a designer must consider several specific factors. Here are some essential factors for you to consider.

 

A Site Survey

A site survey is crucial because it provides precision when constructing new structures or making changes to existing ones. Without a site survey, the plan will not be accurate if the project goes beyond the coverage limit allowed by the zoning code. So if the plan is inaccurate, how do you know that the project will successfully pass the building permit phase?

One of the everyday items that home sellers provide to potential buyers is a mortgage survey. This usually comes with purchasing a house, but this item can sometimes be helpful for projects. However, they are outdated and short on critical information, often leading to inaccurate measurements. For example, mortgage surveys do not have geodetic data points, so the designer for home renovation Victoria would use other means to calculate building height to meet height restrictions.

Getting a property survey is pretty straightforward. An appointment for the next day can be scheduled with a surveying company by simply calling them. When the survey is complete, they will send you a PDF file with the measurements of your property. The architect usually uses this file when creating custom house plans in Victoria that are required for building permit applications.

 

Keep Servicing in Mind

It's important to address services that happen behind the scenes before embarking on a project. The crucial resources that often go unnoticed should be established before the design process begins. Before any work starts, a designer should consider how the project will be serviced with water, how it will be serviced with sewer, and how stormwater will be managed. A client should know about this information in advance, which is why these items must be discussed and answered before anything else begins. These elements may alter the overall cost of the project, and therefore it's best to establish these aspects at the beginning of the project, so they're addressed.

If you are adding water fixtures that use water on your property, two upgrades may take place.

An upgrade to the pipe you own that runs from your property line to your home renovation design services in Victoria.

An upgrade to the service of pipes owned by the city; these items run from the street to your property line.

The idea is that your water service should be able to accommodate all fixtures running at once. There should never be a time when it cannot handle what the fixtures need. You can learn more about how this process works at your city's engineering department.

Sewer services are responsible for two types of water: black and grey.

Black water is nonreusable liquid sewage, while

Grey water is used water that does not contain sewage, such as bathwater or laundry.

Sewer systems run towards the street, usually at a slight slope from your house to your sewer main. In other cases, a septic tank and field are still commonly used. A septic system typically draws dirty water from a tank into a field, allowing it to separate from the central portions of sewage over time. 

Stormwater management is one of the most important aspects of a property. Adding a gutter system to your house will help keep your foundation intact and prevent significant water damage. It's also important to take steps to divert rainwater away from your house's foundation walls. If left in place, it can cause serious injury to the wall or other parts of the house.

 

Lining up new to old

Building additions and renovations can be a complex challenge, especially when aligning the new structure with the existing one. Another old saying goes like this: "If you can't make it look like it's always been there, make it look different." For example, don't pretend like the new construction matches the existing one if that's obvious; instead, turn it into an asset. And usually, building a seamless addition is possible - but you still have to watch out for a couple of things.

 

What Not to Touch

In the case of additions & renovations, you need to know what items to touch and which ones not to. Working on a project can mess up your budget if you have to start touching things that weren't originally in your plans. One example is legal non-conforming construction. This refers to older construction techniques that fail to meet current building codes. The city won't force you to bring this type of construction in line with the code unless you make any changes.

This knowledge could help save you from major headaches with the city. Construction can create a domino effect in which an item not originally part of your project needs updating. For example, lessening a basement floor might require adding steps onto stairs - but those steps would need updating because they're not compliant. There are many examples like this. It's a good idea to keep these things in mind and consider them, especially when planning construction projects.

 

This concludes our succinct list of things the homeowner and designer should consider and plan for during the design phase. These items are by no means an exhaustive list of what to anticipate during additions and renovations, but we believe they provide useful insight into some of the things you can anticipate. Comparing additions and renovations to custom and spec homes can be very different. As with other projects, they necessitate attention to various factors, and a designer must have extensive construction knowledge to succeed.