Trying to build a tiny house myself. Ive built basement suites and done renovations, not terribly complicated and the process was relatively simple. Could fit the guidelines for a basement suite on about 4 pages.

But this tiny house thing is ridiculous. I have my development permit and building permit which already took a powerpoint presentation to the town council, approval from the planning commission, and then several submissions and lots of scale drawings for approval for the building permit, plus the fees.

So I had some specific questions and wasn’t sure where to ask. There are SIX different places where I could find different sets of building regulations. Figured the most applicable would the National Building Code for my province. Opened up the document online and its 1,570 pages!? What the hell?

So I narrowed it down to the section on homes and small buildings and just the INDEX for that section is 7 pages long.

This is nuts. No wonder people don’t want to build homes. The codes are so ridiculously detailed that unless you study it for a living its just crazy complicated (There’s a code for how many hinges you put on a door and how deep the screws have to go into the casing)

I’ll slog through it but if I cant find the answers in a couple of hours Im gonna revert to the old “its easier to ask forgiveness than permission” approach and see how cranky the building inspector gets.

Man, you want houses built in Canada? Make it EASIER to find out how to do it.

  • LoveCanada@lemmy.caOPEnglish
    13·
    4 days ago

    Thanks. Ive actually been planning this for 10 years and have had half the tiny house sitting on a trailer in my yard for that long. Just couldn’t find the right place to put it where the town council would be open to the idea. Attitudes are finally changing though and the idea of tiny homes is becoming acceptable in many more Canadian cities.

    Yeah you’re right about taking one step at a time. Thats a good point. I was looking at the chart for determining the size of built up beam I need to put under the house and its clear as mud. And the silly measurements are given in mm which is lovely except that no one goes into a lumber store and asks for a 38 x 184 board. Thats a 2x8. Dont know why they dont just call it a 2x8. Silly.

    I couldn’t figure out the right size, so I put the link to the chart into ChatGPT and gave it my span and asked it to interpret the chart and tada! It figured out that a beam of three 2x8’s nailed together is what I need to pass code. Nice.