Your New Cottage Should Have An ICF Foundation

Thinking about building a new custom home or new custom cottage up on the Bruce Peninsula this spring/summer?

If you have then you have properly envisioned what the place would look like, the inside the outside, the windows, the siding, the finishing's, the kitchen and the bathroom. But something that people don't put enough thought into is their foundation. Nobody thinks about their foundation, until of course they have problems with their foundations!

Something that you as the homeowner should be asking your contractor about is the options for your foundation. What do I mean about options? Aren't all foundations concrete or block? Yes and NO.

A questions every homeowner should ask their contractor is "WHAT ABOUT ICF?". What is ICF. It stands for Insulated Concrete Forms.

Basically instead of building your foundation out of concrete you build the foundation with large foam blocks. The foam blocks look like large Lego blocks but they have a a hallow space in the middle where you place the rebar and the concrete. An ICF wall is basically a concrete wall with its long underwear still on.

Why do you want your concrete wall to have long underwear? Well once you pour the concrete in the ICF forms your foundation wall is completed! That's tight it's basically done. The wall is already insulated and has built in webs so that you can attach the drywall too or hang a picture or place stone or brick on the outside.

What's the limitations to building out of ICF? Nothing, you can even create round walls with it. There is no set size or shape that it has to be in.

Worried about mice and bugs? Nothing lives in an ICF wall, the foam has no food value so nothing lives in it and if something decided to try and burrow through the foam from the outside they would end up running into the concrete wall that's behind the foam.

ICF foundations made your basement or crawlspace warm and dry, a basement made out of ICF is usually the coziest basement you've ever been in.

If your contractor hasn't talked to you about building your basement out of ICF then maybe you need a new contractor.

If you like the idea of building your foundation so that it is warm and cozy and well insulated then send me an email and let's see if we can get you an ICF foundation.

Email me at greatlakescustomhomes@gmail.com

Rob Abbott
Great Lakes Custom Homes Inc.

How Far From The Water Can I Build My Cottage?

This is one of the most important questions that you should be asking when you are looking to buy property to build a new waterfront cottage.

Every municipality has a different setback from the water for new construction.

Every municipality in Ontario works off the same location no matter how far back they are restricting the building of new cottages. That location is the historic high-water mark. The high-water mark is determined by what the historical level of high water is in your area. Every area can be different. If you are building on the great lakes you would have noticed that they tend to rise and fall up to 4 to 5 feet in less then a 5 year period. That means that sometimes your new cottage will be close to the water where other times (if your waterfront is shallow) the water could be a fair ways away. Every municipality has a different distance from that high water mark.

Finding the historic high-water mark can be done in two different ways depending on the municipality;

1. Hire a surveyor to come in and survey the property. They will be able to determine the high-water mark with the actual elevations and also be able to mark for you the location of the high-water mark and the point that is closest (to the water) that you can build a new cottage on paper or PDF to submit to the township.
2. Some municipalities do not require a survey as surveys can become costly to people, especially in certain remote cottage areas. If you can identify trees that are large enough to be older then the last time the water hit the high-water mark then you can use the ones that are closest to the water as your mark. You do all your measuring from those trees and the local building department will approve it once they either seen the drawing you have done or visited the site to see the stakes and take some measurements. 

There are municipalities in Northern Ontario that still allow you to build cottages within 50 feet of the high-water mark. Where other municipalities in southern Ontario require you to be 100 or even 150 ft from the high water mark.

These setbacks can greatly affect the amount of enjoyable space that you end up with around your cottage. If you cottage is pushed back 150 ft on your lot and you end up near the road then you are kind of defeating the purpose of having a waterfront cottage.

It is easy to find out this distance, either your real estate agent can find out for you or you can make the calls to the local municipalities yourself. The building and planning department will not only be able to tell you the setbacks on the piece of property, they will be able to tell you also what the restrictions are for the size, height and shape of the cottage you are allowed to build on are. That goes for any accessory buildings that you want to construct like garage's, bunkies or storage sheds.

The only way that you can build closer to the water then the municipal setbacks is to buy a piece of property that already has a cottage on it. Most municipalities will allow you to replace an older cottage with a new one and place it in the same place as the existing cottage even if it violates the setbacks from the high-water mark.

Before you make that offer make sure you do your due diligence.

Rob Abbott
Great Lakes Custom Homes