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.

Do I Fix That Old Cottage Or Tear It Down?

Do I fix that old cottage or do I let it die and build a new one?

When people think about older cottages they have a nostalgic memory or thoughts about an old wood cottage on the lake that has lots of character and maybe needs some small repairs.

In reality those cottages that are like that are in such bad shape when you start to look behind the walls, the roof and the foundation you find that they require major surgery by a professional and not by you the owner on the weekend.

The repairs of these kind of cottages usually take several years as the work gets spread out to save on money and to allow the homeowner to use the cottage in the warmer months. But at some point you the homeowner are going to have to ask yourself is all this time and money worth putting into an old cottage?

There is an alternative to spending large amounts of money and time fixing and repairing endlessly an old cottage that without a major investment is coming to the end of its life, you could tear it down and build yourself a new cottage.

Yes a new cottage, no its not your romantic vision of what a cottage is, but those romantic visions also don't have all the bugs, slugs and critters that are chewing their way into your cottage and watching you while you sleep. That vision doesn't have you cleaning up the mice poop or the having a plumber to come and repair the plumbing lines because they broke again or the septic is backed up again with tree roots. That vision doesn't have you placing buckets in new places every time it rains to catch the leaks or you squinting through old foggy windows to see the waterfront that you paid for. 

If we are talking about if its worth it to build a new one because that costs money, let me tell you that right now newer homes on the water are rarely for sale and when they do come for sale the asking price is extremely expensive. People look at new cottages as something that they can buy and start enjoying right away and not having to think about fixing for years to come. That is worth it to a lot of people, people will pay a premium for something like that. In other words you will not lose money on building yourself a new cottage.

Remember that everything eventually comes to the end of its life and at a certain point you are going to have to decide when to let it go and build a new one. You can either spend the money now or wait until it's even more expensive later.

Rob Abbott
Great Lakes Custom Homes Inc.

Lots of Vacant Waterfront Lots Means Its Time To Build That Custom Cottage On The Bruce Peninsula

With the abundance of vacant water front lots that are for sale now on the Bruce Peninsula it has never been a better time to build yourself a new custom cottage.

If you are to look around the Bruce Peninsula you will find that any cottage or home that is on or near the water has risen in price every year for the past 4 years. The market is becoming expensive as the Bruce Peninsula becomes more popular with tourists and people from South Western Ontario.

The rental market for the Bruce Peninsula has exploded in the last several years, this has slowed the amount of people that were selling their cottages because now they can make money on them even when they are to busy to enjoy it themselves.

All of this is helping drive the resale housing market through the roof, it's getting to the point were it is actually better to buy a vacant waterfront lot and build a new cottage.

There are several things that help make it less expensive;

• Bruce Peninsula has extremely low building fees compared to the rest of southern ontario.
• With a lot of waterfront lots basically sitting on the rock you don' t have to spend a lot of money on landscaping.
• The building standards for the Bruce Peninsula are from the Ontario Building Code, there really isn't anything added that will cost you money like what happens in a lot of communities in Southern Ontario.

What you will have to do is find a good quality contractor that can build you the new cottage that you want and also give you a proper budget before they do it. That is probably going to be the toughest thing that you will find, finding a contractor. There are very few good quality contractors on the Bruce and more people wanting to have cottages built every year. 

When you do find that contractor you should hire them, because there aren't that many to choose from. 

Great Lakes Custom Homes is one of those contractors that can take care of your cottage building needs.

Send me an email and let's see if we can help you; greatlakescustomhomes@gmail.com

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Rob Abbott

Great Lakes Custom Homes Inc.

The Art Of The Custom Cottage Build

Not Everyone can build a custom home or cottage and not everyone should even attempt to build one, there are so many things that you have to know to build it right.

Gone are the days of building the little cedar bunglows that were never used past the labour day long weekend, today's new cottages are expected to be used all year round. They are bigger, more modern and much more complicated then ever before. Cottages are more like normal residential homes then they are the old "camps" as they are called up north.

One of the biggest differences between a modern residential home and a cottage is the remoteness of a cottage. Because of the distance great care most be taken when building a cottage so that it can survive without homeowner supervision for long periods of time and work perfectly when someone requires it.

Because of this hiring someone that doesn't know a lot about building custom cottages means that you could end up with a lot of problems months and years later that would not be covered under any warranty whether it is the builders warranty or Tarion which does not apply to a lot of cottages.

Great Lakes Custom Homes is not only a home building company it's also a tradition going back to the late 1970's of building quality custom homes and cottages. I am the second generation in the family to take up this business and have been in it and around it my entire life. The collective knowledge that is within Great Lakes Custom Homes allows us to have the answers, ideas, techniques and know how to build a great custom home or cottage.

If you are looking to build a custom home or cottage send me an email at

greatlakescustomhomes@gmail.com

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