A Technical ABC for ABC
City Conversation #92: An Affordable Building Code is within Vancouver’s grasp
November 16th 2022—ABC Vancouver has much on its plate as it moves to governance. Vancouver’s unique ability to create its own building bylaw could be applied to affordable housing. Here’s a suggestion how.
Until the early 1970s Canada had a special, simpler building code for housing construction—why not again?
“Dad—really?!” My son was looking over my shoulder at the illustration for this City Conversation. “How can a 50-year old book have anything of value today?”
“It’s not so much the content as the idea,” I responded, ignoring the rude ageism of his comment, “it’s the concepts—concise, focused, practical solutions to most issues.” He gave me his waiting look so I kept going.
“We called this book Residential Standards and used it for the vast majority of affordable housing projects through to the 1970s. It consisted of 215 two-thirds size pages (6” x 9”), including structural, mechanical and electrical requirements. By comparison, although the current Vancouver Building Bylaw (VBBL) is online, if you printed it out it would be more than 1,400 full size (8-1/2” x 11”) pages—allowing for two-thirds versus full-sized pages, the current VBBL is more than 10 times as big as what it replaced—it’s basically doubled in size every 12-15 years since the Residential Standards were last published in 1972.”
1,400+ pages in the current Vancouver codes
“Is that an apples to apples comparison?” he asked, reasonably.
“Yes and no,” I responded. “The 1,400 pages in the VBBL includes complex residential buildings, like high-rises. Perhaps a fairer comparison would be to the 1970 National Building Code (NBC), which integrated the Residential Standards content with more complex buildings in a slightly different, more compact format.” I paused. “But before you think you’ve caught me out, the 1970 NBC was 461—6”x9” pages.” He did some quick mental math.
“So those smaller 461 pages are about one-fifth the size of the current VBBL?” he suggested, hesitantly, then continued. “But construction is much more complex than it was 50 years ago.”
“Again, yes and no,” I continued. “I’ll give you some VBBL content that wasn’t in NBC 1970: 61 pages for fixing existing buildings; 25 pages of new environmental requirements; even 43 pages of more modern environmental requirements—but those three total 129 pages—let’s be generous and say 10% of the entire VBBL. Even so, that leaves us with a VBBL that’s nine times the size of the Residential Standards, at least four times the size of the 1970 National Building Code that was intended to apply to the whole country!”
I continued. “An example of one of the many important concepts lost in translation between the Residential Standards and the VBBL—also the BC Building Code and the current NBC—is the idea of minimum room sizes.”
He interjected. “Surely rooms couldn’t get any smaller than they already are?” I laughed at his misunderstanding of my words.
“My point,” I responded, “is that the Residential Standards listed minimum room sizes for all buildings—they no longer appear in modern codes, meaning designers now routinely create rooms that are less than previous minimum sizes.”
Residential Standards 1972, p. 11
“One of my favourite profs in architecture school, the late Norbert Schoenauer, actually wrote a book showing how you could furnish rooms that just met the minimum Residential Standards. Then he sketched the explosion of options that occurred when room sizes were expanded by just one or two square metres.”
“I can’t put my hand on that book at the moment, but in this Computer Aided Design & Drafting (CADD) universe, I and many other architects made templates for furniture that included things like night tables and circulation spaces around beds, for example. Once we had a room that worked for what it intended, we could turn off the furnishings, but only after we had the mechanical and electrical engineers position heaters, plugs and switches in logical places.”
He interrupted. “You mean somewhere other than the centre of the wall behind the bed?” We both chuckled from experience.
“The BC Housing Management Commission (BCHMC) went through a period, when it was still building affordable housing, where proponents had to show furnishing layouts to prove out their proposals. Sadly, that approach seems to have been set aside. It needs to be revived.”
He was thoughtful for a moment, continued: “So what’s the solution between 1,400 pages and 210?”
“Well, minimum room sizes are just one area where good ideas were abandoned over time. One of the reasons 210 grew to 1,400+ pages arose, in my opinion, from unnecessary complexity injected by well meaning designers and building scientists who wanted Canada’s building codes to be aligned as best possible and didn’t feel comfortable dealing with design issues like room sizes—so they simply eliminated them. The same code needed to work for low-rise and high-rise construction, for a bike storage shed and a laboratory or school.
Code experts know pretty well how to zero in on the code sections that work for their project. For most folks, including builders, many designers and plan checkers at city halls throughout the land, it’s just gotten way too complex. Because Vancouver has its own charter and its own building bylaw, it’s uniquely positioned to create its own solution that’s focused just on housing.”
He awaited the rest of my answer.
“I’ll bet that if city staff and the design and construction community was asked to focus just on what’s needed in the variety of home types, what the current codes call acceptable solutions, rather than theoretical discussions (don’t even get me started on functional statements!), the result would be a much more compact, simpler to read and use Affordable Building Code (ABC) that would make everyone’s jobs easier.”
He paused for a moment. “If you were successful in creating a book of new standards, simpler, more concise and easier to implement, wouldn’t that put a lot of city staff and code experts out of business or a job?”
“Not necessarily,” I answered, smiling. “I have some ideas for ABC about how to build on new standards in a way that would dramatically reduce all types of permitting times.”
“What do you mean, dramatically reduce,” he asked as he opened a beer, our indicator that the conversation was drawing to a close for the moment.
“I mean walking into city hall with signed, sealed design and construction documents for any project included in the ABC and getting your permit immediately over the counter.” I paused for effect. “And the same approach could work throughout the rest of the province, which uses the BC Building Code.”
My next City Conversation will address how all permitting times can be drastically reduced.
Today’s question: Do you think an Affordable Building Code is a good idea?
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Brian Palmquist is a Vancouver-based architect, building envelope and building code consultant and LEED Accredited Professional (the first green building system). He is semi-retired for the moment, still teaching and writing, so not beholden to any client or city hall. These conversations mix real discussion with research and observations based on a 40+ year career including the planning, design and construction of almost every type and scale of project. He is the author of the Amazon best seller “An Architect’s Guide to Construction.” and working the first 88 City Conversations into a book about how we’ve come to where we are.
How come in the 90’s there were all the leaky condos. My building had to go through major repairs.
The developer would put in insulation. Be inspected. When inspector left the insulation was taken out and used in other buildings.
Used to get my building permits across the counter for small renovations and commercial tenant improvements in the 70s to 90s. Want to see what I have gone through for a teeny building permit the last year? Yes, the acceptable solutions list helps but it depends how inspectors interpret it. The stories I could tell you.