Status - Lateral Bracing Design for Part 9.23.13

Several of you have asked where I am at. Well, I am in a holding pattern. The District has asked for up to two weeks to review the policy regarding Lateral Bracing, and to talk with other Municipalities. I have not been provided a written policy from DNV and could not find one on their site, however when the manager advised other Municipalities had similar policies, he specifically mentioned Burnaby. A search of the Burnaby site turned up the following policy.

Burnaby does allow Lateral Load designs for Single Family to comply with BCBC 2012 Part 9.23.13.  However, those taking this path must prepare much more detailed drawings for the lateral load design AND must have an engineer sign off stating “I, ____________, have reviewed and confirmed that the lateral resistance of this building for wind and earthquake is designed in accordance with BCBC 2012 9.23.13.” They do not actually have to design the system to Part 9, something APEGBC does not allow them to do, they only have to confirm the system designed by others (me) is in accordance with Part 9. They also have to provide the site inspections to ensure what is built, matches the design.

This seems to be a completely reasonable policy that passes the responsibility for compliance of the new Lateral Bracing rules from the Municipality (which at least at this point in time seem ill equipped to address) to a professional engineer.  Of course, I do not yet know of an engineer who can perform this task (waiting to hear from my Structural Engineer), and like many structural engineers who do not want to participate in an answer build design, there may be a limited number willing to provide this review.

I have asked DNV if they have enacted a similar policy and will allow a Part 9 design under these additional conditions.

In the meantime, my wife and I decided over the weekend we are not interested in moving back into the existing dwelling.  My wife really did not like it and I technically cannot move back in now anyway because I have lost the occupancy permit now that the services have been disconnected.  I suspect, I would have to bring a lot of systems up to current code before I could reconnect the services and once again occupy the dwelling.  For the reasons identified in my blog, I really do not feel it is prudent to put money and embodied energy into a dwelling that would still be a tear down.

So I will continue the process of taking down the existing structure over the next month and a bit.  Once at grade, we will then re-group to see where we are at in terms of building permit status.  If a reasonable compromise has not been achieved, we may just sell the property and regroup.  It seems crazy to think that way after all the effort to get to this point in time and we would have already spent $25K+ getting here, but we really cannot afford the significant added costs (Rough estimate at between $20K – $30K) of a fully engineered Lateral Bracing design.