Southwest New Brunswick Service Commission

As the province grows older and we all grow a bit more aware of the needs of others, its understandable that homeowners and business operators would want to make access easier through a wheelchair ramp.

When it comes to building ramps, though, there's a lot that can go wrong. For example, it's not uncommon for a ramp to be constructed that is simply too hard to use for those it was intended to help! That's why we've built a pamphlet aimed at helping weave through the Building Code and help make your project right.

Our one-page pamphlet is available for free at our office (or for download here if you want to print it off at home.)

New Brunswick's building codes for things like wheelchair ramps and bathrooms are among the best in the country when it comes to helping out those who are confined to wheelchairs, need to use walkers, or are visually challenged. But that means builders have to be quite attentive when constructing commercial wheelchair ramps. (Note: these require building permits, in part to make sure submitted plans meet Code requirements.)

It's our intent to write a companion guide on wheelchair-accessible bathrooms in the weeks to come.

Questions? Give our building inspectors a call. We can be reached at 466-7369, ext. 3.

 

A few times in the last year, our inspectors have run into a critical oversight that’s caused problems: incorrect placement of vapour barrier in floors over an unheated space.

First off, there’s a general rule on where vapour barrier goes: the warm side of the building. For things like walls and ceilings, that’s a really obvious thing. However, when building a stud floor over, say, an unheated crawl space – which is usually insulated later in the build than other sections – it’s easy to overlook the vapour barrier placement.

The image provided here illustrates how it should be done: vapour barrier is drawn over the joists before the sheathing goes down.

What some folks might overlook is the vapour barrier when building a suite over a heated garage. Garages are considered unconditioned (unheated) spaces, and for good reason: they’re often exposed to serious drops in temperatures, even if insulated and heated like the rest of the house. Further, garages must have a layer of vapour barrier encapsulating them to keep vehicle fumes away from the rest of the house. In this case, the old rule – vapour barrier on the warm side – holds true.

There is one critical exception: if closed-cell foam is used as the insulation. In that case, the foam serves as the vapour barrier, and can be applied on the underside of a sheathed floor without vapour barrier being in place.

In the past few months, our inspectors have noticed a number of situations where over-large holes have been drilled in framing members, or, alternately, holes have been drilled too close to the edge of a framing member.

We remind contractors of the relevant code on drilling holes through load-bearing elements:

9.23.5.1. Holes Drilled in Framing Members
1) Holes drilled in roof, floor or ceiling framing members shall be not larger than one-quarter the depth of the member and shall be located not less than 50 mm from the edges, unless the depth of the member is increased by the size of the hole.

Our inspectors have also observed holes for plumbing – usually for draining toilets or showers - drilled through the top members of open-web joists in the floor system below. This requires the contractor to contact the joist manufacturer for an engineer-approved repair, at the contractor’s expense.

If you have questions, give us a call. Our building inspection department serves rural Charlotte County, southern York County, and the municipalities of St. George, Saint Andrews, Harvey and McAdam.

This week, we’re going to give you a “pro tip” that will make installation of vapour barrier a whole lot easier.

If interior walls are going to be installed before the ceiling vapour barrier, staple a strip of vapour barrier on the ceiling where the wall is going to go before the wall is lifted into place. This gives a continuous barrier above the wood of the interior wall, and makes the later installation of vapour barrier a lot easier: it also means no worries about using acoustic sealant on that wall, because there is no need.

This simple trick ports over very nicely into more high-end construction where fire-rated drywall is required on the ceiling. In these cases, the drywall must be installed before the walls: failure to do so will result in some costly and time-consuming alterations after the fact.

We had a question yesterday about shingles – that is, applying shingles to the side of a structure.

In this area, due to the heavy rainfall, one of the requirements for shingles is that it has what we call a “capillary break.” That’s a fancy term to describe a 1-cm gap that must be left behind the shingle and the housewrap behind. This is so that when (not if) water penetrates the shingle, it has a place to drain. There are two common ways to achieve this. The first is to apply a shingle backer, which looks like a scrubbing pad on steroids. The other method is to tacknail pressure-treated garden lattice on the side of the building. This also provides the required offset and breathing/drainage space.

You may ask, “why did you use the term ‘when’ water penetrates” the shingle? Shingles, like all wood products, absorb water. Even if there is no rain, but humid conditions, the shingle will retain moisture. If this moisture has nowhere to go, it will lead to mold and mildew behind the shingle, and begin to force its way through the housewrap and cause serious problems with the sheathing (and worse.)

And here, for your reading pleasure, is the Code on what kind of shingles to use on walls.

9.27.7.1. Materials
1) Shingles and shakes shall conform to
a) CSA O118.1, “Western Red Cedar Shakes and Shingles,” or
b) CSA O118.2, “Eastern White Cedar Shingles.”
2) Western cedar shakes shall be not less than No. 1 or Handsplit grade, and western cedar shingles not less than No. 2 grade, except that No. 3 grade may be used for undercoursing.
3) Eastern white cedar shingles shall be at least B (clear) grade, except that C grade may be used for the lower course of double course applications.

Questions? We serve the rural areas of Charlotte and southern York Counties, as well as the municipalities of McAdam, Harvey, Saint Andrews and St. George. We can be reached at 466-7369.

We’re starting to get the message out there that permits are needed for any new construction, even in “the country,” as some folks call the unincorporated areas. But our staff have noticed some confusion or mis-information about placing pre-built structures, including the (false) belief that no permit is required to move an existing structure onto a piece of property.

Here’s the key take-away: a permit is required to place any notable building on property.

(What do we mean by “notable?” In simple terms, it means nobody is going to be upset if you build Fido a doghouse.)

But the rules and permits required vary depending on what kind of pre-fabricated building one may intend to place.

Modular homes:

These structures are built to very strict engineering standards and then placed on a foundation on-site. A building permit is required for all modular homes, but we only evaluate the permit cost based on the on-site work (concrete and finishing costs.) Inspections are required for the foundation and before move-in.

Minihomes:

Modern minihomes are factory-built structures that meet specific engineering requirements. As such, they are exempt under the building code from requiring foundations. A development permit is required to place a minihome. Some municipalities have limits on where a minihome can be placed, so it’s best to call the development office for that municipality (for McAdam, Harvey, Saint Andrews and St. George, that’s us) for information.

Mobile home:

Like minihomes, mobile homes also require a development permit to place on a property. And, like minihomes, most municipalities have limits on where they can be placed – if at all. Again, call first.

Other structures (shipping containers, etc):

Long-term storage units, like shipping containers or transport trailers with wheels removed are considered “structures” as far as provincial and municipal regulations are concerned. These will require development permits in rural areas, and either development permits or building permits (depending on size) for municipalities – if allowed at all. Once more, call first.

One of the challenges our building inspectors face is that some folks confuse our building inspectors with home inspectors. What's the difference?

A home inspector is usually involved at the onset of a real estate transaction. They are usually hired by a potential purchaser to evaluate the structural status and overall condition of an existing building.

A building inspector evaluates renovations, new construction and changes of use/occupancy. Their task is to ensure that the construction meets the National Building Code of Canada, including structural safety as well as life and fire safety. Building inspectors are usually employed by a government body of some nature, and have a certain scope of legal powers under the Community Planning Act, which also includes the power to work with municipal by-law officers in deeming buildings suitable for demolition.

In New Brunswick, a provincial professional association – the New Brunswick Building Officials Association - oversees education and certification of building inspectors, and the training meshes with a national body to ensure inspectors have similar training and qualifications across the country. All the inspectors employed by the Southwest New Brunswick Service Commission are active members in the NBBOA.

Earlier this year one of our inspectors was on site with a client to discuss a fairly simple project, but the visit identified a problem with the plan to shingle the roof. The roof, a simple single-plane sloping structure (“barn dormer” in building lingo) had a slope of about two feet over eight feet, (a 3:12 pitch) and the builder wanted to use shingles.

Veteran contractors may already know the problem our inspector identified: the roof wasn’t steep enough for a simple shingle installation.

The National Building Code of Canada stipulates that shingles can be used without much in the way of specialized installation for any roof with a slope of 1 in 3 (a 4:12 pitch for builders). Shingles can be used on roofs as shallow as 1 in 6 (a 2:12 pitch), but with special requirements, most notably that the installation must be such that there are three layers of shingle over the entire roof, not two as well as special applications of cement and tar.

Ultimately, the builder chose a metal roof, which is Code-compliant for a 1:4 slope, and for the builder, a simpler and cheaper alternative.

Here’s the thing with shingles: the shallower the slope, the more susceptible they are to issues of wind-borne rain driving up-slope.

Of course, shingle roofs require what we call “eaves protection,” (see post here: https://snbsc-planning.com/roofing-tip-protect-those-eaves/) and what builder refer to an “ice and water shield” when they transition over a heated space to an unheated eave. This helps protect the roof from ice-dams.

For suggestions on how to tame ice-damming, see the post on drop-chord trusses here. (https://snbsc-planning.com/benefits-of-the-heel-drop-chord-truss/)

Every now and then, we field a question from a builder that requires a little more digging before we can give an answer. Earlier this year, one of our inspectors fielded such a question about a common practice: building a cantilever on a deck, such as in the image shown here.

The question itself was simple enough: “how far can I extend that cantilever?”

For those that aren’t in the building business, a cantilever is simply a building element that extends beyond its support, and when you think about it, cantilevers are common to just about every building: most roof systems extend beyond the support of a house wall, for example.

For a number of reasons, folks building decks want to extend the deck beyond the support beam. One of those reasons is that making a small extension does much to hide the same beam. But how far can a builder go?

Here’s the interesting thing: the National Building Code of Canada is surprisingly silent on cantilevers when it comes to decks. There is some guide for cantilevered construction supporting roof loads (max 600 mm/24” cantilever when using 2x10s, max 400 mm/16” when using 2x8s), but nothing about cantilevers when there aren’t roof loads.

So our inspector dug deeper and found documents from the Canadian Wood Council. This organization’s work actually feeds into the National Building Code span tables.

The answer?

The exact same.

A Wood Council document (here) gives some very high-end detail about decks, but the take-away as far as cantilevers go is almost exactly the same: 400mm/16” for 2x6 or 2x8 lumber, and 600mm/24” for 2x10 or 2x12 lumber.

This question highlights how our office works: a question might stump us at the outset, but we’ll do our utmost to give a solid answer at the end. We serve the unincorporated areas of Charlotte and southern York counties, as well as the municipalities of Harvey, McAdam, St. George and Saint Andrews. Our inspectors can be reached by calling 466-7369.