Land prices in Nanaimo

 In Nanaimo land is quite expensive, depending on what you can build on a property land can easily cost 400,000$ That is quite a head start to make houses unaffordable. Given that build costs for a 1000 ft2 unit might run in the 250,000$ range, this project already is running you 650,000$. Add a few dollars to connect to city services, easily at 700,000. Does anyone else this is insane?

So maybe a 4-plex might work, 4000 ft2 of built space, so maybe total of 1.5M$ after everything added in. So about 375,000$ to buy a 1000 ft2 unit in a 4 plex... Yikes. Probably a 2100$ minimum monthly mortgage.

Manufactured Housing Company Set to Open New Factory

Ironwood Manufactured Homes in New Brunswick, Canada is set to open a new facility, increasing its capacity ten fold. Here are some details in a CTV news report.

Click Here

Building Affordable Housing

 I've been hearing about all the political parties' views on building more housing. Now finally it appears that the rhetoric has shifted to building AFFORDABLE housing. That is what Canada needs. Mark Carney pointed to the Post WW2 effort to build houses for veterans. What were they? They were basic houses some as small as 625 Sq. ft. with unfinished basements and attics. What has been built in the last 5 years? In Nanaimo, huge 2500 Sq. ft homes, with rental suites. Basically unaffordable for people trying to get started.

Let's smarten up and start building smaller houses.

Temporary Housing Opening Soon in Nanaimo

click here BC Housing Information​

Nuutsumuut Lelum - Snuneymuxw First Nation

 In the category of some of my favorite buildings in Nanaimo. Nuutsumuut Lelum - Snuneymuxw First Nation complex on Bowen Road is right up there.

Built in 2018, this complex provides 25 units of affordable housing. It meets a critical need for urban aboriginal housing.  

Situated along a main thoroughfare in Nanaimo, it also is adjacent to one of the largest parks in the city. The complex is organized around a central exterior meeting space for residents to interact with one another.

The exterior is clad in the locally found cedar wood.

Manufactured Homes

 I have to wonder why after so many years the construction industry and governments seem to have abandoned the idea of building manufactured home communities. Is it not easier to build a home in a factory? Move it to a site and place it on a foundation? I've seen multiple story buildings being built with manufactured components. Isn't the way to go? We stopped building cars one at a time a century ago.

Converting Metres to Feet and Fractional Inches in Construction

 Have you ever wondered about converting Metric and Imperial units. In some cases it's pretty easy. You can even use an online converter. Other times it's a pain. Say you have a measurement in metres and then you need to convert that into feet and inches and even worse, fractional inches. So let's say we start with a measurement like 9.45m how many feet, inches and fractional inches are in that value.

1/ First step, the easy one, is to convert to decimal feet. (3.2808 is the number of feet in a metre.)

9.45m x 3.2808 = 31.10236 ft

That you can do on a calculator, or using an online converter.

2/ Second, is you want to take the remainder and convert that into decimal inches. At this point our decimal is in feet so we are going to convert decimal feet into decimal inches. (12 is the number of inches in a foot)

0.10236 ft x 12 = 1.22832 in

3/ Third step is to convert the decimal inches into fractional inches. Before you do that you have to ask yourself how you are going to use this measurement. If you are going to use this outdoors in some sort of landscaping then you might just round off the inch value to the closest inch, in this case 1". But say you need this value to the closest 1/8" for some application on the inside of a building. Again we will use the remainder and multiply it by 8/8. (8/8 is equal to 1 so you are not changing the value, just how it appears.)

0.22832 x 8/8 = 1.82656/8 

4/ Fourth, we will do some rounding and reduction. 

round 1.82656/8 to 2

our fraction now appears as follows 2/8

which we reduce to 1/4

5/ Finally, we combine everything together.

31' - 1 1/4"

Try a few on your own.