With Canada Day just around the corner I was wondering about putting up a flag on the house to celebrate. There are a few flag poles around the community, including one at the Fijian Consulate, which is a house in our neighbourhood.

Given the local council’s tendency to regulate as much as they can here I was curious about what the restrictions that they have to having a residential flagpole at your house.

Best I can tell from a few local council web-sites as far as limitations for a residential flag pole are as follows:

• Standalone flagpole must not exceed 10-metres in height
• Flagpoles attached to a building you are limited to 4-metres above the top most point of the building it’s attached to
• Heights that exceed these require development approval

To be honest those limitations are not as bad as I thought they would be, I expected a shorter height to be required.

These are just guidelines that I have found, if you are planning to put up your own flag pole I would recommend contacting your local council to find out what their own regulations are.

Image source: CANADA FLAG 3 x 5 foot

As I wrote in my previous article, Black Cart Garbage Collecting Starting Soon in Calgary, Calgary is finally moving to a more effective method of garbage collecting with the introduction of the black cart garbage collecting.

I’m wondering if this is going to change the behaviour of Calgarians when it comes to putting out their garbage? Although back in Australia we were not allowed any extra garbage beyond the cart, here in Calgary you can still have extra bags alongside your bin.

So, have you received your bin yet? Do you think it will change your garbage habits?

Given that they have been using this service in Australia for decades I’m surprised it took so long to catch on here in Calgary. From our experience in Australia it’s a muchbetter way to collect garbage since it’s faster, more efficient and cleaner.

In Australia there was no provision made for extra garbage bags. To be honest I could see that as being quite a hindrance with the efficiency of the system, especially since they are moving to a one-person garbage truck, so the person picking up will have to be the drive.

There is no way in our yard for us to wheel the black bins into the yard or closer to the house, so it will be living in our back alley. We’ve had the blue recycling bins for a while and they’ve worked well. Occasionally after heavy winds though I have sometimes had to go searching for the bin near the end of alley.

You can read more about the City of Calgary Black Cart Garbage Collection here.

After about four different inspection and a few visits to the Townsville City Council offices we have received final approval on our house renovations!

We mad a lot of changes to our plans since the beginning that called for amended plans. The first time I amended our plans and changed the lower level from block walls to timber walls it cost me about $800.00.

For removing the rear deck, “sister” joists, and knocking out an internal wall I chose to fall back on my high-school drafting classes and draw the plans myself. It took me a while to get everything drawn to scale and ready for submission, but I reckon I saved myself about $500 – $700 by doing it myself. Council had no problems with the plans, so I reckon my high school drafting teacher would have been proud …

Because I am an owner builder I also needed to write up and submit a number of the forms myself. This also took a while as I had to find sample forms on-line and make sure that I understood the legislation and building codes that I was referencing in the forms.

So now the house is finished and we are ready to move onto the next big thing …