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 …

Last year the Queensland State Government floated the idea of selling off the Townsville Showground to make way for more development near the centre of Townsville. This week though the government announced that they will not be selling the Townsville Showgrounds for redevelopment.

As a resident of West End, Townsville I had mixed feelings about the sale of the Townsvile Showgrounds. In one hand I like having the Showgrounds here, there is a lot of history to it, and it is central for most people in Townsville. At the same time though I was getting fed up with some of the noise, especially from the motor sports and speedway events begin held there.

In backing off the sale of the Townsville Showgrounds the Queensland government also stated that “high-level impact events such as motor sports and outdoor concerts should not be allowed at the (Townsville Showgrounds) site“. The report went on to say that state government land in the Bohle, a mostly industrial part of Townsville, had been identified for a proposed motor sports complex and drive trainer centre.

So as far as I am concerned, it a win both ways. Townsville gets to keep it’s Showgrounds, and there will be a new, suitable facility built for the motor sports.

Technorati Tags: Townsville, Queensland, showgrounds, Townsville Showgrounds

The Queensland state government has decided to merge the twin cities of Townsville and Thuringowa.

In a move that will cut the number of local councils by more than half in Queensland the state government has begun the process of merging many of the smaller councils into regional councils. The number of Queensland councils will go from 156 to 72 with elections being help in March of next year.

Considering that Townsville and Thuringowa are virtually indistinguishable from one another I don’t find this move to be all that surprising. The new city will be called “Townsville” and the only remembrance that there will be of the name Thuringowa will be one of the suburbs called “Thuringowa Central”. We will go from two councils of 1 mayor and 10 councellors each, to one council with one mayor and 12 councellors. The total population will be about 164,000.

There are about 55 different businesses in Thuringowa that use the city name in their trading name. It will be interesting to see what happens to them, but quite a few have already expressed the fact that they will likely not be changing their name immediately.

I’m not sure that this will mean to building here in Townsville. There are reports already that some developers are putting a temporary hold on building project until things become a bit more clear. One of the biggest worries is that the two councils coming together will not be able to make decisions that benefit the entire city, but they will instead try only to serve their former city.

(Hopefully) our project should be completed, or at least mostly so, before the amalgamation of Townsville and Thuringowa happens in March of next year (2008). Already in the 19-months since our project was approved we have seen regulations change, so hopefully we won’t see too many more changes to building guidelines and regulations before the end of the building project. I’ll write more about some of those changes later.

Tags: townsville, queensland, thuringowa

Our current builder started building under our house to the lockup stage on Monday, July the 9th. He had his crew of three guys working every day of that first week, only taking Sunday off.

On Tuesday July the 17th we received the “Compliance Inspection Report” from the Townsville City Council building certifier. The report indicated that “The building work complies with the Development Permit”.

So after only a week and day on the job the framing has already been completed and certified. They have already begun putting the sisalation on the outside of the frame, putting the insulation in the frame cavities that will be sealed up, adding the flashing and waterproofing the front verandah. We are getting ready for the plumber and electrician to come in on the end of this week / beginning of next week.

The only thing that looks like it might hold us up a bit is waiting for the windows to come in. Other than that things are running almost right on schedule.

Really makes me wish I had found this guy 18-months ago. We would probably be living down there already.

One of the big topics of conversation here in Calgary since we have been visiting has been the cost of housing. Since we were here last in 2003 house prices have easily doubled, they have increased 46% in 2006 alone! The median house price in Calgary is about $450,000, and the median condo price in Calgary is over $310,000.

This is proving to be a huge challenge for a lot of people in the city. Many service professions, like teachers and social workers, are finding the increased cost of living to be extremely challenging. My sister, who has a university degree in social work and is currently working at a group home, has found that she can not afford to purchase a house, or even a condo in Calgary on her salary.

This situation is not only evident for those wishing to purchase a home, but it’s also the case for people wanting to rent. Calgary has a unique situation now where people in lower paying jobs are being forced to live in their cars on in shelters.

So what are some solutions being presented?

1. Increase the availability of basement or above garage suites

• This would increase the availability of low cost housing at a minimum cost, with fairly minimum effort, and relatively quickly.
• It would legalize the estimated 30,000 to 80,000 illegal suites already in Calgary.
• It would put an increased burden on existing infrastructure in neighbourhoods. Communities that had their infrastructure designed for a certain density would have that density increased, without a change to that infrastructure. In a city where 8 in 10 residence own vehicles this could prove to be a huge challenge.
• Although presented to council at a recent meeting this effort was not accepted for existing communities.
• The option is being looked at for new communities.
• Read more about this at CBC News: Proposed Rules for basement suites controversial

2. Require affordable housing to be planned into new communities

• Like the The Crestwood Affordable Housing Development in South East Calgary.
• This can also include zoning new developments and building the infrastructure to support a higher density of people.  The new McKenzie Towne Community in South East Calgary is zoned to allow basement and garage suites.

3. What other options can you see to address the affordable housing crisis now facing Calgary and many other of our large cities? Please put your ideas in the comments below:

I just got an e-mail from the Townsville City Council and I called them on the phone to confirm it, but we have been given approval for all of our plans! So that is very exciting news given that some people told us it would take up to three months for approval to be granted.

The council won’t release the permit for enclosing and building under until we have provided them with an insurance certificate. Since we don’t even have any quotes yet for enclosing and building under the house we don’t have a builder selected yet.

Thankfully it is a separate permit for enclosing and building than it is for raising and restumping the house. Because of that our house lifter should be able to start soon (he previously told us within about three weeks of being approved). That’s pretty exciting because it should mean that we will get that part done quite a bit before the baby is due, rather than a week before, which is what we had originally feared…

In one of my previous posts, 4cm Too Small for a Bathroom, I wrote about how we had to get rid of our built in wardrobe in the master bedroom and put the family bathroom there instead because there was not enough room under the stairs for a bathroom, by 4cm.

Well this time we found out from the Townsville City Council that our house is 8cm too close to the boundary line than the current council regulations allow! This is a problem because we are wanting to put a deck on the back of the house that is in line with the current house…

It was a good experience for us to meet the neighbours on that side of us. The council informed us that we just needed to get their permission for the construction and then it shouldn’t be a problem. They gave us permission quite willingly, which was great, so now town planning is looking into it and they will hopefully give us a verdict soon. If everything comes up good then we should actually be able to move on ahead of schedule with the raise and restump of our house, which would be really good since Tamara (my wife) is now 30.5 weeks pregnant!

At the moment we are at stage 5 on our House Lifting and Restumping Schedule, except so far instead of the builder and architect having to get new things off to council, we are the ones doing it.

Some other good news is that the guy who will be raising and restumping our house will only need us out of the house for a week, instead of the three weeks that we thought we might have to be out for. (See previous article Out of the House for Three Weeks!!! to see when we were told that.)

With the help of the contractor doing the house lifting we have now submitted our preliminary plans to the Townsville City Council for the raise, restump and building in of our house.

Our plans actually have to go through Town Planning despite us pulling our garage under the original roof line, as I wrote about in “New Floorplan for the House“. It seems that the house is less then the regulation 6 metres from the front boundary and even though we are not changing the location of the house Town planning still needs to see and aprove the plans. Bit of a pain but the house lifting contractor thinks that we should be able to have it through some time this week, which would be great.

We are still waiting on the engineering plans to get to us, but City Council doesn’t need that until Town Planning has approved it anyways…

Let’s just wait and see what happens this week.