no other housing stock is uniquely our own, every other house that you see in vancouver is vancouver adaption of a house style from another place. vancouver special is all our own and its probably the only house style and the first house style that was developed that was uniquely vancouver. there were from stock plans that you could buy for $65.00 off the shelf and you just went and you chose whether you wanted, flat roof, the offset roof a double wide, what style did youlike and you take that stock plan
and you would hand it to a builder. they would just build it for you and in sometimes three weeks, you'd get your house delivered to you. the main thing with the vancouver special is just the size that you get and being able to divide it and be able to create a nice open concept with some minimal changes to whole home. but what we did was really, more testing out the sustainable features that we would want to do in future projects. so using high efficiency insulation such as spray-foam to create a tight building envelope
to maximize the heat retention, changingout the windows to fibre glass windows. putting in a high efficiency fireplace on the upper floor. in theliving room here, we had a door that was a closed door with a window and closing off southern light, by putting in a door system, one, we have natural light coming into the space connecting us to the environment, connecting us to the park across the street and the space around us, as well as taking in the whole heating and cooling systems, having this great air flow coming in off the ocean and the fraser river
coming into the space. i think that it's just acreative way of using a house that's already built in the city that we have thousands of and its completely unsustainable to throw them out. so you can take a 2500 hundred foot building that generates about 60 tonnes of debris in the landfill and if you think that we have a thousanddemolition permits per year issued in the city of vancouver, we have look at creative ways of using what we already have. a lot of these houses were built in the late seventies and early eighties so often you have a good mechanicalsystems so your roof
is for the most part, at about this age it's already been done by the previousowner if you've just purchased it. you don't really have to worry about your plumbing as much and your electrical systems are pretty much up to date. ofcourse if you wanted to expand on those electrical systems, there are certain thingsthat you need to do, you have to do the subpanel but for the most part, it'snot a lot of money that goes into mechanical systems in these houses. most your money can go into the pretty stuff, the cosmetic stuff.
you have a low slope roof, you have avery nice front exposure, once your finished with it, that is. and i would say that a lot of time you can do open concept on the living spaceupstairs and just the versatility of some of these houses you can really customize the way youlike.