CANADIAN CONTRACTOR MAY/JUNE 2014

Modular Homes Factory-Built Brilliance

Steve Maxwell Sweet Skylights

Contractor’s Life Being Our Own Clients

page 22

page 37

page 46

CANADIAN

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THE MAGAZINE FOR PROFESSIONAL RENOVATORS AND CUSTOM HOMEBUILDERS

LOOKING

Kerr Construction, Vancouver used all the angles of a triangular-shaped lot to win an Ovation Award for renovation excellence page 28

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CONTENTS

Martin Knowles Photo/Media

CONTENTS

COVER STORY

Perfect Angles 28

features

Modular Homes 22 Factory-built homes, until recently, were mostly associated with workers’ housing. Now, they can be as beautiful as high-end, site-built homes.

Cover Story Perfect Angles 28 Kerr Construction, Vancouver, has won an Ovation Award from the B.C. Homebuilders Association for this spectacular residence built onto a commercial property.

Sweet Skylights 37 Steve Maxwell looks at hi-tech and solar skylights that are good for business.

38

Sweet Skylights

More Than Money: Charles Caskey 44 You may never have heard of the man, because he was a contractor from a century ago.

But his story contains priceless lessons for all builders.

22

Modular Homes

The Toughest Clients of Our Lives: Ourselves 46 Guelph, Ontario contractor Mark Hofstee reports on what he and his business-partner wife, Anitra, learned when they hired someone else to renovate their basement.

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May/June 2014

3

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS

departments

Contractor U

20

Editorials 8 Rob tells us why we don’t need unions in Canada any more. Steve disagrees.

Stuff

We Like

Online at canadiancontractor.ca 6 Check out these videos about a fireless fireplace from Dimplex, electrical safety and how to create a state-of-the-art dry basement.

Voices 10 The best of hundreds of comments posted weekly at canadiancontractor.ca, including: Licensed versus unlicensed trades, apprenticeship training, a contractor who thought DAP was drywall mud, turbans versus hardhats.

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Site Notes 14 A CIBC poll by Nielsen predicts that renovators will have a much easier time finding work this year than homebuilders. And a report on B.C.’s sales tax situation.

Contractor U 20 Five tips on how to get profitable leads from a booth at a home show.

Maxwell’s Stuff We Like 35 Skylights, lessons from Grandpa, panel clamps and utility knives.

Case Study: What Would You Do? 54 This roofing contractor has a dilemma. Tell us how to handle the situation and you could win a prize.

Site

Notes

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www.canadiancontractor.ca

May/June 2014

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ONLINE CANADIAN

ONLINE @

Visit us online

CONTRACTOR to join the conversation that almost 22,000 contractors are having

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VIDEO

A FIRELESS FIREPLACE If you have a customer that likes fireplaces but doesn’t like fire, Dimplex has come up with the perfect solution. Using only light and water vapour, this “fireplace” produces something very flame-like, and very safe. See it for yourself.

Type “Dimplex” in the search line on the home page of Canadiancontractor.ca to find this and similar videos

VIDEO

ELECTRICAL SAFETY IS FIRST The busiest season for renovations in Canada has begun, with pent up demand from a long winter driving activity through the roof. Tight deadlines, pushy customers and tighter budgets may tempt you to cut safety corners. The Electrical Safety Association wants you to know why this is a bad idea.

Type ”ESA“ in the search line on the home page of Canadiancontractor.ca to find this and similar videos

VIDEO

STEVE MAXWELL BUILDS A DRY BASEMENT In this sponsored video, tools editor Steve Maxwell explains why he likes the ease of installation of DriCore floor and wall systems.

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Type “DriCore” in the search line on the home page of Canadiancontractor.ca to find this and similar videos

CONTRACTOR.ca BUILD | GROW | PROFIT

Volume 15, Number 4 May/June 2014 canadiancontractor.ca | Tel: 416 442 5600 |

Editor: Steve Payne spayne@canadiancontractor.ca

80 Valleybrook Drive, North York, ON, M3B 2S9

Contributing Editors: John Caulfield, Mark Hofstee Brynna Leslie, Steve Maxwell

Canadian Contractor, established in 2000, is published 6 times a year by BIG Magazines LP, a division of Glacier BIG Holdings Company Ltd.

Art Director: Mary Peligra mpeligra@bizinfogroup.ca

ISSN 1498-8941 (Print) ISSN 1929-6495 (Online)

Publisher: Rob Koci rkoci@bizinfogroup.ca Production Manager: Gary White gwhite@bizinfogroup.ca

Business Information Group

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May/June 2014

Circulation Manager: Beata Olechnowicz bolechnowicz@bizinfogroup.ca

www.canadiancontractor.ca

BIG Magazines LP Corinne Lynds, Editorial Director Tim Dimopoulos, Executive Publisher Alex Papanou, Vice-President of Canadian Publishing Bruce Creighton, President of Business Information Group Subscriber Services: To subscribe, renew your subscription or to change your address or information contact us at 416 442 5600 x3547 Subscription Rates: Canada $45.95 per year, Outside Canada $83.95US per year, Single Copy Canada $9.95.

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the following methods: Tel: 1-800-668-2374 Fax: 416-442-2191 Email: privacyofficer@ businessinformationgroup.ca Mail: Privacy Office, 80 Valleybrook Drive, North York, ON, M3B 2S9.

Contents of this publication are protected by copyright and must not be reprinted in whole or in part without permission of the publisher.

Publications Mail Agreement No. 40069240 We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

EDITORIALS

Voices

UNIONS: WHY WE DON’T NEED THEM ANY MORE

By Rob Koci

I

t is in the nature of unions that their strength is in agreement.

Unity is essential and conformity underpins their power. They

uphold characteristics like loyalty and solidarity because without them, unions fail. That’s why union dues and memberships are mandatory in union shops. Individuality is not welcomed and can be threatened with violence if it looks like it will thwart the objectives of the union.

Unions take a worker’s focus off work quality and put it on workers’ rights: the right to a 45-minute lunch, the right to refuse work, the right to do this task but not that. Unions disconnect skilled workers from their trades, then connects them to the skill of “showing who’s boss.” It disconnects a worker from pride in his work. Pride of membership, pride of “brotherhood” takes its place.

If a good union man tells a story, it will be how he stood up to oppression, not how his work stood up to hard use.

”

Union leaders won’t disclose their incomes, while their

Unions disconnect workers from pride in their work.

Pride of ‘brotherhood’ takes its place.

”

Rob Koci Publisher

rkoci@canadiancontractor.ca

members’ incomes are public knowledge. Union leaders brook no dissent and their loyalty to a worker only goes as far as that worker’s obedience. Union leaders have friends in high places and receive the best public appointments.

The unions are not entirely responsible for the disappearance of manufacturing jobs in Canada but their inflexibility in the face of serious competition from overseas (or even from the southern U.S. - think Caterpillar) has been a serious hindrance to keeping jobs here. With manufacturing disappearing, unions are looking to the construction industry – specifically the residential sector – for growth opportunities. In other words they are looking at you.

Unions had an important part to play in the growth of the middle class and the improvement of living conditions in North American and Europe. Not any more. They could have important work to do in emerging economies and third world countries where working conditions and wages need improvement. Not here. Not now. Not with us.

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May/June 2014

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EDITORIALS

Voices

UNIONS: REMEMBER WHAT WE ALL OWE THEM

By Steve Payne

A

ll I can do is chuckle over Rob’s version, at left, of what unions are and aren’t. “If a good union man tells a story, it will be how

he stood up to oppression, not how his work stood up to hard use,” Rob claims.

That was one of many statements in Rob’s editorial that drove my brilliant, 22-year old, Trotskyist son up the wall when he looked at a page proof of it before we went to press. (“What is this reactionary sh*t?” he asked me. “Our rent,” I didn’t reply.) Nick then rewrote the description of Rob’s Union Man as it might have appeared in Fightback, the magazine of the Canadian branch of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) that my son much prefers over Canadian Contractor. (I certainly admire their ability to publish without ads.)

“If a good union man tells a story, it will be how he stood up to oppression and how his work stands up to hard use,” Nick wrote.

In fact, he rewrote Rob’s entire editorial and urged me to publish it, changing only a few words here and there. He basically substituted “capitalist oppressors” for “unions” throughout Rob’s piece and it didn’t read too badly. (Try it for yourself. More fun than Sudoku.)

Although I’m no fan of public sector unions specifically, I can certainly defend unions (in general) more than Rob can. It’s not actually unions that ship jobs out of Canada or close down family-

”

We can thank unions for weekends, medical care and worksite safety regulations.

”

run lumberyards and neighborhood hardware stores, but the relentless demands of stock market investors for “efficiencies.”

And think about this. Do you enjoy having a two-day weekend?

(If you can take one.) Think back to the 19th century when we all worked six days. Do you enjoy Canada’s universal health care system? Think about the tens of millions of medically-uninsured

Steve Payne

Americans. Do you appreciate not having to die from being

Editor

forced to work with toxic chemicals on jobsites with no safety

spayne@canadiancontractor.ca

regulations whatsoever?

If you like any of these societal advancements, thank Canada’s unions. Once upon a time, no one else cared. www.canadiancontractor.ca

May/June 2014

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VOICES

LICENSED VS. UNLICENSED TRADES In the ongoing saga of the Ontario College of Trades, a line is being drawn by the College between the quality of work and the character of licensed trades vs. unlicensed trades, with the OCOT trying to make the point that licensed trades are superior on both counts. This reader has another opinion.

“I think there is a misconception that all licensed trades are overwhelming perfect at his or her job.”

What I would like to know is how will it better the non-licensed trades person by getting his or her license? I have never had a customer ask if I had one or not. So why should I get one?

I think there is a misconception that all licensed trades are overwhelmingly perfect at his or her job. They are human.

They can do a bad job, too. In most cases the terrible jobs don’t have permits pulled or inspected either. And there is another misconception that a licensed trades person won’t work for cash. Again, they are human and if you can save paying taxes, why wouldn’t you? I am sure you go to your favourite mechanic and he does a little job and says give me 20 bucks and you whip out some cash and you end up helping the underground economy. We are all guilty. This (the OCOT) will only make more people mad and want to have work done for cash, if only to screw the greedy government. It’s not like they were spending our money wisely.

Dave posted at canadiancontractor.ca

YELLOW PAGES: DEAD OR ALIVE? Years ago, you couldn’t get work beyond referrals if you were not in the Yellow Pages. The old print book seems like ancient history now. Four readers talk about the passing of an icon in Canadian small business life.

“I notice a fairly good increase of traffic after I started blogging more” Yellow Pages are dead. Any business wanting to advertise must have a strong online presence. Blogging is a great way to show your expertise and if nothing else it is a great way to get free links.

From my personal experience I have noticed a fairly good 10

May/June 2014

www.canadiancontractor.ca

increase in the amount of traffic I get to my websites after I started blogging more.”

Joe Seaborne, Calgary Pro Painting Posted on canadiancontractor.ca

“Not only are the Yellow Pages publishers contributing to litter, the advertisers are not getting their money’s worth” I do not care for the Yellow Pages because every year they deliver them in February and the delivery person throws on the ground near my rural road mailbox. Most of them delivered end up in the ditch, or the snow plough pushes them into the ditch and they become covered with snow. Or when using a snow blower they are shredded. Not only are the Yellow Pages publishers contributing to litter, the advertisers are not getting their money’s worth.

I don’t understand why the delivery person cannot put them in the mailbox. I was told because Canada Post doesn’t allow it, but it doesn’t own my mailbox, I do!

But with the web who needs a hard copy anyway?

Raymond Wand Posted on canadiancontractor.ca

“The Yellow Pages on-line app is the new generation of advertisement, and it works” The Yellow Pages book is a dinosaur. The Yellow Pages on-line app is the new generation of advertisement, and it works.

We add customers on a daily basis and that is the only ads we have out.

Frank Conny Posted on canadiancontractor.ca

“I am tempted to try and work directly with search engine companies” I agree with Frank, but I miss the days when you paid to be in the book and for a few more bucks got an online posting. Now it is just the opposite. I have found some success with Rogers Outrank, too, but the lead quality seems lower. I am tempted to try and work directly with search engine companies, but the guys at Yellow Pages are a big help navigating. One thing we can all agree with is that happy customers who go out of their way to refer you is absolutely the best marketing at any price!

Robert Sloan

VOICES

A BETTER PLAN FOR APPRENTICES IN ONTARIO The March/April issue of Canadian Contractor was distributed with a booklet outlining the Ontario Progressive Conservative plan for the province’s apprenticeship program if they form a government after the next election. A reader resists the temptation to toss it in the trash, then realizes its value.

“Finally, a paper with real insight and a clear, concise plan to overhaul a long antiquated apprenticeship program” Gentlemen, I recently received a full colour, six-page supplement with my Canadian Contractor magazine with the title "Skilled Trades in Ontario" on the cover. At first glance it appeared to be yet another misguided government waste of time and money that nearly headed straight for the recycling box. Fortunately, I gave it a second glance, and read it cover to cover, more than one time.

Wow, what a breath of fresh air. Finally, a paper with real insight and a clear, concise plan to overhaul a long antiquated apprenticeship program.

I always wondered why in my trade, plumbing, we had one arm of the government encouraging employers to hire apprentices with substantial federal and provincial grants, while at the same time another arm enforced a severe limit on hiring apprentices through the journeyman/apprentice ratios.

Seems wasteful and counterproductive, doesn't it?

Thank you, Garfield Dunlop for publishing this paper.

I hope that at least some decision makers from the various political parties give it a read before tossing it into the recycling bin.

Rudi Schweitzer Schweitzers Plumbing Centre St. Agatha, Ont. Via email

renovations can look like from the homeowner’s perspective.

Here’s the horror story.

“He used DAP instead of mud on the walls” Beware of (name withheld). He is not registered, and his work is sloppy. He came out to Oshawa and has destroyed two staircases in my home, as well as the basement flooring.

My home is 1,700 sq. ft. He charged us $4,000 to put all the baseboards on, to put down hardwood on two staircases, to put laminate down on the basement floor, and to frame an extra room in the basement. We paid him about $3,100 before he walked off the job. We started questioning the work he was doing as the hardwood was shifting on the stairs, and so were the laminate floors. He used DAP instead of mud on the walls of the new room that he had created, and when we asked him to tape the corners he got upset and said that he was overwhelmed.

Does anyone know of any honest and hardworking contractors out there who could finish this job at a reasonable price? We need the laminate floors fixed, the stairs fixed with veneers that we went out and bought, and the walls mudded and sanded. I don’t see how this kind of job could have overwhelmed an experienced contractor.

We then asked another contractor to take a look, and he’s quoting us another $2,000 to fix the problem. Really need help with this.

Alisha, Homeowner, Oshawa, Ont. Posted on canadiancontractor.ca

SAFETY AND RELIGION Our fearless online contributor Alec Caldwell, president of renovator and home repair association CARAHS (www.carahs. org), broached the subject of hard hats, turbans and safety on site. There was no shortage of willing commenters.

HOMEOWNER HELL

“If you don’t follow safety regulations I won’t hire you”

Every once in a while, a homeowner finds our website, Canadiancontractor.ca. We received a post in January this year from a homeowner appealing for help after an encounter with a bad renovator. It’s always good to be reminded what some

Safety first. I don’t care who you are. If you don’t follow safety regulations I won’t hire you. Sue me or become a Canadian.

Brian Posted on canadiancontractor.ca

www.canadiancontractor.ca

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VOICES

“That safety harness sure messes up my wee sporran and my kilt ”

“People are asking for exclusion instead of modification”

Well said, Brian. I’m a Scottish immigrant, and a proud Canadian citizen and if I were to wear a kilt, I would not try to change the laws. Yet if I did try, I could say to the courts, “That safety harness sure messes up my wee sporran and my kilt on ethnic grounds.”

Not to mention the mess I’ll be in when I’m hanging there mid-air and, to be honest, what a terrible sight it would be for the guys on site: There I am dangling, jewels all over the place!

Alec Caldwell, CARAHS (www.carahs.org) Posted on canadiancontractor.ca

Well, this has stirred up a little bee’s nest, lol.

“We all have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure a safe workplace” If you don’t wear a hardhat you won’t be working around me.

We drop stuff, it happens and it is damn disrespectful to other workers who really don’t need your unnecessary head injury on their conscience.

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario is not a construction organization, has no qualification in construction safety and under no circumstances should they be permitted to dictate such policies. Regardless, we all have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure a safe workplace for all workers and this clearly includes the use of hard hats. As a supervisor you cannot and should never entertain any less.

Joe Greps Posted on canadiancontractor.ca

“Ride your motor bike without a helmet but don’t expect me to pay for your health cost” Before immigration is allowed, would it not be prudent to have a list of Canadian laws stated and if the person immigrating does not wish to accept Canadian culture and laws then refuse them the opportunity to become a Canadian citizen. Existing Canadian citizens should be made by the Supreme Court of Canada to sign a waiver that waives the Canadian taxpayer from paying for any hospital costs associated with injuries sustained while not wearing protective headgear. Ride your motor bike without helmet but don’t expect me to pay for your health costs.

Lyle Donaldson Posted on canadiancontractor.ca 12

May/June 2014

To all those complaining about immigrants coming here and changing things: you all must be Native people. If not, your heritage is one of being an immigrant. Our laws and dress codes and lifestyles have always been influenced by other nations.

Don’t get me wrong, I am totally in favor of the Australian solution. If you don’t like it, don’t choose to do it. But, as an everincreasing number of sikhs apply for jobs, maybe some change is in order. My question is, instead of asking to be excluded from the rules, come up with viable solutions that will work for them and within our rules and regulations.

I think that is the reason for us all to be bitter, is that people are asking for exclusion, instead of modification.

Paul Posted on canadiancontractor.ca

“Every time we approach our honorable craft with petty, extraneous agendas, the project fails” A building has no care or regard for the personal issues of the tradesperson or contractor constructing it but it certainly tells a lot of stories after the fact. Our character and intentionality is what a building becomes. Garbage piled in dead spaces, honeycomb concrete walls, nails protruding from floors and walls, imperfections in cabinetry not filled. We could all make a list 10 miles long.

Every time we approach our honorable craft with petty, extraneous agendas, the project fails. Sure, we’ll get our permits signed off, most of the paint and finishing looks great and we’ll probably get paid.

We all have three daily considerations in what we do: Customer satisfaction, quality workmanship and making a profit. I may be old school but I firmly believe that if we take care of the first two then profit happens.

How do my personal feelings about the way I dress, what I think others should be doing for me or my religious beliefs have any positive influence on my first two considerations?

Here’s an idea. Maybe someone could come up with a CSA-approved design for a hard hat shaped like a turban.

Brian Posted on canadiancontractor.ca

www.canadiancontractor.ca

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SITE NOTES

Renovation work to surge ahead of new home construction CIBC predicts a big jump in home reno spending this year – while Scotiabank predicts a slowdown in new homes

A

new CIBC poll conducted by Nielsen finds that four in 10 Canadian homeowners are planning some type of renovation this year, with an average expected cost of almost $20,000.

According to the CIBC/Nielsen report, 40 per cent of Canadian homeowners plan to renovate their homes in the next 12 months, with average spending up almost 30 per cent from 2013 to $19,754. In 2013, the average was $15,300. Basic home maintenance (57 per cent) is the top-planned project, followed by bathrooms (33 per cent) and kitchens (32 per cent).

“Our poll shows that home renovation will continue to be a big business in Canada this year,” says Todd Lawrence, Senior Vice-President, Products & Payments at CIBC. New home builders, on the other hand, might have a less rosy year in terms of year-over-year increases.

Scotiabanks’s Industry Trends Report on Canadian homebuilding and renovation sees a slowdown in new homes.

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“Canada’s long housing cycle is turning.

Residential investment stalled last year as affordability constraints tempered home sales, and builders scaled back the number of new developments,” notes the report by Scotiabank economist Adrienne Warren.

“We expect the sector will remain on a more subdued trajectory over the next several years, imposing a modest drag on output growth.”

According to Scotiabank, record prices combined with incremental regulatory tightening are reducing affordability and the housing market's earlier momentum, notwithstanding the lowest borrowing costs on record. Pent-up demand has been effectively exhausted after a decade-long housing boom, with Canadian home ownership at record levels. The global outlook also has become much more challenging.

“Average Canadian home prices will eventually decline a cumulative 10 per cent over the next two to three years, as housing demand softens and buyers’ market conditions re-emerge for the first time in over a decade,” said Warren. “The correction will be concentrated in the Toronto and Vancouver markets, where supply risks and affordability pressures have the potential to trigger larger price adjustments.”

Canadian household balance sheets remain in reasonably good shape, with homeowners' equity in real estate assets averaging 67 per cent compared with 41 per cent in the United States. Nonetheless, high personal debt loads and balance sheets heavily skewed to real estate leave Canadians vulnerable to an adverse shock, including a sharp rise in unemployment and/or a sharp drop in home prices.

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SITE NOTES

Ontario PC party pledges to abolish College of Trades Editor’s Note: Now that Ontario election is underway, we thought it would be good for our readers to see and hear, first hand, the PC commitment to abolish the Ontario College of Trades and a brief explanation of why the PCs want to do that.

“The (Ontario) College of Trades is a brand new bureaucracy that is standing in the way of jobs and opportunities – and that’s why it needs to go,” Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak said at a press conference at Queen’s Park just before the Ontario election was called. Hudak was accompanied at the event by his skilled trades and apprenticeship critic Garfield Dunlop, a licensed plumber. ”It’s unfortunate that (Ontario Liberal premier) Kathleen Wynne and Andrea Horvath of the NDP are standing with the special interests and preventing young people from getting into jobs. My million jobs plan will help to create those jobs by eliminating the College of Trades. (It is) an important part of my legislation. Unfortunately the Liberals and the NDP voted it down. It would create 200,000 good apprenticeship jobs and

2015. Reflecting the risks to the outlook, single-detached home starts are expected to range between 72,400 and 82,800 units for 2014 and between 66,600 and 85,800 units for 2015.”

In general, the report suggests new home sales will remain relatively flat or slightly down in 2014 and 2015 while all home sales (including resales) are expected to rise along with improving economic conditions. While economic conditions will gain further momentum in the latter part of the forecast horizon, sales growth is expected to be somewhat restrained by a modest rise in mortgage rates. Also, slower demographic growth among the 25 to 34 year age group will contribute to curb the growth in sales. However, this reduction in demand for existing units will be mitigated by a shift in the overall housing demand toward relatively more affordable housing options as mortgage rates begin to increase.

Consistent with these trends, CMHC’s point forecasts are 466,500 MLS sales in 2014 and 474,700 MLS sales in 2015. MLS sales are expected to be between 436,000 and 497,000 units in 2014 and between 443,400 and 506,000 units in 2015, reflecting potential risks to the outlook.

clear the way for high-paying middle class jobs that are also highly entrepreneurial. Odds are, as you know, if you become a carpenter or a plumber or an electrician, you’ll start your own business. You hire more people, who will get experience, and the cycle continues again.”

“So, ask yourself, who benefits from this so-called College of Trades? Well, it’s a union leader named Pat Dillon. You know him, he runs the Liberals’ negative-ad machine as chair of the Working Families Coalition. And he has a stronger bargaining position when there’s a shortage of tradespeople… The Premier may be comfortable with that, but I’m not.”

Housing down in first quarter of 2014, but expected to stabilize, says CMHC In the first quarter of 2014 housing starts slowed to 187,923 units from 214,827 in 2013, according to Housing Market Outlook, First Quarter, 2014, published by CMHC. The report goes on to say that, “Overall, housing starts are projected to remain somewhat stable, at 187,300 units in 2014. In 2015, housing starts are expected to moderate to 184,900 units.”

On the expectations regarding single family units: “Overall, single-detached housing starts are expected to remain relatively stable at 76,700 units in 2014, and at 76,200 units in 16

May/June 2014

www.canadiancontractor.ca

Ontario WSIB auditor gives contractor a scare about dividends Some good news on the Ontario WSIB front? The provincial government workplace insurance agency is not, apparently, coming after construction company dividends paid to directors.

In the past month, it had appeared that a completely unpublicized new policy on such dividends had been brought into play by the WSIB. Canadian Contractor learned that a WSIB auditor had cautioned Bonnie and Craig Hardy, owners of Covenant Construction, London, Ont., that dividends to that company’s directors (the owners and their daughters through a family trust) might be considered work income. It would have been the first time that dividends had been classified that way.

On March 2, the insurance board informed Covenant Construction of London, Ont., that WSIB would not, finally, consider these dividends as insurable work income.

Bonnie Hardy expressed her relief. “I’m not opposed to paying into WSIB on some level, but we just thought this would be going too far,” she said, noting that she hadn’t received a dividend through the family trust since last November. Craig Hardy takes advantage of the one insurance coverage exemption WSIB allows for a partner or executive per company.

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SITE NOTES

B.C. presses for renovation tax credit T he Greater Vancouver Home Builders Association (GVHBA) has begun crunching numbers and gathering facts it hopes will persuade the B.C. government to introduce a home renovation tax credit. This comes on the heels of renewed renovation activity among homeowners following last year’s return to the PST from the much reviled 12 per cent HST. “Definitely there was some hold off on the part of consumers; that’s what my members were telling me,” says association CEO Bob de Wit. “This was followed by a rush of activity shortly after.”

Return to the seven per cent PST created a wave of uncertainty in B.C.’s home renovation market during the 18 month transition period ending April 1, 2013. De Wit and others complained about the poor flow of information from government about how the PST would be reintroduced. Contractors like Rob Currie, co-owner of Basement Systems in Vancouver, also feared honest renovation contractors would lose business as homeowners turned to underground renovators instead of waiting for return of the PST. “They pay taxes when they buy product from stores. But in the underground economy they’re not paying other taxes. It’s fundamentally unfair.”

Eventually the Province clarified the rules around application of the PST to labour and materials. But that didn’t stop homeowners from hedging their bets in the transition period.

Currie knows of at least three customers who put their renovation projects on hold, waiting until the April 1 deadline before renovating. “That,” he says, “hurt a lot of business.”

“If your project’s $50,000 and you know you can save five or seven per cent you're going to do that. If there’s no hurry on it and it’s something you’ve always wanted to do, why wouldn’t I wait?

By contrast a renovation tax credit – something both the federal and B.C. governments had in place previously – would encourage more homeowners to renovate right away and give the boot to underground contractors. When the feds balked and the B.C. government also failed to act on a renovation tax credit some renovators like Currie offered discounts as a way to bring more customers in.

“Absolutely we did. We said we’ll pay the difference between the HST and PST. We would have coupons out there. Don’t delay your renovation, we told them, we’ll pay your tax now.”

“That was the progressive, smart way to do it,” says de Wit. “And not just renovators but also some of the trades and suppliers did the same thing.”

Neil Moody, CEO of the Canadian Home Builders' Association of British Columbia, says the association is not about to give up on making a case to the feds for a renovation tax credit to offset the GST. “It is something that we will keep pushing on at the national level because as they get into an election year these things pop up.” Meantime, both he and de Wit are hoping B.C. housing minister Rich Coleman can be persuaded to introduce a provincial renovation tax credit.

“We had Minister Coleman at our last meeting and we ran it by him,” says de Wit. “He was favourable to it but he wants to see a study...So it’s a matter of pulling some facts and figures together and presenting those to him.”

To that end, the association is working with the Renovators Council to spearhead a national study into the feasibility of a renovation tax credit. To support that study the two groups are assembling facts and figures to show how such a tax credit would help their industry and strengthen the economy. The study would then be made available to Minister Coleman.

“In the case of B.C. we would say here is a national program that works. Why not do this at the provincial level and get the benefits here, independent of the federal government.”

For his part, Rob Currie says it’s simple economics.

Homeowners would be able to hire credible trades, get a tax benefit and know that everyone is paying their taxes. “And government would benefit from more revenues just by the sheer volume of people who would be able to renovate with that thousand dollar tax credit. I think it’s a win-win.”

Moody says he hopes a study on the benefits of a renovation tax credit will kick start once the information gathering phase is complete in a few months. cc David Godkin

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How to win more work through

Home Shows Five tips to help you find real renovation customers among the crowds of tire-kickers

By Rob Koci

T

he rise of online shopping has caused an equally rapid rise in the importance of face-to-face encounters with homeowners. Your ability to tell your customers about your company on the web has increased dramatically, but getting people to click on your website is not enough. Your future customers also want to learn about your reliability, honesty and integrity. They need to “read” you through your body language, your intonation and the way you answer their questions. Taking a booth at a home show is a great way to begin that face to face process. Here are five tips to getting good leads at a show.

1. Do your pre-show planning Unlike a renovation project, you can’t be a single day over your deadline on a trade show – not even a minute! Give yourself a lot of slack time in your pre-show planning.

Break up your planning into three categories: site prep, marketing and staffing. In the marketing, you are going to plan not only how you will follow up on all your leads after the show, but also how you are going to let your existing and past customers know you will be there before the show opens.

But the most important part of planning is training staff on how to approach, or not approach, show attendees. Classic sales training is best. Don’t asked closed-ended questions (“Are you planning a renovation this year?”). Open-ended ones are better. Have a list of questions your staff must ask every prospective customer. (“Do you have a budget?” should be one of them.) The questions will all be qualifying questions for you to evaluate the likelihood that a second meeting – at the homeowner’s residence – might be worth your time.

2. Stand up! Look up! Be up!

Big home shows in the larger cities can make you feel like are locked locked up in a vast, windowless torture chamber. Smaller

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shows are easier. Regardless of the size of the show, you and any staff manning the booth must be awake, positive, engaging and ready to talk to a lot of people. Schedule lots of breaks. Ask others who have worked the show when the busiest times will be. See if you can get extra staff to work your booth at those times.

3. Give something away Don’t let visitors to your booth walk away empty-handed. If they walk by, they should at least get a brochure. If they stop to talk to you, they should get something better: a pen, a note pad, a key fob with your contact info on it. It’s time to get into gift-giving mode. The best prospects might get something even better, like a DVD with pics or videos of your work. You can have a prize draw that takes place at the end of every day or at the end of the show.

4. Take something away If you’ve had a great chat with a potential client in your booth, you need to collect their contact info to follow up. You can use your giveaway to provide a subtle obligation to give you that information. Collect business cards for a draw you will conduct at the end of the show. If someone in your booth hands out a brochure, they should be instructed to ask for a card in return for that draw. Email address collection is hard to obtain if it’s not on the prospect’s business card, but ask for it and promise you won’t be selling that address to any outside services.

5. Follow up!

Post-show follow up has to be a priority. Don’t just throw the leads you got from a show in a drawer and go put out the fires that lit up while you were busy with the show. Those leads are the future life of your company. If you break them down into three categories: Hot Leads, Good Leads, and Not Leads, it will help you to start the important process of starting your follow-up calls, emails and mailings. cc

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MODULAR HOMES While it looks site-built, this is a modular home from Quebec-based Bonneville Homes.

Breaking Out

of the Box Factory built housing accounts for more than one in 10 homes started in Canada each year. Some modular manufacturers are attempting to expand that market share by targeting a broader customer base with upscale and multifamily products.

By John Caulfield

Q

uebec-based Bonneville Homes had been producing basic, low-cost modular homes for about 15 years when, in 1996, it decided to take a big chance. The manufacturer retooled its factory so that it had the flexibility to customize its products for a more upscale clientele.

Customization can he “a pain,“ admits Bonneville’s copresident Dany Bonneville. But he also thinks the company’s maneuver gives it a distinct competitive advantage in Ontario and Quebec, and continues to separate Bonneville Homes from many modular manufacturers that still produce standard modules with few options or flourishes, that appeal primarily to entry-level buyers looking for affordable options.

“The market has become very picky,” asserts Bonneville, who is also convinced that his company’s strategy—which includes rolling out new models and styles consistently— will eventually create demand that doubles the 500 or so housing units its two plants currently pump out annually.

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Risk and reward If Bonneville is right about modular housing being ready to break out of its market niche, it’s a safe bet that other builders will want to get in on the action.

About a year ago, selling homes built in factories instead of on jobsites started making sense to Qualico, the Winnipegbased builder/developer whose construction businesses complete about 1,000 site-built homes per year.

Before that, modular manufacturing’s overhead always seemed to trump any possible savings from operational efficiencies, recalls Shane Erickson, Qualico’s regional vice president. And the experience of other builders that have dipped their toes into modular’s waters was not encouraging. That’s been especially true in the U.S., where several leading production builders have flirted with modular, only to back off after they discovered the customer demand didn’t merit the investment required.

MODULAR HOMES

Bonneville Homes is relying on customization and the roll out of unique models to capture new business in the modular market.

The company also has vacant, ready-to-build lots for sale.

Bonneville has been manufacturing modular homes at its facility in Beloeil, Que since 1977.

But Erickson still liked the concept of building houses in a controlled environment, and wondered how the process might be made more financially viable. Qualico’s solution was vertical integration. In May 2013, it launched Connect Homes, a modular-home retailer with models in seven neighborhoods around Edmonton. Eight months later, Qualico acquired Connect’s module supplier, a 110,000-square-foot factory in Acheson, Alta., that was owned by the pro dealer Igloo Building Supplies.

Now operating as Star Pre-Built Homes, that factory builds to whatever house plans its builder-customers present. Erickson projects that Star Pre-Built Homes would produce 300 houses in its first 12 months, compared to about 170 homes per year under Igloo.

Canadians like modular What Qualico might have going for it, which U.S.-based builders so far have not, is that Canadian buyers are more receptive than

American buyers to manufactured housing. Factory built homes account for between 11 and 13 percent of Canada’s total annual single-family starts (including townhouses), according to estimates by the Canadian Manufactured Housing Institute (CMHI), compared to less than 4 percent in 2000. (In contrast, modular currently represents about 3 percent of annual starts in the U.S.) Modular workforce housing is serving the purpose in Oil Patch markets in Alberta and North Dakota, as well as in Canada’s outlying and less-populated areas. New Brunswick-based Maple Leaf Homes, for example, has seen considerable growth in recent years from its “industrial” business supplying housing for camps in First Nations and Arctic markets, according to David McInnis, whom Maple Leaf hired as its general manager in February.

Demand for modular homes in general historically has come from entry-level buyers searching for less-expensive alternatives to site-built housing. But that demand is certainly

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MODULAR HOMES

Ninety per cent of homes in Parkbridge’s lifestyle communities across Western Canada and Ontario are modular, like the one seen here at Cherry Hill in the Niagara Region.

broader in the communities and resorts owned and operated by the developer Parkbridge Lifestyle Communities. Ninety percent of Parkbridge’s 100-plus properties include modular homes in their inventories, says Parkbridge’s vice president of sales and marketing Rob Tallis.

About half of the modular homes started annually in Canada occurs in western provinces, where Champion Canada, reputedly the country’s largest manufacturer, operates five plants and ships as far east as Ontario under two brands: SRI and Moduline. (Champion is a division of Michigan-based Champion Home Builders.)

Saddled by stereotypes Canada remains behind the U.S. when it comes to modular design. Most of the modules sold in Canada are still plainvanilla rectangular boxes with roofs attached. “This consumer is pocketbook driven,” says Vern Kuehn, president of the Modular Housing Association-Prairie Provinces (MHA).

But while their curb appeal might leave something to be 24

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Pennsylvania-based supplier Ritz-Craft Homes ships modules into site-build developments in Ontario border towns from its plant in northern Michigan.

desired, the structural integrity of modular housing is considered to be equal to site-built construction. “Factory-built in general is perceived as higher quality,” asserts Kathleen Maynard, CMHI’s chief executive. Her association has certified 138 factories under the Canadian Standards Association’s A-277 quality control procedures, which cover the factory and the products built.

Last August, Kent Homes, one of Atlantic Canada’s largest modular producers, established its own standard that meets Energy Star certification for windows, insulation, appliances and other energy-using products.

Kent Homes, which operates plants in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, is owned by the conglomerate J.D. Irving, which also owns the home improvement retailer Kent Building Supplies. A few other pro dealers, like Nelson Lumber in the west, make and sell modular homes. And in 2011, RONA partnered with a modular manufacturer to market houses through RONA’s dealer-member network under the brand Fabrica.

But that experiment ended in less than a year.

“The modular business looks appealing from the outside,

MODULAR HOMES

Mending modular misconceptions One of the biggest challenges the modular home industry faces is the misperception about its product. Specifically, many consumers confuse modular homes with mobile homes. While both are factory-built, they are not the same thing. Adding to the confusion, mobile homes are often called “manufactured” homes, which leads to the tendency to bulk modular and mobile into the same grouping. They are quite different.

Five things you should know about modular homes:

1

Unlike mobile homes, modular homes are installed onto a permanent foundation.

They are not moveable.

2

Modular homes are subject to high standards of quality, and must be built to regulatory standards and industry building codes.

3

Once on site, modular homes will increase in value at the same rate as on-site builds in comparable neighbourhoods

4 5

Mortgages, taxes and insurance on modular homes are the same as those on traditional homes Modular homes are considered a form of green building.

but once you get into it, it has all kinds of challenges,” says Luc Rodier, Rona’s executive vice president. For one thing, Rona was trying to market higher price-point houses, “but I don’t think Canadians are ready for that yet,” Rodier laments.

Working against Rona, no doubt, was the fact that Quebec and Ontario have long been “hostile” to factory built housing, says Hank Starno, president of MHI Canada, an Ottawa-based trade group with 17 manufacturer-members. Those provinces’ antipathy is manifested in restrictive zoning and warranty requirements.

Suppliers and retailers across Canada say they continue to confront misperceptions that there’s not much difference between modular and cheaper mobile homes. MHA recently published a 45-page manual for realtors to counter their “negative stereotypes” about modular housing, says Steve Vail, president of the Airdrie, Alt.-based dealer Grandview Modular Homes, who sits on MHA’s board.

Vail doesn’t think modular will gain market share until more of the public recognizes that modular is as good or better than

site-built. But modular’s image isn’t helped, either, he says, when big manufacturers fixate on low price and volume, which Vail believes stymies innovation.

Cautiously customizing A few years ago, Grandview Homes started selling houses supplied by Triple M Housing. Vail says he switched vendors because Triple M isn’t afraid to try new things, such as a twostory urban-oriented product it recently added to its mix. (Parenthetically, Vail says his company is trying to crack the urban market, which he speculates could eventually mean aligning with an infill developer.)

Grandview is on track to sell 82 homes in 2014, which would exceed its previous best year in 2007. It has been “turning heads,” says Vail, with products made by Grandeur Modular Homes that are a bit more stylish and can retail for up to $300,000. “We’re going after a higher-end customer who might not have even considered modular in the past,” says Vail.

Attracting such buyers, though, sometimes requires a level

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MODULAR HOMES

of customization that until recently was anathema to most modular manufacturing. Customization may now be “a matter of survival,” says Ken Josuttes, Champion Canada’s president.

But he notes that customization also entails “a lot more upfront work” by salespeople and the plant. And customization can negate what Josuttes calls the “earnings value” that modular creates through bulk purchases of products like carpeting.

Moving in on multifamily Josuttes and Bonneville may disagree about the efficacy of customization. But they and several other manufacturers agree that modular housing’s future expansion in Canada lies partly in the apartment sector. “Multifamily for sure is a growth industry,” says Kuehn of MHA, who is co-owner of the modular retailer Pleasant Homes in Warrenville, Alt., which eight years ago diversified into commercial and multifamily sales.

In fact, Maple Leaf Homes prefers to measure its plant’s production in square footage—it made about 600,000 square feet last year—rather than in houses completed to reflect how multifamily has become a larger part of its overall business, according to McInnis. He adds that his company, which sells through between 35 and 40 retailers in Atlantic Canada, gets asked “all the time” by buyers and developers to provide customized multifamily options.

More than 10 percent of Champion’s business now comes from supplying multifamily construction, versus less than 2 percent four years ago. Last year, Champion formed Gibralter Building Systems, an umbrella division handling the manufacture and distribution of multifamily, commercial and industrial buildings.

Last June, Bonneville Homes launched Soluplex, a program that offers builders, investors, and developers turnkey “solutions” for multifamily projects, including financing, sales and marketing, and project management.

Producing and selling modules for apartments has become

more attractive as the cost of single-family lots, particularly in urban areas, “has skyrocketed,” says Starno of MHI. In addition, demand for apartment living in general, especially among younger Canadians, is trending.

Targeting tract builders One area where modular has yet to make inroads into sitebuilt’s domain is in residential subdivisions. Most of what modular factories make for Canada still gets placed on scattered lots owned by the house’s buyers. And, notes Josuttes, “It’s really tough to convert [tract builders] to modular.”

McInnis points out that while a metropolis like Toronto, dominated by “huge subdivisions,” has not been hospitable to modular housing, Maple Leaf Homes has had success finding Ontario buyers outside of the Greater Toronto Area.

Some other modular manufacturers haven’t given up on trying to crack into site-built subdivisions, either. Since the fall of 2012, Ritz-Craft Homes, a Pennsylvaniabased supplier, has been shipping modules into Ontario from its plant in northern Michigan. “We’re trying to tap into the site-built market” along border towns in that province, explains Paul Lindsley, that plant’s general manager.

To win over tract builders, Ritz-Craft’s pitch includes marketing assistance. “We’re here to help the builder with every facet of his business,” says Lindsley.

Edmonton, which is Star Pre-Built’s primary market, should generate nearly 14,000 single- and multifamily housing starts in 2014. So why, Erickson asks, shouldn’t Star go after a bigger slice of that pie, including what’s built in neighborhoods? And he’s not bothered by the lack of success that other manufacturers have had in supplying tract builders. “I’m more concerned about whether [modular] will catch on with builders and consumers. And I really don’t care what brand we stick onto the finished house.” cc

Since the fall of 2012, Ritz-Craft Homes, a

Pennsylvania-

based supplier,

has been shipping modular homes into Ontario

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CREATIVE EYE

ALDER CROSSING Two-Storey House Built onto Commercial Building, Vancouver Kerr Construction Vancouver-based Kerr Construction has a 27-year history of taking on “oddball projects and trying to work it all out,” says owner Doug Kerr.

Alder Crossing, a two -storey house built atop an irregular-shaped commercial building and parking garage is no exception. In April, the project received an Ovation Award from the Greater Vancouver Canadian Home Builders Association for the best custom home, $750,000 – $1.5 million.

The goal of the project was to create a living space over the owner’s commercial space that maximized natural light. The skylight (see our cover) was one of the project’s crowning achievements.

The building, originally a sawmill, has a diagonal wall that runs along a set of operational train tracks.

“It’s a commercial site, so everything had to be done to commercial standards,” says Kerr. That meant steel studs and no plastic piping.

The green wall meant the building (inset) had to be waterproofed to an entirely different standard, including layers of overlap and flashing around the windows.

By Brynna Leslie

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CREATIVE EYE

PERFECT

ANGLES

ALL PHOTOS: Martin Knowles Photo/Media

Kerr Construction builds briliantly on an eccentric-shape lot in Vancouver

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CREATIVE EYE

ALDER CROSSING

Two-Storey House Built onto Commercial Building, Vancouver Kerr Construction

Making a kitchen look “normal” in a space without a single 90-degree angle was one of the biggest design challenges.

The island is positioned to match the lines of the exterior wall. A variety of offset angles in the marble countertop are mimicked in the ceiling overhead.

The open-concept stairs, with free-standing beech treads and glass framing reflect and project light from the skylight above.

In the living room, Kerr’s team executed a “major engineering feat” by incorporating a floating wall (inset) that would allow light from the skylight to flood into the sitting area. “We had to use big steel toes drilled down into the concrete and four feet up the wall to make the partition structurally sound,” says Kerr.

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ALL PHOTOS: Martin Knowles Photo/Media

CREATIVE EYE

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CREATIVE EYE

ALDER CROSSING

Two-Storey House Built onto Commercial Building, Vancouver Kerr Construction

Kerr’s team incorporated a day kitchen on the second floor of the house that leads out to a covered deck. The glass half-panels on the deck offer unobstructed views of ocean inlets and picturesque Granville Island.

The master bedroom has a walk-through closet. The doors go from floor-to-ceiling with a valence of lighting to “wash down over the front of the light-coloured wood.” The naked theme, accentuated by the use of glass and wood carries into the master bathroom. White marble countertops offer symmetry with the rest of the house, such as the main floor kitchen.

As Vancouver pushes for work/live environments, Kerr believes there will be opportunities to do more renovations like this.

“It’s a unique challenge to make it feel like a residential structure,” says Kerr.

“You have to very tightly organized,” he adds. “The commercial site was always operational, so we had to schedule things so we weren’t making noise at certain types of day, along with working around the train schedule to get the materials craned over the tracks and onto the roof.”

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ALL PHOTOS: Martin Knowles Photo/Media

CREATIVE EYE

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MAXWELL’S MIND

WHAT GRANDPA TAUGHT ME

By Steve Maxwell

O

n May 1st I became a grandfather for the first time and that’s the sort of milestone that’s bound to get you thinking. There’s nothing like holding a newborn to remind you how fragile human life is, and how vitally important shelter is for keeping little ones alive. As a contractor you may be many things, but bottom line you’re a preserver of life.

When my daughter gave me a grandson it also became my turn to pass on something that a grand old man passed on to me as a boy.

I was lucky enough to grow up with an involved and exceptional grandfather, and I see now how many of the advantages I’ve brought to manhood come from him.

Although Grandpa wasn’t a professional builder, he did have that high level of hands-on skills many ordinary men possessed in yesteryear.

Grandpa taught me how to plane wood, use a handsaw, measure and mark lumber and keep tools neat and organized. He was big on those great old wooden 6 quart fruit baskets for tool storage and I still keep his gear in them today. More importantly, Grandpa also taught me that persistence beats even the biggest and most daunting jobs, and that kindness of speech and grace is always a virtue. When I hit his hand hard enough to make it bleed one day as I was learning how to use a hammer, all he said was “Don’t worry Steve, it’s only pain.”

In a world where fewer and fewer kids have a chance to learn the lessons that a hands-on lifestyle teach, being a contractor means you have even more to pass on to the world than the shelter, beauty and security you create. Don’t waste your chance.

”

He taught me that persistence beats even the biggest and most daunting jobs.

And that grace and kindness of speech is always a virtue.

”

Steve Maxwell Tools Editor

steve@stevemaxwell.ca

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PRODUCTS

MAXWELL’S NEW PRODUCTS

S t u f f We L i k e

SWEETNESS and

LIGHT Why good skylights are good for business

By Steve Maxwell

Villum Kann Rasmussen, a Danish civil engineer, invented skylights in 1941, and the company he founded, VELUX, still makes the most innovative and reliable skylights I’ve ever worked with.

Pleasure

is one of the strongest human motivators, and that’s one reason you should become a skylight expert. There certainly are practical reasons skylights make sense, but ultimately good skylights deliver pleasant feelings, health and a sense of well-being to people living under them.

All of these things matter because your success as a contractor ultimately comes down to how your clients feel when they’re living in what you build.

When they invite friends over to see the new addition you built for them, or to share a drink at the lakeside cabin you crafted, it’s good feelings that drive the oohs and aahs. And more than any other single design feature, skylights can help build your reputation as an ooh-aah contractor, and skylights can do it in ways you might not realize.

Over the last five years, skylight technology has quietly advanced in three specific ways. The key to selling skylights is to understand what these advances are – as well as learning how to explain them to clients. So, let’s look at these three advances.

Skylight Advance#1 Multi-Layer Flashing Is Watertight and Reliable When the very first skylights arrived in North America in the early 1970s, poor designs and roof leaks tarnished public perception of skylights in a way that still lingers with some people today.

Even though the difference between those original skylights and today’s best models is like the difference between a bathing cap and a submarine hatch, you might need to be prepared to

Stuff We Like . . . Stuff We Like .

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PRODUCTS

MAXWELL’S S t u f f We L i k e

defend your recommendation to install skylights. Today’s top-of-theline skylights, properly installed, will deliver reliably dry performance.

You need to communicate that.

I first installed skylights in 1996, but for budget reasons and my own inexperience I chose a B-grade brand with a single-layer flashing system. These skylights kept water out most of the time, but they leaked every three or four years when ice, snow and spring rains came together in just the wrong way. I learned my lesson about singlelayer flashing back then, and that’s why all the skylights I’ve installed since that time have had dead-reliable, multi-layer engineered flashing kits as part of the package. They’ve never let me down.

Villum Kann Rasmussen, a Danish civil engineer, invented skylights in 1941, and the company he started, VELUX, still makes the most innovative and reliable skylights I’ve ever worked with. If there’s a better system than their triple-layer, no-leak skylight, I haven’t seen it yet. They come with a 20-year warranty on seal failure and a 10-year warranty on parts that gets you beyond the responsibility you have as a contractor, so installing them doesn’t add to the liability you have for fixing call-backs.

Skylight Advance#2 Today’s Skylights Are Smarter Today’s best skylights do more than just let light into a room. They also open to allow stale air out and fresh air in, and they include programmable blinds that govern how much sunlight enters a room and when that happens during the day. All these operations rely on electricity, of course, and that’s why solar skylights are the biggest recent break-through I know of. This allows multi-function, remotecontrol skylights to be installed without the need for running power cables. An on-board solar cell and battery mean that these solarpowered skylights are a plug-and-play affair. You don’t have to call in an electrician to wire them into new construction, and you don’t need to tear up surrounding walls and ceilings to deliver power for reno jobs. See “A word about solar skylights,” page 41, for a tour of this up-and-coming technology.

ike . . . Stuff We Like . . . Stuff We www.canadiancontractor.ca

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PRODUCTS

MAXWELL’S S t u f f We L i k e

Smart skylights save energy because they can be opened and closed on a programmed schedule. Clients can set skylights to open at night automatically during hot weather to speed household cooling, then have them close when the morning starts to get hot. Blinds can be set to open and close automatically during the day for maximum solar heat gain during winter, or kept closed during the day in summer to keep heat out.

And if it starts to rain, built-in sensors allow powered skylights to close automatically and quickly after the first few drops hit.

Skylight Advance#3 Modern Skylights Are Easier to Install The whole building world is getting more modular and less skilldependent, and that applies to skylights as well. The easiest skylights I’ve installed so far on sloped roofs simply sit on the roof deck with a factory-applied foam seal on the flange to prevent air leaks. Tack the unit down with roofing nails, apply self-adhesive ice and water shield along the bottom, sides and top of the skylight, lapping onto the roof deck, then weave step flashing into the roofing as it goes on around the skylight. The best manufacturers offer installation training, but to be honest, triple-layer waterproofing systems aren’t easy to mess up.

Until recently, flat roof skylights have been much more trouble to install than sloped designs because all residential flat roof options require a sitebuilt wooden curb. Banging together four 2x6s sounds easy enough, but like so many building details in a cold climate, it’s not that simple. These wooden curbs need to be insulated in a way that prevents condensation on interior surfaces, and this usually means rigid foam fastened to the inside of the surrounding wood curb, with some kind of wood, trim or drywall on top.

VELUX is currently the only supplier of flat roof skylights with an insulated, built-in curb. This curb is also flared to allow more light entry, a detail that’s not so easy to reproduce quickly in a site-built, wooden curb.

Feel-good projects are the best advertising you can have, and Canadians are especially impressed with anything that brings a little more fresh air and light to their lives. That’s why it makes sense to get good at skylights. cc

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PRODUCTS

A WORD ABOUT SOLAR SKYLIGHTS Do wire-free, solar-powered skylights really work reliably? After a year of living with this technology, I say yes. The on-board solar cell is more than powerful enough to keep up with multiple daily skylight operations, and the acoustic rain sensors close the windows within 10 seconds after the first few drops of rain come down. This feature works on sound, and even a roofing nailer operating nearby caused the window to close by itself during my installation work. A replaceable lithium-ion battery keeps the system opening and closing for many days of cloudy weather. There’s even plenty of juice to open and close the window right out of the box after installation. Watch solar skylight operation for yourself at the end of my installation video tour at this website: www.goo.gl/0CrAjM. (“How to Install a VELUX Solar Skylight”)

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Products Damstom D300 Panel Clamp If you ever create millwork and cabinets as part of fancy, stain-grade interiors, you’ll eventually need to clamp together wide sections of solid wood or apply wood strips to the edges of hardwood veneered ply. Pipe clamps are the usual option for this work, but a Canadian outfit called Damstom has got something better. I used their D300 clamp last fall for a big job involving a wide cherry panel clampup and they work better than pipe clamps because they do more. Pinch the boards between the top and bottom rails of the assembly vertically and they minimize board-to-board misalignment while boards are drawn together.

Typical street price: $60 each, less in quantity. damstom.com; 450.824.1592

Milwaukee Fastback Flip Open Utility Knife For years my favourite utility knife was the OLFA HB, and while it’s still a great knife, I like the Milwaukee Fastback better. Speed is the reason why. While the Fastback isn’t a switchblade, it acts like one. Push the button, flip your wrist, then the blade swivels out and locks with just one hand. Hit the button again and you can flip the blade back in for storage. The knife is thin enough and short enough to sit comfortably in your pocket, yet strong enough for any kind of building work. It takes standard double-ended utility knife blades and includes a belt clip and feels solid and substantial in your hand.

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Stuff We Like . . . Stuff We Lik www.canadiancontractor.ca

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43

In 1886, Charles Caskey was just 35 and had only previously built cottages when he made a daring leap into the big time as general contractor of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan.

He borrowed huge sums of money and hired 600 men. Locals called the project “Caskey’s Folly.”

He completed the project in 93 days.

PROFILE

More than

MONEY The story of Charles Caskey, a courageous contractor from a century ago, still has priceless lessons to teach all of us.

By Steve Maxwell

I

Charles Caskey

t goes without saying that being a contractor is about making money. Building is a business, and the more profits the better as long as it happens within the bounds of honesty and balance.

We’ve all got lives to fund, families to feed and retirements to hope for. But when money is your only reward, you’re leaving something energizing on the table. It’s the understanding that good contractors are also part of a centuries-long line of historic heroes. They still have enthusiasm to give us, and the best way to get it is by studying their stories. That’s why you need to meet a contractor named Charles Caskey.

Until the fall of 1886, 35 year-old Caskey had only built cottages. But that didn’t stop him from bidding on construction of a 210-room, 625-foot palatial hotel funded by a consortium of railroad and steamship companies as a destination for summer tourists. To make the challenge of this project steeper, the building site was on a small island called Mackinac, 7 miles from the shore of a remote part of the northern Great Lakes.

Then there was the building schedule. This new hotel had to be open and ready to accept guests in the summer of 1887, less

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than a year away. It absolutely had to be done because rooms had already been sold.

Caskey closed his cottage-building business for a year, he borrowed huge amounts of money, made timeline promises to wealthy barons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, and assembled a crew of 600 men to live in a tent village set up in the snows and mud of Mackinac Island on March 1887. Similar monster projects around the northeast had depleted the labour supply to the point where Caskey had to pay double wages to get the workforce he needed.

A total of 1.5 million board feet of lumber was sledded across the ice with horses day and night over the winter of 1886/87, until the pile was large enough to see from the mainland.

Locals called the project “Caskey’s Folly”. When construction work began in March 1887, three shifts of tradesmen would eventually be pressed into service, working around the clock by lantern and candlelight. But before that even begun to happen, labour unrest flared. Troublemakers learned about the tight building schedule, so they demanded triple wages. “If we don’t

PROFILE Mackinac Island

The Grand Hotel today, after 127 years and several major renovations

get them, we don’t work and you go down.”

Caskey stood his ground: “Double wages is what we agreed on, and double wages is what you get. And if you don’t like it, you can leave the camp and make your own way back to the mainland. You’re not eating any of my food, you’re not sleeping in any of my tents and you’re not leaving on any of my boats if you quit. The next public boat doesn’t get here for three weeks.”

After that bit of head butting, the men got down to what must have been an awesome work pace.

The most amazing part of Caskey as contractor of the Grand Hotel is not just that he pulled off the job with a crew living and working under conditions primitive enough that modern labour inspectors would shut the site down today. It’s not even that all the work happened without electricity, power tools, compressed air or an army of sub-trades ready to swoop in with specialized gear. The truly stunning thing is that the place actually did get done at all.

The first rich and privileged Grand Hotel guests stepped off the luxury steam liner that tied up on Mackinac Island, they

walked into the lobby of the Grand and checked in on July 10, 1887. Only 93 days earlier the place was nothing more than a mud hole next to a towering pile of white pine lumber. Similar hotels took nearly a year to build at the time.

As a contractor you know how the public has no idea the honour that’s due to the people who build their world. It’s almost like the structures that give life and joy and health and security somehow spring from the ground by nothing more than the magic wand of a designer. But while the smooth-talking, blowdried pretty people in this world get all the credit, builders can smile knowingly because we realize where good things really come from. The Grand Hotel is still in business today. It’s an awesome place and considered one of the top 25 hotels in the world – none of which would have happened if it weren’t for one spunky 35 year old contractor with the balls to say “let’s do it.” Doesn’t that just make you want to roll up your sleeves, look risk in the eye, then take on something big and profitable? Like I said, the best source of enthusiasm for contracting today is the awesome stories of contractors from the past. cc www.canadiancontractor.ca

May/June 2014

45

CONTRACTOR’S LIFE

The toughest clients of our lives: Ourselves Being our own clients taught us important lessons on customer service and family business

By Mark Hofstee Rammik Renovations & Restorations, Guelph, Ont.

LESSON ONE It could have been a renovator’s dream. The house, a raised bungalow, was built in 1973 and parts of it were still original – in other words it was in serious need of upgrading. The clients, a husband and wife, were another matter. The wife I knew well.

She could be fussy and demanding. Generally when I visit people’s homes I am treated with respect, regarded as the renovation expert that I am. But not at this house. The husband had his own shortcomings. That husband was me.

After eight years of living in a house with a family room decorated in early 70’s style, my wife Anitra and I decided that the original dark barn board finishes, which were dried out and splintering, and the angel-stone brick in the rec room had to go.

And the gale force drafts that whooshed and whistled into the basement through the pervious R4 paper-backed insulation, 46

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(cutting edge technology in 1973) also were out of fashion, not to mention out of touch with today’s green sensibilities.

Deciding to gut The whole room was constructed so inadequately that the decision was made to gut the room back to the concrete and rebuild from scratch, including new framing, spray foamed insulation, a new gas fireplace with a stone surround, wall-towall built in cabinets on two walls and, with a sense of irony, even some contemporary shag carpet.

The poor construction of the original house didn’t end in the old rec room. The split level stairs between the two floors, though they were paint grade stringers, had been stained.

Closed stingers were used where open stringers could have been installed. The decision was made to remove the whole stair system and install hardwood stairs, newels and handrails and modern wrought iron pickets.

Renovating went relatively smoothly, at least at first.

Anitra and I consulted each other when decisions had to be made. All decisions were not equal; I had a larger say in the construction details and she took the lead on the finishing details. Unfortunately, things got rocky with both the stair and the cabinet subcontractors, when the same decision problem occurred. In both cases, prior to hiring out the work, Anitra and I made decisions about what we wanted the finished products to look like. We didn’t quite get what we wanted.

Pickets mistake My wife visited the stair showroom and with the help of their staff, selected the styles of the newels and the pickets.

The pickets were carefully chosen and arranged to make a beautiful pattern, which was worked out with the pickets installed two per tread. However when the stairs arrived, each tread was pre-drilled for three pickets.

Of course we questioned these results. We found that, in fact, the decisions made were perfectly reasonable. The pickets selected would not meet code with only two per tread;

“Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”

PROFILE

Mark Twain

After Before

the distance between pickets must be such that a 4” spherical item will not fit between them. With some larger dimensioned pickets, such as wood balusters, two pickets per tread would not be a problem but we had chosen narrow iron pickets. Although I knew this rule I had not been part of the selection process so I did not pick up on this as being a potential issue. Plus, having used this sub-trade for years, I had implicit trust in their ability to provide the needed expertise.

The cabinets The wall-to-wall built in cabinets we ordered were another challenge with a similar, disappointing result.

We created a rough cabinet design, which we gave to the cabinetmaker. We were looking for dual symmetry; the cabinets were to symmetrically frame a large basement window and were to be perfectly symmetrical themselves.

There were two heights to the cabinets—one part of the cabinets was to be a computer station at standard desk height and the other sections, general storage, were to be about a foot higher. The desk and drawers were all symmetrical. We wanted the tops of the tall cabinets to be lined up at each end equally

with the casing of the very long window. It was a challenging order, this dual symmetry, especially because the window was not exactly centered on the wall. But the cabinetmaker assured us it would work, so we signed off on the working drawings.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but the cabinets were installed almost butting up against the casing of the window on one side, and six inches away on the other.

Whatever the cabinetmakers thought he could do to make the cabinet look right, it clearly didn’t work. Again, we knew what we wanted and thought we had communicated it. And we knew what we heard the cabinetmaker say he could do (make it work) but somewhere, somebody missed something.

What I learned Robert Burns is quoted as saying “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” As a professional renovator, most of my time is spent dealing with the awry. With my renovation— as with all the ones we do—something had to give and someone had to make decisions with limited knowledge. In the case of my renovation, they were made, but not by my wife and I and not how we would have made them. Continued on page 50 www.canadiancontractor.ca

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PROFILE

Where the devil is The whole experience has given me pause as I reflect on the bigger picture. If this happened me, the renovation business owner, how many times has this happened to one of our customers? And more importantly, what is my take home from this experience? The most important lesson is this: the devil is in the details.

We often send customers on their own to the showrooms of our sub-trades to work out the design features. These specifics need to be double checked by us with the homeowner to ensure that what the sub-trade heard and designed equals the client’s desires. And if it turns out that the details won’t work out, the sub-trades need to be made aware that it is not their job to make design changes for our us, no matter how seemingly insignificant. We want them to make us aware of the design issues and make suggestions, but no decisions.

At our house I am proud to say that the entire project turned out great. No one who comes to our house would have any idea that we had design decision difficulties. Maybe the most important lesson; sometimes you have to give in to the ”awry” and just roll with it.

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LESSON TWO Being a self-employed businessman can be tough. One of the things that I still struggle with is the weightiness of always having more to do. Always. That pressure of always having more to worry about. The anxiety of being responsible for bringing in the bacon for the whole company can be daunting.

My experience is that those who are not self-employed don’t understand this feeling and that many of those same people have the ill-conceived notion that the self-employed have a licence to print money. All of these pressures can lead to loneliness.

Anitra works part time with me in the business. Truthfully, sometimes it’s a royal pain. But most of the time it is a great blessing. Perhaps the biggest benefit of working together is that she is able to understand these struggles and difficulties.

Renovating my own house alongside her reinforced an important lesson I knew, but needed reminding. The best way to ensure you get the maximum benefit from a married relationship is simple but powerful; love your spouse.

How do we go about loving our spouses? In theory, we do it in a way that is similar to how we treat our businesses. For

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PROFILE

After

Before

“We want subtrades to be aware of the design issues and make suggestions, but no decision.”

many of us, we started our own business with a romantic notion. After that notion passed (usually quickly) we labour really hard to ensure that it survives; we don’t just sit back and have warm fuzzy feelings about it – we make it happen, often sacrificially and perhaps in spite of that effort – more likely because of that effort – we love our businesses.

In our marriages, as the illogical feelings of eros (romantic love) fade away we need them to turn into agape (spiritual love). We do this by thinking of the word love as a verb instead of as a noun. Love as doing.

Love as action. Think of it like this – action is doing, doing is making. To ensure our marriages are successful, we must make love. Clever, huh?

Perfect love, Mark Twain says, comes with time. “Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.” We must be patient and kind. Exhibiting jealousy or boastfulness, holding grudges and any sort of behaviour that is dishonouring is not love making, but love taking. When you “do” love, rather than just “feel” it, you protect, trust, hope and perhaps most importantly, persevere. Simple. It takes discipline sometimes and it is not easy, but it is simple. cc

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Anitra Hofstee

Happy wife. Happy life According to Family Facts.org, marriage is linked to health and economic benefits. Married individuals tend to have better physical health, psychological well-being, and a lower mortality risk. Financially, married men tend to earn more. Married couples report greater sexual satisfaction than those who were single or cohabiting.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Roofer’s Dilemma Should a small mistake cost this contractor his profit or years of referrals?

By Rob Koci

J

ack Johnson, president of Do Right Roofing, was thrilled to have finally won a job in a neighbourhood he had been canvassing for a year. Riverview, where he did most of his work, was good, but Guildwood was a step up: better houses, bigger renovations and clients with money and no inclination to do cash work.

It was only a small flat roof, but Johnson knew he could work this job into years of renovation work in Guildwood if he did it right. He had attractive flyers to drop in the mailboxes along the street, highly visible lawn signs and a smile for every passing neighbour. The future looked bright for Do Right Roofing – except for one thing; the original deck boards exposed when Johnson’s men pulled up the old roof were terrible.

Nothing he’d heard about the houses in Guildwood prepared him for what he saw. Even for a 1920’s house, the gaps were too wide. The boards were varying widths and full of loose knots, and the 90-year-old nails were now rusted down to pin-thickness. He

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guessed rightly about rot (there was none), but that didn’t matter – for a topnotch job, the boards needed to be covered with ½-inch ply before he could lay down his torch-on membrane.

His contract said nothing about plywood and his fixed-price contract didn’t include the cost of installing it.

He could explain it all to the client and bill a change order, but should he? He didn’t want to start his reputation as the “change-order gouger” contractor, but he didn’t want one as a sucker willing to do work for free, either.

There was as good chance that if he mentioned it, the customer would tell him it was his problem to solve and if adding plywood was the answer, it was his responsibility to do it. If he didn’t mention it, he could go ahead as planned, make money and know the roof would survive at least long enough for him to make millions in this new neighbourhood before it failed.

What should Jack Johnson do?

Should he:

1. Go ahead without plywood and without telling the customer and make a profit.

2. Tell the customer, insist it be done and bill for the extra cost and risk a confrontation and a bad reputation.

3. Tell the customer that it’s needed but let the customer decide if it should be done.

4. Tell the customer and risk him insisting it be done with no extra charges.

5. Go ahead with the extra work without telling the customer, protect his reputation and make no profit.

Go online to canadiancontractor.ca to post a comment on which of the 5 options you would choose. Type "roofer" in the search bar to find this story. If you are among the majority opinion, you may win a $100 gas card

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