Get Yer Permits...Red Hot Permits...

With modern times and an innovative project comes bureaucracy and bureaucratic challenges; the One Planet Reno is (sadly) not immune. We feel very fortunate to have a good relationship with the City having worked on a series of successful and innovative projects here in Ottawa, as well as having developed and delivered a training program on green development for the Development Approvals staff. Even with that going for us, we’ve still had four significant permit challenges:

1. A challenge to the use of hose bibs with our rainwater harvesting system;
2. Concern about our non-standard insulation/non-venting for the flat roof;
3. Concern about the mechanical system and pre-heating of domestic hot water with solar thermal (would not have been a challenge if we were using a standard off-the-shelf and pre-approved systems); and
4. Disagreement about zoning interpretations.
   

We’ll blog about each of these as they come to resolution with plenty more detail to follow.