Tiaribbon

Does anyone know what the building regulations are like in Ontario? We have a farm in the Quinte region which has a couple of big barns, both, although old have been very well looked after. We are considering converting one of them to make a large family home. Is this allowed in Ontario or Canada? Any info or links would be a great help to us.

mickj

The fella below might be able to shed some more light on the subject for you, you can either ring, fax or email him, am sure he has a lot of knowledge about that sort of thing, and might be able to point you in the right direction.

From what have seen, i know there are a lot of farms with barns and houses as well on them, people sure get a lot for their money to build on round there, places like Northumberland, campbellford, Coburg and Trenton am talking bigger than what my new neighbours are building.


Contact: Mr. Chris King
Title: Economic Development Manager
Organization: Bay of Quinte Region
Address: 284 B Wallbridge / Loyalist Drive, P.O. Box 610
Belleville ON
K8N 5B3
Telephone: 613-961-7990
Fax: 613-961-7998
Email: [email protected]
URL: http://www.quintedevelopment.com

Tiaribbon

Thank you so much Mick (I noticed you were on and know how much you enjoy finding out information, so I hoped that you would respond). That's a pretty neat house next door!

The situation with ours is that we were always planning on building a Viceroy (or similar) but one of the barns is in the perfect location and about the right sort of size so it would make sense to convert it instead of putting up a modern house. Plus the original farmhouse is about 100 years old so I would like our house to be a character property too.

iaink

The contact below may be better...its for the Trent hills planning department (ie Cambelford) not the Belleville/ Quinte economic Development one.

The link was for archetectural conservation (Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committees), which may or may not be relevent to what you want to do. Around here a lot of farming folks are selling the old cedar board the barns are made of to architectural reclamation companies, and making enough from the material to build new, more efficient barns. Unfortunatly the new ones dont look as nice as the big old barns, but I can see why they do it, they are operating a business after all.

I havent seen many conversions done, probably because the planning rules make it easy to build from scratch, and it will be hard to insulate and heat a barn efficiently.

Good Luck

Iain

Ms. Carol Hamilton, LACAC Chairperson
Municipality of Trent Hills
c/o Jim Peters, Planning Department
P.O. Box 1030, 66 Front St. South
Campbellford, Ontario K0L 1L0
Fax: 705 653-5203
E-mail: [email protected]

Also found more trent hills contact info here
http://fourinfo.cioc.ca/Details.asp?RSN=23789&Number=19

Tiaribbon

Oh that's great Iain, thanks. We are over in 3 weeks time so will make an appointment to speak to Mr Peters regarding our plans.

I hear what you are saying re: heating costs and insulation but this particular barn is such a beautiful building and it would be such a shame to not do a whole lot with it. The plan would be to build a modern livestock barn as they are so much more efficient, but situate it in a hidden away part somewhere else on the farm.

We will have to weigh up the costs of course and it may work out just too indulgent to do this, but we think it is worth a shot anyway. We have a few building contractors coming up to the farmhouse as we want to modify it slightly so we can also ask their opinion on costings. We just love old buildings, especially such nice ones.

Thank you again.

Smokey

In the meantime, this might help a bit. Try:-
http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/userfiles/...s_1_8522_1.html

If you get some good piccies, would you post one as I'd love to see it?

Tiaribbon

Thanks for that. I am sure that somewhere on this site there should be information but I couldn't find it as yet.

I am quite surprised that barn conversions are not more popular over there. I have found plenty of ancient stone houses which have been revived and there are lots of pioneer homes still in use.

Just going to check out Iain's updated link now.

MikeUK

It would be worth noting that the foundations on a barn are not all that likely to be up to the standadrd you would want in a house..

Don't forget the freeze thaw cycle in this part of the world

Sean Boxer

Hi, I saw you mentioned Viceroy.
What do you think of the quality of their homes?

We were interested in buying one of their wooden ones, it was called "The Invermere", but when we checked out their show flat in Toronto we were slightly put off as it was all a bit flimsy.

Has anyone had any experience with this company?

Many thanks

Sean & Sophie
(Canada in ONE month!)

Tiaribbon

I personally think they are pretty flimsy too! (In fact I don't really like any of them, but my husband does.) We are looking at the Richmond but with a few extra footage lumped on. We went to look at their showhouse just outside Vancouver and it looked fine but I don't know how long they last, which is why I would rather have a stone built or brick built house over there. There are very mixed views on Viceroy, some people think they are good and others wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. I would however consider having a couple of the log cabin type ones built as they are pretty inexpensive (we are doing vacation rentals) and they will be earning their keep so to speak. I don't know anyone who has had one built so I cannot give you a recommendation.

Apparently the foundations were re-built??? last year. Don't know what they mean by this but the barn has stored tonnes and tonnes of hay so the weight shouldn't be an issue, but when we are out we need to speak to the builder who laid the new foundations because we don't really know what he is talking about. Hey this is a great adventure to us and we have a million ideas kicking about in our heads so we will have to see how it pans out in the end. I am just not relishing the idea of living in a "modern" house but if they turn out to be the best one to have then I guess that is the way we will have to go. Just a shame to leave such a beautiful building sitting there doing nothing.