The Cost Of Water
We’ve made significant progress in the past week, although the sky opened up on Saturday and I fear the rain may slow us down over the next few days. Regardless, the walls are all up on the second floor and I managed to slip in over the weekend to snap a few pics. I actually visited the site a few days prior, although it was quite late (read: it was pitch black and I was using my iPhone as a flashlight), and not exactly the safe (read: the temporary stairs had been installed, but not the railing). Probably not the smartest of things to explore after dark, but I couldn’t resist going upstairs and having a walk around.
Now that the walls are up, we’ve realized that we want to mildly adjust the layout of the bathrooms and our closet area. Nothing too major, but we felt some of the walking areas are a little tighter than they should be. Other than that, everything is looking great. And I must admit, the framers are doing a fantastic job. Our contractor had insisted that they did great work, but thought for sure I’d be walking around each day with a level and measuring tape, ensuring everything was in order. After the first few days however, it became quite clear these guys knew what they were doing. If all goes according to plan, hopefully we’ll have the roof up before weeks end, and the windows in sometime next week. Given the temperature forecast, I think the timing might just work out.
Framing aside, I also stopped by Toronto Water Services this morning to pay for the reconnection fees. Prior to construction, the city didn’t charge us to come and disconnect the drainage and water supply. I didn’t really think much of it at the time, but I kept waiting to see a bill in the mail afterwards. Clearly the City understands that you’ll eventually need to reconnect everything, ’cause they get you on the back end. The process was quite painless, although it was also quite expensive.
- Drain Installation: $6750
- Water Installation: $2175
- Water Disconnect: $300
- Sewer Disconnect: $650
- “Other”: $660
Total: $10,535
Yes, it costs over $10K to get new water services.
The racket here is that you can’t negotiate. You can’t shop around to find a more competitive price. The City gives you a price and they inform you which company will be doing the work. And that’s that. I can appreciate that the City needs to ensure that quality is controlled, but this just seems like extortion when compared to the other costs we’ll need to cover during the project. Purely from a cost:effort standpoint, the amount seems incredibly exorbitant… and don’t forget, we still need to account for hydro and gas reconnections.
Photo via Flickr User Chad Ingraham
Post Tags: city, drainage, framing, Toronto, water
That is pretty pricey, but you’re still saving over the initial cost of a septic and well. We’ll likely be looking at $10-15,000 for a septic system and $5-10,000 for a well. Granted, we also don’t get charged monthly for water or sewage, but the starting investment is still not completely unreasonable.
The framing is looking very cool. You must be getting super stoked. I find that until the drywall gets put up, I find the rooms feel smaller than I expected. Let me know.
— posted on October 28, 2008I always find the opposite, the rooms seem bigger until the drywall goes up. When you are inside and the person you are talking to is standing in a wall, or outside the room or you take pictures while standing in the wall and not in the room… it seems bigger.
A small trick I’ve used before: Hit up a cardboard company for a stack of 4×8 sheets of corrugated and in 5 minutes you can staple them up in a room. Gives a near perfect feeling of the room.
— posted on October 28, 2008Two things:
1) I thought my framing was good too, and so did the contractor. Unfortunately it turned out not so. The walls and ceilings looked straight but werent’t. I wish I had had in my contract that the walls had to be level to within 1/16″ of an inch like my friend did, and, at least had gone around with a level to make sure the walls were indeed straight. I’d suggest you do this with the walls and ceilings if you already haven’t before you pay the framers. I ended up having to hire another crew to shim out the walls and plane them down where required. About $4,000.
2) The drain and reconnection fees are high and so is curb cutting. It seems you already have a driveway there, but if you don’t, I had to fork over almost $4,000 to have my driveway curb cut as I moved it to the other side of the lot. Again, no negotiation. The City just lets out the curb-cutting contract and you have to pay who they choose. We could have done it for 1/3rd the price to the City’s specifications. The sad thing is they didn’t even do it properly (no compaction of the sub-base for the new curb and some other things) so I had to call the City supervisor to get them to do it right.
— posted on October 28, 2008Exciting times Jeremy. Forgive me but I haven’t explored all
of your website… Have you developed/kept a cost spreadsheet
on your project? During my last similar project, I kept an
Excel sheet where I listed items under categories such as
land and preparation, design, foundation, framing and roofing,
exterior windows and cladding, water supply and plumbing,
electric supply and electrical, heating/cooling, interior
walls and flooring, cabinets and furniture, appliances, final
landscaping. To the right of all of these items rows and
their 10 or so individual detailed sub-entries are columns as
follows:
Estimates (enter and revise as you learn and go - estimates
match up to actuals when you know the final value). This
isn’t your original estimates - if you want to record
originals, simply save a copy of this spreadsheet every time
you revise it. Eestimares here are your best estimates of the
items to realize your dream as you learn or as you think
about them. Your architect’s cost estimates usually serves as
a good high level start.
Actuals Paid/Committed to be Paid to date (committed is “it’s
alreay on the charge card or the subcontractor’s invoice is
in this months bills to be paid pile”).
Left to Pay (i.e. formula derived as latest Estimates less
Actuals Paid/Committed to be Paid to date - i.e. your best
guess on everything beyond all past payments and this month’s
lates bills.
At the bottom is the Totals of the Estimated column, of the
Paid to Date column, and of the Total Left to Pay column.
Then one final tally which is Worst Case Left to Pay (which
is Left to Pay times some percentage for surprises (15%?).
This spreadsheet:
1) kept my frustration in control - at least I could review
where the money has gone so I could rationalize them as “as
well as as I could do with what I knew or could control at
the time” - it helps.
2) I could see if I had enough financial resources to buy
higher end flooring or appliances as I went.
3) Also, as the financial tension inevitably mounted, I could
see the end point along the way.
4) The other good news is that as you get close to the
end of the project, the Left to Pay and Worst Case Left to
Pay converge to zero, while your Actual Paid reflects what
you need to now enjoy, and what you have to recoup someday
when you sell this adventure some day. Yes, yes, I too said
I’d be going out of my first project of 20 years ago in a
pine box (all I could afford at the end of it). That project
is now being prepared for sale (at a profit) just as I
finalize my third project, this time on budget.
Regards,
— posted on October 31, 2008Nitram
Hi Nitram - I do have a rather detailed spreadsheet which I’ve been using to track everything. I’ve got it in Google Docs and will be sharing it when the project is complete. I had planned on sharing it along the way, but decided against it for a number of reasons… ultimately, I didn’t want to open up our decisions to public scrutiny. I’m sure people will have plenty of comments about how/where we spent our money, but I’d rather those comments be made after we’ve made the decisions ;)
— posted on November 10, 2008