greenspree.ca at The Sietch

Time for another update, I wish I could say it was good news.  We were hoping to have at least started on the driveway and house pad by the end of June but it’s looking unlikely now.  We bought out developement permit the end of last week and got all the info to our mortgage broker.

Last Friday I got a call from her where she suggested we go through CMHC, even though we have a 25% downpayment and can go with a standard mortgage, because the rates would be comparable and dealing with CMHC would somehow be easier.  It wasn’t.  Early this week she called back with some questions from CMHC on the strawbale construction and asked if we had experience in building with strawbales.  I replied no, but it being infill only it shouldn’t be an issue.  She said ok, and said she would talk to the CMHC.  The next day she sent us an a-mail stating we would need a structural engineer to review and stamp the drawings and be present at each of the draw inspections.

I was, and still am, quite confused at this request as our building structure is being built with conventional stick framing that exceeds the NBC requirements.  It seemed an arbritrary requirement and suggested that the CMHC representative didn’t have enough info on what we were doing to make informed recommendations.  The fact that they did anyways, and one that adds considerable costs and delays to the start of our project seems irresponsible and unprofessional to me and I said so in a reply to our broker.

She had said when sending me notification of the requirement that she would talk to her head office about handling the mortgage without CMHC and see if they would waive the requirement for an engineer.  So we wait now for a response from her company and a response from CMHC to my subsequent e-mail regarding our structural exceedence of the NBC.  Laine and I wanted our home to be an example of alternative building and owner built technology, that bale homes are affordable, buildable and legitimate.  Seems we’ll be fighting a battle for future bale builders with CMHC and our mortgage broker, I hope we can set a precedent and that it does get used in the future!

If however we fight and fail, we haven’t decided what the next step will be.  There is the option of going to completely conventional construction, maybe with a little more insulation,  but that option doesn’t appeal to us that much.  We could put off building another year and look for funding from other sources, another option we don’t relish.  We are really hoping we don’t have to exercise either of those options or any others, maybe another funding source would be possible this year, or maybe our letter to CMHC will change their minds, in any case, we’ll keep you posted!