Latest / On The Lake with James Pitropov / Setbacks vs Site Reality: Why the 90-Foot Rule Can Be a Mistake

Transcript

Setbacks vs Site Reality: Why the 90-Foot Rule Can Be a Mistake · On The Lake with James Pitropov

• 0:00
  The best tool, let's do it in 3D modeling.
• 0:03
  You can shift things around, lift, move, rotate, rotate towards the sun, more windows, less windows.
• 0:09
  That's really the way to do it.
• 0:10
  In the past, I spent countless hours doing it in physical models, and I probably, still would on particular projects.
• 0:16
  Now we have other 3D modeling tools, but it's the idea of the fit rather than the final design that becomes really important.
• 0:38
  Today, we are going to be talking about site planning and making sure that you are building within zoning constraints, complying with regulations, and all that really groovy stuff.
• 0:51
  It's a little bit more complex than it may seem at first, dear viewers, so let's get right into it.
• 0:57
  It's setbacks versus site reality when following the rules creates bigger problems.
• 1:03
  Most people assume that the solution to building wisely on the lake and having a low impact on the, the lake, which is often, either part of regulations or part of the, expectations, rules set out by lake associations and so on, there's an idea that you need to minimize impact on the lake.
• 1:27
  And for a lot of people, what this immediately means is setting back further away from the lake to do the right thing.
• 1:34
  And, that assumption is, is based a lot of times on the official plan, in your township or municipality, and they use the tool of the setback to reduce visual impact on the lake.
• 1:46
  Now, we have to look very carefully at the wording in the official plan, and is it about reducing impact, sight lines from the lake, overall height, disruption to shoreline and, and so forth.
• 1:59
  In a lot of cases, owners want to build over the existing-- they, they want to build over an existing footprint, grandfather over the existing location because it's closer to the lake, and a lot of the cla- cases, that is the best place to build.
• 2:14
  On some lakes, you'll have a steep hillside, and then there's a flat area near, near the lake.
• 2:20
  And in these cases, the assumption that pushing back forward is, is a better approach, it, it, it may, it may be faulty.
• 2:29
  I'm going to be talking about some site product-specific examples of, of when that didn't work and, and a, a different solution for you.
• 2:38
  I'm a cottage architect.
• 2:40
  It's, uh, my company is Lakeside Architecture Incorporated.
• 2:43
  You can check it out online.
• 2:44
  It's lakesidearchitecture.ca.
• 2:47
  I specialize in projects in Muskoka, the Kawarthas, Biaquinti, Georgian Bay.
• 2:52
  I've done a lot of v- very, challenging projects on unique sites.
• 2:56
  That's usually why people call me first.
• 2:59
  And then I also have a separate unrelated company.
• 3:02
  It's Lakeside Construction Management.
• 3:04
  You can check out the actual work being, performed on site.
• 3:07
  It's, lakesideconstruction.ca.
• 3:09
  overall, what I'm interested in is helping you design your vision and making it work on site.
• 3:16
  Now, things can look, good on site, but, sometimes dealing with the real constraints is more of the challenge.
• 3:24
  So let's talk about why the shoreline setbacks exist and where the problems have come up.
• 3:30
  Ideally, the townships, they, they wanna, protect the water quality, they wanna prevent erosion on the lake, they wanna preserve vegetation and original sight lines on, on the lake.
• 3:40
  You, as the owner, probably want that as well.
• 3:42
  in a lot of cases, vegetation near the shore may be riddled with carpenter ants.
• 3:48
  There's issues of mold There are practical reasons to clear things out a little bit.
• 3:52
  And this standard setback tool, in a lot of cases now is 30 meters, so that's roughly 90, 90 feet.
• 4:00
  That pushes you way back into the site.
• 4:02
  The problem is that when you are pushing back into the site on these sloped cottage sites, you're going up back further up the hill.
• 4:11
  and in a lot of cases, you're going back into the bedrock.
• 4:13
  This is necessitating having a structure that is really...
• 4:18
  is worse.
• 4:18
  Like, the view from the lake, a lot of times, the original locations, you're shielded by shoreline vegetation and so on.
• 4:24
  You're lying down low on the site.
• 4:27
  When you get your house or cottage up on the hill there, you can see it from across the lake.
• 4:31
  So it's not immediately the great tool that it, it, that it would be.
• 4:36
  And plus, you're further away from the lake, which is probably, as the owner, what you're most concerned about.
• 4:42
  secondarily, a lot of times on these cottage properties and probably 90% of them have the rock starting up halfway up the slope.
• 4:49
  If you're on the slope, you are building, You're, you're, you're blasting the rock, which is-- is not a great thing to do.
• 4:55
  Like, I don't promote it.
• 4:57
  Like, a small amount might be all right, but if you're blasting away half the hill, maybe it's not the site for you.
• 5:01
  It's costly and overall just disruptive to the environment.
• 5:07
  So the, the interesting thing is we're dealing with setback constraints.
• 5:12
  There's side yard setbacks.
• 5:15
  Also, in a lot of cases, the property might be on an environmentally se-sensitive area, like an ESA.
• 5:21
  You might have a designation like an E1 or an E2.
• 5:23
  so what that means is that possibly you are on a cold water lake, a lake trout lake.
• 5:28
  If you're adjacent to the, to, If you're close to rocky shoals that are adjacent to deep water, so basically if you're on a deep water lake near a shelf, that's pretty much lake trout habitat, and your lake is probably designa-designated under the OMNR as a, cold water lake supporting lake trout.
• 5:44
  There are some rules and regulations about, how you can build on the site and not, doing anything to contaminate the water, cloudy it up, which would increase the warming of the water because those particles in the water will warm up in the sun.
• 5:58
  it's not a great thing to, to be, responsible for on your lake.
• 6:02
  People will absolutely not, like it, and there are heavy fines involved as well.
• 6:07
  an-another constraint is if you're adjacent to warm water fish spawning habitat.
• 6:12
  We need to be mindful of distances to, to habitat and the time of year of construction and so forth.
• 6:19
  So what I like to do is I like to look at the overall site, and then we like to get a, environmental, assessment done, and these can be fairly straightforward or they can be more involved.
• 6:30
  as a bare mi-minimum, we like to know, about fish spawning habitat.
• 6:34
  Amphibians such as tree frogs and spring peepers and salamanders, you can't destroy their habitat, and there's also nesting birds.
• 6:43
  The assessment happens during the spring, so we've got to plan for it.
• 6:47
  Amphibians come first.
• 6:49
  their spawning period is soon after ice out.
• 6:52
  The birds come next.
• 6:53
  They're in May, their nesting period, and then l-looking for the warm water fish habitat is in June.
• 6:59
  Pretty easy to find.
• 7:01
  The cold water, the lake trout spawning, that's a fall thing and they're in deep water, so you're not really going to find them, but the ministry has things mapped out.
• 7:07
  So what I like to do is avoid the unnecessarily pitfalls of working against the site.
• 7:15
  So Let's put it this way.
• 7:17
  There's two ways about this.
• 7:19
  you can either build on available land that you have as of right, opportunity to build on, or we can go for commutative adjustment, minor variance when you want to adjust the location somewhat because you're avoiding a rock or you want to be a little bit, further away from a neighbor's septic field, that sort of thing, practical sort of thing.
• 7:41
  And then the tool that I use a lot is a site-specific zoning amendment.
• 7:45
  But in order to do this, you need to be prepared, you need to know precedents on the lakes, and you need to have a, a real strong rationale for where you're building on the site.
• 7:54
  Some, reasons for, for-- that could justify going for a site-specific zoning amendment would be We want to, we don't want to push back so far that we are blasting or removing a lot of mature trees because the lake, the trees that are near the shore, they're the s- the softwoods, they're, they're, cedar and fir, and they're, like, fairly quick-growing.
• 8:21
  Probably should be cleared out in a lot of cases because they harbor tons of mosquitoes and so on.
• 8:26
  we wanna avoid cutting down mature trees, and a lot of times the, the beech trees and the maple and the, the, the oak, the red oak, they're further up the hill because they need more drainage.
• 8:37
  So there's a reason to avoid pushing back and thinking we have to push back the cottage 100 feet in the worst possible location on the site.
• 8:47
  Because a lot of cases, the original locations were, were there for a reason.
• 8:50
  They, they, they made a lot of sense.
• 8:52
  But now there's more awareness of what you see from the lake is why we find ourselves having to comply to some good design rationale.
• 9:01
  So it comes from the official, it comes from the official plan.
• 9:05
  What is it?
• 9:05
  Is it sight lines from the lake?
• 9:07
  Is it the environmental integrity of the shore?
• 9:11
  If we can demonstrate that we are complying with those values, then there's a good opportunity that we can go through a z- a site-specific zoning amendment to Get the positioning on the site so that it makes sense.
• 9:24
  Now, we're following the rules, and we're gonna protect the lake, and then secondarily, we want to build where it makes the most sense for you.
• 9:34
  What we don't wanna do is work against the land and carve it up in order to get the setback.
• 9:40
  So there's the secret.
• 9:41
  I've let it out of the bag.
• 9:42
  It's we want to have to...
• 9:44
  We wanna optimize the, the locating y- your cottage or house on the lake.
• 9:50
  We, we wanna optimize it and have more than one tool that will continue to protect the lake, so it takes a little bit of planning.
• 9:57
  I'm going to give you a, a real-life, example, and this is in, one of the, the cottage areas that we build in.
• 10:06
  Just generally, it's in the, in the, Kawartha Highlands.
• 10:09
  And if we have planners watching and so on, feel free to make comments or...
• 10:16
  It's a great discussion to have, like what, what is the best way to, to build on the lake?
• 10:20
  So in this per, this particular example, we're...
• 10:24
  our client is building on, on Pencil Lake.
• 10:27
  It's a very interesting site because it lies in that land between area where there's this transition from the limestone of the Kawartha Lakes to the granite that you find in, towards Haliburton, so very unique site.
• 10:44
  And it has a upper part and a lower part.
• 10:47
  So the lower part had an existing, structure, multi-generat- multi-generational, family cottage on the, the lower flats and really a great location because, it was completely concealed from the view, from the lake.
• 11:03
  Now, the bylaws, the setbacks, In order to comply with them, they wanted the structure to be way up on the hill.
• 11:10
  Way up on the hill meant way up on the hill because there, there's a steep rock wall there.
• 11:15
  it didn't make sense.
• 11:16
  So we had to think about that positioning, so it took it out of, It would take the, the proposed cottage out of the low-lying area and place it on higher ground.
• 11:27
  Even though it's further ba- further away from the lake, it's more in view.
• 11:30
  It is placing it right in, in view of boaters from the lake.
• 11:35
  There's, there's, mature forest and wildlife habitat on the lake, and, it is, it w- it was, it is a designated, lake trout lake, so we had to be aware.
• 11:44
  That alone necessitated getting environmental approval.
• 11:47
  But there are some areas on the site adjacent to the ESA that did require some attention, so we weren't expanding in, into that area.
• 11:57
  We were overall trying to build over the existing cottage footprint.
• 12:02
  In order to comply, but also to meet the overriding mandate of the official plan of preventing the, the, uh, uh, the desecration, that's a big word, the desecration of the view from the lake, the quality of the view from the lake, that, that wouldn't be a great solution to, to begin with.
• 12:20
  Now, what a lot of townships have, they have various regulations on how much you can build depending on how far you are from the lake.
• 12:28
  So using some precedents from other lakes and even from different municipalities, in some cases, there are some rules on if you are X amount of feet or meters, you're granted a certain amount of width, and then the higher you go up, the further back you have to be.
• 12:42
  So if you see some, designs by my firm, Lakeside Architecture, and you're thinking,"Well, why is this plan all zigzagging all over the place?" Well, it's because we're working with the site so that we can get the square footage.
• 12:56
  But we're sensitive to different parts of the terrain and at how far back we are from the lake.
• 13:02
  So if it's a regular shoreline and you have a wide building, a w- a wide structure, then that is going to create a form that's irregular.
• 13:11
  So that's the thing that is so different from the city.
• 13:14
  If you're in a, in a typical, urban environment in southern Ontario or anywhere else for that matter, you can build...
• 13:20
  You're basically building a rectangle.
• 13:22
  It can be an elaborate, beautiful rectangle, but there aren't different aspects to it.
• 13:26
  You generally have four similar sides to the property.
• 13:29
  On the lake, you have this as your shoreline, and you can set back from it depending on, on, depending on the width of the bui- building, you're going to set back, accordingly.
• 13:40
  we really want to avoid blasting or cutting a lot of trees, so this, this works with a design that's already gonna be a little bit irregular.
• 13:49
  What our clients really like is they like having different parts to a building.
• 13:54
  So in a lot of cases, if there's a shift in terrain, rather than blasting, it's nice to come in at a certain level, maybe have a breezeway or a walkway between different parts of the building.
• 14:05
  In a lot of cases, these cottages, they almost look like collections of pavilions under one overall roof, a collection of pavilions that follow the terrain.
• 14:15
  Now, this isn't something that Lakeside Architecture has invented.
• 14:18
  Of course, I always encourage, Canadians Well, and Americans too.
• 14:22
  There's, there's role models for Americans.
• 14:25
  On the Canadian side, if you look at iconic West Coast architects such as Arthur Erickson and Ron Thom, they...
• 14:32
  mid-century modern, they were masters of the site.
• 14:36
  And it's an opportunity to work with various orientations.
• 14:40
  You might want one part of the building to face the morning sunshine, another one, to be, oriented to the evening sunset.
• 14:48
  You may want to have, part of the structure blocking outdoor courtyard away from the northwest wind, so that in the in-between seasons you can be outside and, and not be blown away.
• 14:59
  If you're on Georgian Bay, it's nice to have-- to be in the lee of an L shape.
• 15:02
  It makes a difference in the spring and the fall.
• 15:04
  So low wide profiles that we can s-shift around on-site, will result in less plasting.
• 15:11
  Hopefully, we can remove less trees and, I would really like to integrate your building with the, with the landscape, and it makes sense.
• 15:22
  Like overall, planners, when they're looking at compliance to the overall mandate of the official plan, they will recognize and appreciate good design.
• 15:32
  So instead of taking the approach of,"We want to stay exactly on the footprint because it's, we're on, uh, Lake, uh, Rosso, and our cottage, the original cottage was 18 feet from the shore or 16 feet, and then we were allowed to have this, uh, quarter mile, um, dock out, out our property." That's slightly exaggerated, but not that exaggerated.
• 16:01
  That might not be the best approach.
• 16:03
  The, the best approach for your design as well is to think,"How can we optimize it?
• 16:07
  Are there other, other tools?" Overall, I would say breaking down, shifting, working with the terrain is better than the straight,"Let's push it back.
• 16:16
  Let's go through committee of adjustment.
• 16:17
  Just push it back and push back our side, to comply with the side set backs.
• 16:23
  Let's make the building narrower and taller." And then all of a sudden you have this ugly eyesore, and it is overbearing on the lake.
• 16:30
  It's up on the hill.
• 16:31
  We all know examples of it.
• 16:32
  And it doesn't...
• 16:33
  functionally, it doesn't correspond to any real use of the site.
• 16:37
  Everything is sort of like the tall, narrow shoebox set back.
• 16:41
  I'm a registered architect, through necessity more than anything else, I'm also a construction manager under the separate company.
• 16:47
  So at the end of the day, I'm the guy on the site that has to deal with how, how do we build this structure and make the most use of things, for you.
• 16:56
  So let's call it lessons, lessons from the site, lessons from the terrain.
• 17:01
  How do we do this?
• 17:02
  I like to design 3D modeling.
• 17:03
  I like to get a survey right away, and then I like to get the surveyor to do terrain, modeling so that I can get your design on a 3D model.
• 17:13
  So before you go, go any further, just ask yourself, how are we working?
• 17:17
  Are we working in 3D modeling or are-- do we have a floor plan that's not gonna fit on the site without sticking up like half a mile?
• 17:24
  The way to do it is 3D modeling, and then I, I'll create the terrain, and then we place our building on it, and the first thing you, you realize is a simple shoebox doesn't really optimize the building on a Canadian landscape, like building on a lake.
• 17:39
  What works is taking your floor plan, breaking it out into parts, and shifting things around.
• 17:44
  I think a lot of designers will work-- they think everything is a box and, and you, you subdivide it into rooms, and that's your design.
• 17:52
  Well, the way that I work is I like to cut everything down and then literally shift them around in a model and see how these pieces can come back together.
• 18:03
  the Canadian, icons were, Ron Thom and Arthur Erickson, of course.
• 18:07
  I think for Americans, if you look at, John Lautner, who was Frank Lloyd Wright's, protege, I guess.
• 18:14
  He went and, became an architect of his own right and became a builder.
• 18:19
  So he had that.
• 18:20
  the link between the mind and the hand was there because he saw it all.
• 18:24
  He had to make things work.
• 18:25
  And he ended up building all these really, exciting, visionary structures.
• 18:32
  These are the ones that you see, as opposed to being on the lakeside view, you could call these cliffside in Southern California.
• 18:38
  So these exciting places on the edge of cliffs in LA and in Palm Springs and, Santa Barbara and, and places like that, they were built out of neces-necessity on the site.
• 18:48
  He was building them because he was a good designer, and then he had to contend with the steep sites.
• 18:53
  We have steep sites too, but ours back onto a lake.
• 18:56
  And this is, for most people, this is gonna be a problem.
• 18:59
  And for most builders, they're going to take architectural plans that may not work on the site, and they're gonna come up with something different.
• 19:07
  So that's where, where I come in working with you and the, the, the logic and the rational between, behind the site planning has gotta be precise, and it has to comply with the overall values, but there's different ways of doing it.
• 19:22
  The best tool, let's do it in 3D modeling.
• 19:25
  You can shift things around, lift, move, rotate, rotate towards the sun, more windows, less windows.
• 19:31
  That's really the way to do it.
• 19:33
  In the past, I spent countless hours doing it in physical models, and I probably, still would on particular projects.
• 19:39
  Now we have other 3D modeling tools, but it's the idea of the fit rather than the final design that becomes really important.
• 19:48
  So what does this mean for you as the homeowner?
• 19:51
  Well Right off the bat, before we look at design, I like to get on the site with you, and you are the expert on the site.
• 19:59
  in a lot of cases, property's been in your, family and generations possibly.
• 20:04
  perhaps you grew up cottaging on the lake and so forth.
• 20:07
  You will know if you had your druthers, there's a highly technical term there, druthers.
• 20:12
  If you had your druthers, do you want to orient your great room with a walkout to a screen porch?
• 20:18
  We call it a Muskoka room or a Kawartha room or the Bay of Quinte room.
• 20:22
  Everybody's got their name for it, but these covered outdoor spaces are, are wonderful.
• 20:29
  Do you wanna orient it towards the southwest sun?
• 20:31
  In the summer, the orientation of the southwest sun is actually towards the evening, it's more like northwest, north-northwest, so it's good to know your exact orientation on the site.
• 20:42
  Do you want sunlight in the bedrooms in the morning?
• 20:45
  Let's take the bedrooms and make them a separate pavilion for starters.
• 20:48
  Let's take the great room and the kitchen and give them their or- own orientation.
• 20:54
  Is there a prevailing wind?
• 20:56
  Do you have noisy neighbors?
• 20:57
  Do you wanna have a wall along a certain side?
• 20:59
  This is the first step in laying out, if you had your druthers, how you would lay things out, and it gets us away from that box-like mentality, which creates problems rather than giving us opportunities to do something different.
• 21:12
  We analyze the site.
• 21:14
  You can't do it from the survey alone, even from the three-D modeling, which is a, a good tool, but we have to walk the site because you really need to feel it out.
• 21:24
  so here's how I approach.
• 21:26
  maybe we wanna separate the parts of the building, have a, a breezeway in between, enclosed glass.
• 21:32
  You walk in, you see the lake.
• 21:33
  All the public stuff like the, the, the great room and the kitchen and maybe guest bedrooms can be on one side, private bedrooms and a study maybe on the other side.
• 21:42
  You don't always need a second floor.
• 21:44
  Sometimes on a hill, the entry level is the second floor, if you can imagine that.
• 21:49
  Sometimes you would come off a bridge to a second floor and then come down, then we're really talking West Coast.
• 21:54
  And it makes sense because the opportunities, we have a steep site.
• 21:58
  It keeps the overall profile down rather than building it up.
• 22:01
  Your planners will, will like these ideas rather than saying,"Well, our neighbors built it, so can we." While technically you can, it doesn't mean that you can do it just because somebody built a giant McMansion stucco box that's three stories tall.
• 22:15
  It's not good planning generally.
• 22:17
  So we can, we can orient on the site and then we can shift and-- but we need to walk the site so that you can tell me, The neighbors here are really noisy.
• 22:26
  Let's have a wall here." Okay, maybe we can build out like a, a garage or something as a separate structure, block them out.
• 22:33
  Or here's a prevailing north wind.
• 22:34
  It's wind, it's just freezing here.
• 22:37
  That will help create a little microclimate on your site if we position things, which is great.
• 22:42
  It's all part of site planning and then comes the design.
• 22:44
  So this is why I like to say it comes from the site.
• 22:47
  I like to, start with the site.
• 22:49
  Like it's, it, it really is about the site.
• 22:51
  Let's start from the site, walk it and the site will, will teach us.
• 22:54
  It will show us things that aren't obvious and you will know at first when we walk through, I can help you just recognize when you've got something good in hand that might align with your overall vision for having a beautiful cottage that relates to the site No Does this mean that we strictly work by a set of guidelines?
• 23:13
  No.
• 23:13
  Th-this opens up opportunities so that we're not strictly going off of, like, the strict compliance because we're not after meeting the variance of zoning bylaws.
• 23:22
  We're looking for site-specific zoning amendments.
• 23:25
  I specialize in difficult sites, dramatic sites, sites with har- that are hard to access, cliffs, inaccessible points, islands.
• 23:35
  You can find it all on lakesidearchitecture.ca, and you can also check it out on Lakeside Construction Management, lakesidecm.ca.
• 23:42
  What you can do is get onto the web- website, lakesidearchitecture.ca, and then go to the lake site feasibility checklist.
• 23:50
  It's just gonna ask you some questions about your site.
• 23:53
  Give me a call, and then I can talk you through your...
• 23:57
  through property decisions before you lock into a particular design When we walk your site, I, I assure you it will be eye-opening and exciting.
• 24:08
  And in some ways, the more constraints there are, the more difficulties, like,"This is impossible.
• 24:14
  I'm on a point.
• 24:15
  I've got setbacks from three sides.
• 24:17
  This site is too steep.
• 24:19
  I can't build here.
• 24:20
  I'm over my coverage.
• 24:22
  I've gotta do this.
• 24:23
  I've gotta do that.
• 24:23
  This is impossible." I'm gonna take you beyond that and look at your property individually, and we will come up with designs that are gonna work, and that's where the excitement is.
• 24:37
  It's not in a preconceived idea.
• 24:39
  It's not notions that you can get online.
• 24:43
  I know there's wonderful precedence of products all around the world, but they are not your site.
• 24:47
  Your site is unique, and those difficulties, we're gonna put them together into the design that works for you.
• 24:54
  We're gonna model it in 3D modeling.
• 24:55
  We're gonna get on site, walk around.
• 24:57
  You are the master of this because you're the ones that experience the site.
• 25:02
  I am your hands.
• 25:03
  You're gonna have the vision and the heart for it, and we will work out site-specific designs.
• 25:09
  The great thing about this is that it's a very-- it's a first step.
• 25:12
  You can see if you like working with Lakeside Architecture, see if it makes sense to you.
• 25:16
  I guarantee that you're gonna have modeling, floor plans, elevations.
• 25:21
  You'll have a design that is 110% unique to your site and your own way of living there, and you'll be able to call it your own.
• 25:28
  It'll be beautiful.
• 25:29
  James Pitropov, thank you so much.
• 25:32
  Next time, please join me on a new topic, why boathouses are one of the most misunderstood and over-regulated structures on the water.
• 25:41
  Maybe we can help you out there too.
• 25:43
  Thanks again for listening.
• 25:44
  It's been a blast.
• 25:44
  Thank you.