On the road with a two-bedroom home.
Words :: Feet Banks
Steps 4 and 5 on the Municipality of Whistler’s adoption of BC’s mandated Climate Big Action Moves Strategy are “build zero-emission buildings” and “make existing buildings better.” But it’s also important to consider the dozens of existing homes, shacks and dirtbag ski chalets built in the 1960s and ‘70s that will undoubtedly be torn down to make room for the larger, fancier megahomes of the new Whistler landscape.
Globally, some researchers estimate that as much as 30 per cent of the total waste generated on earth comes from the construction industry. Closer to home, a study from Metro Vancouver found that in 2021 the city created approximately 372,000 tonnes of construction and demolition (C&D) waste, about one third of their total waste for the year. (Since 2019, Whistler has averaged about 11.6 tonnes of total waste per year, with 15 per cent reportedly coming from local C&D in 2023.)
Twenty-five-year local and Cayoosh Construction founder Seamus Quinn has been building homes in the Sea to Sky since 2010, and says often there are existing structures to be dealt with. “Some Whistler places are moldy, falling apart and need to be torn down,” he says. “But as real estate gets tighter and tighter and the neighbourhoods change, houses that may have never been considered teardowns are being looked at differently now.”
Recycling materials has always been part of Quinn’s process. “We put the word out and people come get stuff. Appliances or cabinets and vanities are easy, but often you will see people grabbing siding or roofing to use on their outbuildings or a cabin on rural property. We often reuse old wood from a teardown to make concrete forms. Windows, doors—we do our best to find a new home for as much material as we can.”
Globally, some researchers estimate that as much as 30 per cent of the total waste generated on earth comes from the construction industry.
On a recent project in Alpine Meadows, however, Quinn and his clients wanted to give the entire home a new home. “It was a two-bedroom, 1200-square-foot cabin, quite nicely built. It would have hurt to tear it down, but the new owners were interested in relocating it to a property they had in Pemberton. At first we didn’t think it was feasible because of the train bridge.”
That bridge, a railway overpass on Highway 99 just south of Pemberton (at the bottom of Suicide Hill) has a sign on it claiming 13 feet, 6 inches (4.75 metres) of clearance; squeezing an entire house on a trailer under it seemed unlikely.
“I decided to take one more look,” Quinn says. “So we went down with some lasers and took some measurements. Turns out there was a bit more room to play with than we thought.”
Quinn then called the team at Nickel Bros—BC’s experts at moving entire structures—and went over the numbers and strategies with them. “They have a system where the house sits on I-beams that can be lowered almost right to the road,” Quinn says. “And then if we gave the house a bit of a haircut—remove the ridge cap and cut a bit off the roof peak—it seemed like it would go.”
Quinn’s crew disconnected the water, sewer and electricity services. Nickel Bros came in, lifted the house and built a special trailer right underneath it. They laid a temporary “road” of 6 by 8-inch boards across the crawlspace and drove the house right over its own foundation and onto the road.
“We did it at two in the morning,” Quinn says. “It was wide and long, but the trailer had a hydraulic system to individually control each wheel, so with even just a few feet of room they were able to crabwalk the house around any corner by going back and forth a bunch of times. It was like that scene in Austin Powers, the 32-point turn. It took almost two hours just to get out of Alpine Meadows and onto the highway.”
With a simple system designed to ensure all overhead lines were lifted and directed up and over the cargo, the only remaining crux was the train bridge. “The bridge was funny to watch,” Quinn says. “They lowered everything almost right to road level. The driver got out, took a look, then hopped in and tucked the nose under the bridge. After that he just went for it and didn’t look back. I had a crew there waiting, middle of the night, with chainsaws and Sawzalls in case we had to quickly cut down more of the roof, but it was perfect. Our estimates were down to an inch and that’s about what we had.”
With the old 1970s home safely repositioned in Pemberton, Quinn and his crew could begin work on their clients’ new Whistler dream home: a modest (by contemporary Whistler standards) 3,000-square-foot home with an emphasis on mountain views and an indoor-outdoor living space.
“What makes it unique is this massive 1,500-square-foot covered deck, so you open the patio doors and the living space is suddenly 50 per cent larger,” Quinn explains. “The roof comes right to the rail of the deck and, to help preserve the views, the design has almost no posts. So we had to cantilever 17 feet of roof, which took some doing.”
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To facilitate the numerous structural components in the shape of the roof with that much overhang, Quinn and his team used cross-laminated timber panels cut by a computer numeric control (CNC) machine to perfectly fit together. “We pieced them in like puzzle pieces,” Quinn says, adding that it was his crew’s first experience with this type of roof building. The panels fit perfectly.
“The houses we build now are complex,” he says. “That is the new norm. We need to build homes that withstand those 100-year storms that can happen more frequently now. They need to be net-zero or near net-zero energy efficient and seismically sound for our earthquake risks. So everything is more complicated and we are always learning. Material costs are going up and labour is, too—people need to make enough to raise their families in this area—so we are always conscious of new techniques, materials and efficiencies.”
We need to build homes that withstand those 100-year storms that can happen more frequently now. They need to be net-zero or near net-zero energy efficient and seismically sound for our earthquake risks.
And repurposing entire older homes will likely play a larger role in the future. “To build that house we moved from scratch would have cost more than it did to move it,” Quinn says. “Whistler has unique challenges for moving houses compared to the lower mainland or the prairies. The terrain here is rarely flat and easy, and it has to be a single-story house if you want to go north because of that train bridge, but it can be done. And I think as it gets to a point where saving and moving a house makes more sense financially, we’ll see more builders with an appetite for this.”
And, perhaps most importantly, it keeps an entire home out of the landfill.
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