Custom Home Designs on Vancouver Island and The Gulf Islands

Everyone has a dream home. We can help you make yours a reality. Alex Apostoli, P.Eng. provides custom home design services for clients and builders on Vancouver Island. You can count on us to integrate the structural design with your architectural plans for a safe and resilient custom home that can resist the combination of dead, live and snow gravity loads as well as lateral wind and earthquakes loads appropriate for your project's location.

There are two categories for buildings in the BC Building Code (BCBC): Part 4 “Engineered Structures” and Part 9 “Small Buildings”. Buildings that meet the design requirements of Part 9, including Sub-section 9.23.13 “Bracing to Resist Lateral Loads Due to Wind and Earthquake”, do not generally require detailed structural design by a registered structural engineer (Engineer of Record, or EOR) unless specific components of the structure exceed Part 9 limitations,  and therefore require a Part 4 structural design.  

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If the design of the structure does not meet the requirements of the BCBC Sub-section 9.23.13 then generally a formal Part 4 earthquake design is performed. In a wood-framed structure this generally means wood-based shearwalls, but depending on the design might also require masonry or concrete shearwalls or steel moment frames. In this case the level of engineering required to design a reliable and coherent load path for lateral loads can be very challenging if the structure includes offsets between floors, large open areas, large expanses of windows and/or doors, or wall panels that do not line up vertically through a multi-story structure. In these cases thorough and detailed engineering is required to create a rational and reliable lateral load path for wind and earthquake loading.

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Custom home designs are typically performed by the homeowner and the home designer without initial engineering input. Once complete the drawings are handed off to a structural engineer who is challenged with meeting code requirements for resistance to lateral loads and deformations. The effort and cost of structural engineering can be significant if the structure includes any of the features mentioned above that complicate the load path for lateral loads.  

Registered Architects are generally aware of engineering requirements and will often get a structural engineer involved at the outset of the design process. With home designers this is typically not the case, and it would fall on the homeowner to initiate the involvement of a structural engineer at the beginning of the home design, which rarely happens. When applying for their building permit the homeowner would then be informed by the local building authority that they require a structural engineering review and/or design, often even if the design appears to meet all the requirements and limitations of the BCBC Part 9.