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Leaky Condo Crisis
The leaky condo crisis, also known as the leaky condo syndrome and rotten condo crisis, is an ongoing construction, financial, and legal crisis in Canada. It primarily involves multi-unit condominium (or ''strata'') buildings damaged by rainwater infiltration in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island regions of coastal British Columbia (B.C.). In B.C. alone an estimated $4 billion in damage has occurred to over 900 buildings and 31,000 individual housing units built between the late 1980s and early 2000s, establishing it as the most extensive and most costly reconstruction of housing stock in Canadian history. Similar infiltration problems have been reported in highrise buildings and schools, as well as in other climatic zones in Ontario and Nova Scotia, in the United States, and New Zealand. Since the start of the crisis it has been commonplace to see occupied buildings draped in scaffolding and protective tarps as the problems were assessed and repaired. The crisis has c ...
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Building Envelope Repair - Vancouver - 1
A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently in one place, such as a house or factory (although there's also portable buildings). Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and functions, and have been adapted throughout history for a wide number of factors, from building materials available, to weather conditions, land prices, ground conditions, specific uses, monument, prestige, and aesthetic reasons. To better understand the term ''building'' compare the list of nonbuilding structures. Buildings serve several societal needs – primarily as shelter from weather, security, living space, privacy, to store belongings, and to comfortably live and work. A building as a shelter represents a physical division of the :Human habitats, human habitat (a place of comfort and safety) and the ''outside'' (a place that at times may be harsh and harmful). Ever since the first cave paintings, buildings have also become objects or ...
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Climate Of London
London features a humid temperate oceanic climate (Cfb). This gives the city cool winters, warm to hot summers with precipitation fairly evenly distributed all year round. London has a very rich history of meteorological observations, with precipitation records beginning as early as January 1697 at Kew Gardens. Irregular observations were made at multiple locations in the ensuing years. An observing station has been located at Greenwich since 1841, giving London its longest continuous reliable temperature series. Other stations include Heathrow, beginning in 1948, Hampstead, beginning in 1910, Northolt, beginning in 1948, and St James's Park, beginning in 1910. The highest temperature ever observed in London is provisionally recorded at both Heathrow Airport and St James's Park on 19 July 2022 and the lowest is 1 January 1962. The lowest daily maximum temperature is occurring on 3 occasions: 8 January 1841, 4 January 1867 and 12 January 1987. The highest daily minimum ...
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Exterior Insulation Finishing System
Exterior insulation and finish system (EIFS) is a general class of non- load bearing building cladding systems that provides exterior walls with an insulated, water-resistant, finished surface in an integrated composite material system. In Europe, systems similar to EIFS are known as External Wall Insulation System (EWIS) and External Thermal Insulation Cladding System (ETICS). EIFS has been in use since the 1960s in North America and was first on masonry buildings. Since the 1990s, the majority of wood-framed buildings have used EIFS. The recommended system now includes a drainage plane to let water drain down and out from behind the cladding; this is in response to historical water infiltration problems that caused damage to buildings and resulted in costly legal cases. History of EIFS EIFS was developed in Europe after World War II and was initially used to retrofit masonry walls. EIFS started to be used in North America in the 1960s, at first on commercial masonry buildings ...
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Stucco
Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture. Stucco can be applied on construction materials such as metal, expanded metal lath, concrete, cinder block, or clay brick and adobe for decorative and structural purposes. In English, "stucco" sometimes refers to a coating for the outside of a building and "plaster" to a coating for interiors; as described below, however, the materials themselves often have little to no differences. Other European languages, notably Italian, do not have the same distinction; ''stucco'' means ''plaster'' in Italian and serves for both. Composition The basic composition of stucco is cement, water, and sand. The difference in nomenclature between stucco, plaster, and mortar is based more on use than composition. Until ...
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National Building Code Of Canada
The National Building Code of Canada is the model building code of Canada. It is issued by the National Research Council of Canada. As a model code, it has no legal status until it is adopted by a jurisdiction that regulates construction. History The Constitution of Canada includes the regulation of building construction as a provincial responsibility. In a few cases, municipalities have been given the historic right of writing their own building code. In the early years of regulating building construction, this caused a patchwork of building codes across Canada. In 1941, the federal government of Canada published the first National Building Code. This was adopted by the various provinces and municipalities in Canada during the next 20 years. On 1 August 1947, the Division of Building Research, later named the Institute for Research in Construction (NRC-IRC) and today known as NRC Construction Research Centre, was established to provide a research service to the construction indust ...
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Rainscreen
A rainscreen is an exterior wall detail where the siding (wall cladding) stands off from the moisture- resistant surface of an air/water barrier applied to the sheathing to create a capillary break and to allow drainage and evaporation. The ''rainscreen'' is the cladding or siding itself but the term rainscreen implies a system of building. Ideally the rainscreen prevents the wall air/water barrier from getting wet but because of cladding attachments and penetrations (such as windows and doors) water is likely to reach this point, and hence materials are selected to be moisture tolerant and integrated with flashing. In some cases a rainscreen wall is called a ''pressure-equalized rainscreen'' wall where the ventilation openings are large enough for the air pressure to nearly equalize on both sides of the rain screen,Brown, W. C, Rousseau, M. Z., and Dalgliesh, W. A., "Field Testing of Pressure-Equalized Rain Screen Walls," Donaldson, Barry, ed.. ''Exterior wall systems: glass and ...
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Floor Space Ratio
Floor area ratio (FAR) is the ratio of a building's total floor area (gross floor area) to the size of the piece of land upon which it is built. It is often used as one of the regulations in city planning along with the building-to-land ratio. The terms can also refer to limits imposed on such a ratio through zoning. Written as a formula, FAR = . Lower maximum-allowed floor area ratios are linked to lower land values and lower housing density. Terminology Floor Area ratio is sometimes called floor space ratio (FSR), floor space index (FSI), site ratio or plot ratio. The difference between FAR and FSI is that the first is a ratio, while the latter is an index. Index numbers are values expressed as a percentage of a single base figure. Thus an FAR of 1.5 is translated as an FSI of 150%. Regional variation The terms most commonly used for this measurement vary from one country or region to the next. In Australia ''floor space ratio'' (FSR) is used in New South Wales and ''plot ...
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Zoning
Zoning is a method of urban planning in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into areas called zones, each of which has a set of regulations for new development that differs from other zones. Zones may be defined for a single use (e.g. residential, industrial), they may combine several compatible activities by use, or in the case of form-based zoning, the differing regulations may govern the density, size and shape of allowed buildings whatever their use. The planning rules for each zone determine whether planning permission for a given development may be granted. Zoning may specify a variety of outright and conditional uses of land. It may indicate the size and dimensions of lots that land may be subdivided into, or the form and scale of buildings. These guidelines are set in order to guide urban growth and development. Zoning is the most common regulatory urban planning method used by local governments in developed countries. Exceptions include the Uni ...
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Suburban Tract House
A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate political entity. The name describes an area which is not as densely populated as an inner city, yet more densely populated than a rural area in the countryside. In many metropolitan areas, suburbs exist as separate residential communities within commuting distance of a city (cf "bedroom suburb".) Suburbs can have their own political or legal jurisdiction, especially in the United States, but this is not always the case, especially in the United Kingdom, where most suburbs are located within the administrative boundaries of cities. In most English-speaking countries, suburban areas are defined in contrast to central or inner city areas, but in Australian English and South African English, ''suburb'' has become largely synonymous with what i ...
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Eaves
The eaves are the edges of the roof which overhang the face of a wall and, normally, project beyond the side of a building. The eaves form an overhang to throw water clear of the walls and may be highly decorated as part of an architectural style, such as the Chinese dougong bracket systems. Etymology and usage According to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'', ''eaves'' is derived from the Old English (singular), meaning "edge", and consequently forms both the singular and plural of the word. This Old English word is itself of Germanic origin, related to the German dialect ''Obsen'', and also probably to ''over''. The Merriam-Webster dictionary lists the word as ''eave'' but notes that it is "usually used in plural". Function The primary function of the eaves is to keep rain water off the walls and to prevent the ingress of water at the junction where the roof meets the wall. The eaves may also protect a pathway around the building from the rain, prevent erosion of the footin ...
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California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territories of the United States by population, most populous U.S. state and the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated Administrative division, subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous Statistical area (United States), urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7million residents and the latter having over 9.6million. Sacramento, California, Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the List of largest California cities by population, most populous city in the state and the List of United States cities by population, ...
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Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant. The Sea has played a central role in the history of Western civilization. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago. The Mediterranean Sea covers an area of about , representing 0.7% of the global ocean surface, but its connection to the Atlantic via the Strait of Gibraltar—the narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa—is only wide. The Mediterranean Sea e ...
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