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Professionally designed and sealed drawings, or drawings with professional engineer design review and sealed are required for the following conditions:

□   When the municipality bylaw requires all house foundations are designed by a professional (engineer or architect)

□   Grade beam and pile foundation supporting living space. E.g. House with GB&P foundations, large additions with GB&P foundation, attached garage with living space over it, etc.

□   Walk-out foundations

□   When set out, required, or recommended by a geotechnical investigation

□   Substantial ‘Tall Wall’ systems

□   Where substantial portions of foundation walls are laterally unsupported

□   Where preserved wood foundations have differential backfill heights greater than 600 mm

□   Foundations and structural components of below-grade entries

□   Retaining walls higher than 900mm where the wall impacts the house design or feature integrity. E.g., a wall creates grade conditions to allow a walk-out foundation or grade conditions around a building that would otherwise not have been achieved

□   Foundations that are supported on grade / near grade such as ‘thickened edge slab’ or ‘structural slab’

□   Pier type foundations supported on grade (unless the home is specifically designed to be supported on a pier type foundation, i.e. mobile home CSA Z240)

□   Exemptions for pier type foundations without an engineer’s design are additions to existing dwellings on pier or grade supported foundations, provided the proposed addition foundation is similar to existing, the addition is single storey, the area of the proposed addition is no more than 20% of the existing dwelling and a maximum of 240 sq. ft., and the total building area including addition is no more than 1200 sq. ft.

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