Victoria’s City Councillors have been busy amending the Zoning Bylaws to prohibit Roof Decks. In most Cities Roof Decks are a welcome private oasis. At SOS Design we have incorporated several roof top gardens in our designs. Green roofs provide many benefits – added insulation for sound and temperature, reduced runoff, longer lasting roof membranes [...]

City of Victoria has developed a policy to allow Garden Suites on properties of Single Family Homes. SOS Design has developed a Garden Suite that is in compliance with the intent of the bylaws. This 37m² (400 ft²) one bedroom suite is available as pre-fabricated kits-of-parts from Pacific Homes at an estimated cost of less than [...]

Belron, the parent company of Speedy Glass, contracted SOS Design to facilitate their move. Hard to find locations in the auto repair district it took over a year to secure a new lease. The new facility also operates Interlock. SOS Design has, over the past couple of years, assisted Belron with screening new locations in North [...]

SOS Design planned this 2 storey 112 m² addition to a  typical bungalow style home in Victoria BC. Our client purchased a home that had been renovated by  its previous owner without a permit. There were several infractions: the internal  stair had been removed and an illegal suite was created in what used to be the  [...]

Mark McDougall has created the perfect tool to join the interests of sellers and buyers with an innovative use of technology. The aim was to create a customized strategy that removes the stress of selling or finding a new home. Here, for the first time, sellers can see what buyers are looking for. Mark will [...]

BC Hydro is replacing our current digital electric meter with new “smart meters”. The cost to the users is over $1 billion. The claim is that it will save $1.6 billion over 20 years in theft and labour. Currently there is no way to know how much electricity is being stolen. In many older homes [...]

Karen Konzuk has moved her studio to the Sunshine Coast in BC. KONZUK jewelry is faithful to the clean, minimalist aesthetic of contemporary industrial design and architecture. Combining materials like stainless steel, concrete and powder-coated enamel with processes like laser cutting, CNC machining and photo engraving, the KONZUK collection embraces materials and methods that reflect [...]

GE has provided this graphic to show how much noise a  wind turbine makes – it won’t keep you up at night. Wind turbines are not permitted to be  built closer than 300 meters from the nearest house in a residential area. The  graphic shows that the noise emitted is only slightly more than the [...]

New 212 m² – 3 br. house is now in construction, to be completed early 2012.    

Clever! Geothermal Power Plants Could be a Massive Source of Lithium for Batteries In absolute terms, lithium is not particularly rare on Earth. It’s the 25th most abundant element, close to nickel and lead. Bolivia alone is estimated to have enough lithium to make batteries for 4.8 billion electric cars and since lithium is not destroyed [...]