BC Building Code

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You won’t hear it from the Barrett Commission, but the current crisis of building envelope failures plaguing condominiums and, more recently, other types of buildings is actually a constitutional issue.

Under Canada’s constitution, building regulation is a provincial responsibility. That includes such regulations as the BC Building Code (BCBC), which governs construction throughout the province except for the City of Vancouver. (Vancouver’s charter allows it to have its own Building Code.)
The National Building Code (NBC), often mentioned during this debate, has no jurisdiction in BC. It is developed by the National Research Council in Ottawa as a model code; the provinces are then free to adapt the NBC to meet local climatic conditions. Unfortunately, sometimes the only local climate that gets considered is the political climate.
However, research costs money, and Code development in BC has been more reactive than proactive, with little or no research into the effects of the climate that our buildings must endure. In fact, two years ago the BC government actually eliminated the Building Standards Branch – which administers the BC Building Code – as a cost-cutting measure.
Just how different is our climate in coastal BC? On a sunny March day in Vancouver, it’s difficult to contemplate that the vast majority of the country for which the National Building Code was written is still covered in snow and ice. Coastal BC is the only climate in Canada where it seldom freezes, and one of the only areas of North America where it can rain almost non-stop for weeks at a time. Clearly, a Code written for the rest of the country might not be appropriate in BC.
Compare two walls – one in Regina and one in Vancouver. Both walls experience rain once a month. However, the single rainfall in Regina lasts an hour, while the single rainfall in Vancouver lasts the whole month. Even if each wall leaks only a very small amount, the Vancouver wall will rot unless it can find a way to dry out.
On this issue, there are two schools of thought. The first believes that if we hire enough engineers to design building envelopes and inspect the construction, we can prevent any water from leaking into any building. This school is populated largely, and understandably, by engineers.
The second school of thought believes that we cannot reasonably expect to be able to keep all water out of a wall, and that we must therefore allow a wall to "breathe", rather than sealed it up on the inside and outside. This group believes that walls have always leaked, and that the reason walls on the wet coast are now rotting is that they can’t dry out like they used to, because Code has sealed them up with an air-vapour barrier and other measures. We no longer build walls that are forgiving of the inevitable leaks that come with our climate.
At a technical meeting in early February, initiated by BC’s Homeowner Protection Office, a roomful of technical and regulatory experts concluded that some of the recent changes to the way we build – higher insulation levels and air-tightness requirements, for example – impeded the normal drying of walls in BC’s climate. There was a near-consensus on the need for research into the drying capacity of various wall designs. This research, if the BC government moves quickly to undertake it, might well identify why buildings constructed in this climate have failed.
There is currently a lab study underway at Forintek to discover the drying capacity of various types of exterior walls. One of the questions that must be answered is the extent to which measures aimed at increased energy-efficiency and air-tightness, introduced into Code in the mid- and late-eighties, served to lower the drying capacity of our buildings. This is the first time that extensive research has been undertaken of the effect of moisture on wall performance in BC; sadly, the research is being done more than a decade after the Code was changed.

How could this happen?
Well, Code development in BC has traditionally been a reactive process; the public submits proposed Code changes to Building Standards Branch, and every five years a Code Advisory Committee is appointed for a few weeks to review all the proposed changes before the new Code is published. No research budget to speak of, no analysis of the effect of our climate on building performance, and no ongoing Code development.
By comparison, the NBC is developed by ten Standing Committees made up of experts from across the country who work year-round – not just a few weeks every five years – continually ensuring that the NBC is relevant and accurate to the country as a whole. Unfortunately, research into Code requirements for small climatic regions like coastal BC is left to the provinces who are, after all, responsible for building regulation.
As well, research into the NBC is done before Code provisions are written. In contrast, BC saves the research for much later in the process. BC is perhaps the only jurisdiction that would adopt a Code designed for a completely different climate, wait a decade for an enormous problem to develop, spend a further five years pointing the finger, and then undertake research to find out whether the walls prescribed by Code are suitable for our climate.
That fact isn’t lost on some provincial officials. As early as 1987, then-head of BC’s Building Standards Branch Jim Currie (now retired) wrote to his political masters warning that the new provisions included in the National Building Code, if adopted in BC, would cause buildings to rot.

Have we learned our lesson?
No. Even today, very little proactive research is being done on building regulations, partly because the BC government still won’t admit its mistakes, for fear of liability. Because it’s easier to blame those that developed the buildings – a list that now includes school boards, commercial landlords, and governments – for this enormous failure of BC’s building regulatory system.

Richard Stewart, a consultant who has been involved in the leaky condominium issue for more than six years, sits on one of the Standing Committees that develops the National Building Code in Ottawa.

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