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    • Flexibility: The Key to Renovations

      May 26, 2023

      Here at Copper Island Fine Homes, we don't just specialize in building our clients' new dream homes. Since inception, we've also been committed to renovating existing homes to modern standards.

      Renovating older homes in an area like the Shuswap comes with its share of challenges. Prior to building inspections, many homes in our part of the province were originally constructed without much thought to future changes and improvements. So we've always found that flexibility and creativity are important tools when we work on renovations.

      Case in point: we just started a renovation project in Sorrento, where we’re converting a small garage into a new shop with bathroom. To accommodate this, we needed to improve the existing septic system -- and then connect the new shop to it. There’s a  wide driveway between the new shop and the house which will now share the same tank. The problem was, how to connect them with new piping without doing damage to the existing pavement driveway?

      We decided to call in Iron Man Drilling out of Salmon Arm. Iron Man has a Ditch Witch track-mounted directional drill to bore under roadways. The company uses a two-man team, with one running the drill and the other using a sensor that detects a radio beacon on the drill head to guide the drill head on the correct path.

      The drill set up on the shop side and drilled five feet below the driveway to a target location on the house side. Once the drill bit had reached a hole that our excavator had previously dug, the Iron Man crew attached a hole reamer to widen the hole and then pulled a 6” utility sleeve pipe through the new tunnel. Our plumber can now run a new sewer line in the sleeve (and the same sleeve can now be used for new electrical and water supply lines).

      We think it's an ingenious solution that retains the integrity of the driveway. Our thanks to Iron Man Drilling for the great work. If you've got questions about renovations, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us to discuss your project.