Godfrey Building Group

Godfrey Building Group An Ontario-based building company with a family legacy of creating quality custom homes.

Specialists in custom homes, garden suites, laneway suites, and renovations, we're at the cutting edge of Toronto home development.

Happy New Years! ..let's get to work.
01/01/2024

Happy New Years!
..let's get to work.

David Godfrey (founder and owner of New Urban Home Builders) made an epic Instagram Live video of the first concrete wal...
12/24/2023

David Godfrey (founder and owner of New Urban Home Builders) made an epic Instagram Live video of the first concrete wall pour for his big new garden suite project. We'd already highlighted it, but we wanted to provide imagery from the video for everybody on Facebook and everybody on Instagram who might have missed it.

(These are screencaps, so it ain't all 4K, but you get the idea.)

Yes, that stuff coming out of the pipe is concrete, same as in your foundations and in the walls of many of the buildings you're in every day! People learn that on an intellectual level, but it's different from actually seeing it, so we wanted to show you the liquid concrete pouring out of the pipe before it becomes your wall.

As you can see, it's going into the between those wooden forms that we showed you earlier, surrounding the metal reinforcing bars (rebar) that we also showed you earlier. It's the combination of the concrete and metal that does the trick, hardening into the same material that keeps billions of people safe, warm, and dry every day.

(And, yes, this is done by real human beings, hauling around real big pipes full of concrete. There might be a day when an AI can pour your walls, but not today. This project had our hardworking builders out there in the December cold. It's hard work, but it's worth it, and we appreciate it!)

In case you missed it: David Godfrey (founder and owner of New Urban Home Builders) did a huge Instagram Live yesterday ...
12/20/2023

In case you missed it: David Godfrey (founder and owner of New Urban Home Builders) did a huge Instagram Live yesterday showing the concrete pour for the new Garden Suite project. You can find that on our Instagram, and we'll see about putting some pics on here soon. In the meantime here's some pics of the concrete forms and rebar being put in place!

Yes, that's what those big wooden walls are. You create concrete walls and floors by putting up these wooden "forms", tying together a lattice of metal reinforcing bars ("rebar") inside the space between the forms. Then you pour the concrete in and let it harden. Once it's done, you remove the forms, and you've got a concrete wall!

If you've got concrete or cement in your home, these forms probably had a lot to do with it!

David's been busy on the Garden Suite site! (More tomorrow morning...)
12/20/2023

David's been busy on the Garden Suite site!

(More tomorrow morning...)

So as we’d mentioned earlier, David Godfrey (founder and owner of New Urban Home Builders) is working on a garden suite ...
12/18/2023

So as we’d mentioned earlier, David Godfrey (founder and owner of New Urban Home Builders) is working on a garden suite for a couple and their father in Toronto.

It’s been interesting, as the whole project nearly got derailed by some issues with the soil and all the random stuff we found buried in it. Now it’s dug out, and we’ve poured a raft slab for the base of the foundation.

What’s a “raft slab”? That’s what we wanted to to tell you about today!

A raft slab, like the one that David poured, is a big “slab” of concrete that sits underneath a building. The slab of concrete is wide and thick; so wide that it can support the whole weight of the building above it, spreading out the pressure on the soil underneath. It’s really useful when you’ve got soft or otherwise difficult soil to work with, and means you don’t have to drive long piles into the ground.

It does mean you're pouring a lot of concrete, though!

David’s familiar with raft slabs; homebuilders in Toronto use them regularly. There’s a fair bit of work involved, calculations need to be made to determine the thickness of the “raft” based on the quality of the soil and the weights and forces involved, but that’s nothing new for an experienced homebuilder.

As you can see, the pour was done, the “raft” was formed, and the curing took place. The slab’s ready to go, and we’re starting to form the walls!

More on that soon...

So work’s continuing on the garden suite, as David (founder and owner of New Urban Home Builders) continues construction...
12/12/2023

So work’s continuing on the garden suite, as David (founder and owner of New Urban Home Builders) continues construction on a garden suite for a Toronto family and their father.

As we said, the ground was a bit...strange. When he started digging, he saw that it had a tendency to turn into muddy puddles instead of draining. That could have made building a foundation extremely difficult! We’d talked with our expert soil engineer, who wasn't sure what was going on, and said that the only solution was incredibly expensive shoring around the foundation.

Helical piles were one solution, but they were also expensive, albeit not quite as bad.

So David reached out to the soil engineer again after a few days to get fresh eyes and a fresh perspective .With those fresh eyes, he got a fresh answer.

The answer was in some of the OTHER things he found in there when he started digging. Our expert contractors were finding huge rocks, tree stumps, and loads of other detritus that you wouldn’t expect to find buried under the ground!

When he looked into it, he discovered that the lot was at the bottom of a ravine, and there’d been frequent water flow (and outright dumping) that had deposited all that stuff in there. That’s why the site wasn’t draining properly: all that random stuff in there from decades of buildup was preventing it.

So there was only one thing to be done for it: DIG. And dig. And dig some more, getting it all out, until you get down to the soil underneath. Clean up all that nonsense, get rid of all the stumps and rocks and whatever else he found.

We found concrete!

We found a tree twelve feet down!

Then, when the digging was done, and our tireless workers had cleared out all the detritus, it was time to start actually building. David decided to use a raft slab. And what’s a raft slab? That’s what we’re talking about next…

Garden Suite project: We DIGGING!(And you won't believe what we were finding down there. More a bit later.) ...
12/08/2023

Garden Suite project: We DIGGING!

(And you won't believe what we were finding down there. More a bit later.)

The work continues on the Garden Suite ! David Godfrey (our founder) and his expert contractors are in the middle of exc...
12/05/2023

The work continues on the Garden Suite ! David Godfrey (our founder) and his expert contractors are in the middle of excavating right now, after having had to take some time resolving a problem that the homeowner was concerned would derail the project.

After finally getting the permit from the city, David was eager to get to work. He and his contractors took their equipment into the back, and got to work digging. There's a lot of digging to do, because this Garden Suite has below-grade elements. But as they got to digging, they discovered a problem with the ground.

What they found upon inspection was that the ground’s firmness might well present a problem—and that it might need to be heavily shored up before building. When David reached out to some engineers about it though, they quoted an eye-watering number that could have made the entire project impractical.

That wasn't acceptable. This was about keeping a family together, and giving a recovering father the dignity and independence he deserves. He needed a home, so David needed a solution.

But that's the thing about being a homebuilder: you spend your life making connections with people who create solutions. David knows a lot of people who've built a lot of homes, by solving a lot of problems and creating a lot of solutions. So David started making more phone calls.

Talking with some expert engineers brought up a potential solution: helical piles. They're giant rods with a spiral end, ones that you literally twist into the ground like a screw. They require a professional touch to ensure that they get into the ground in the right place, at the right angle, and bite into the ground exactly how they need to. But if you do it right, they can keep a building intact and level on imperfect ground for decades.

David made some calls, linked some connections, and was on the phone with the specialist in helical piles right here in Toronto. He got a quote, and it was far more reasonable.

The project was saved—but he knew he could do better, and save the homeowner more on the project.

So he started making more calls...

(More on that next time.)

More cool digging equipment! David (New Urban Home Builder's founder) said that "The rumble of the machines is something...
12/01/2023

More cool digging equipment! David (New Urban Home Builder's founder) said that "The rumble of the machines is something that I can’t NOT get excited about." Can't say I disagree.

David had to resolve a rather sticky problem with the garden suite project over the past few weeks, but we think it's going to be a cool story about what you need to be a homebuilder. More soon. (Along with more pics!)

11/27/2023

As David works on his garden suite project (the one we'd mentioned a little while ago) we thought we'd put up some vids of a favorite piece of equipment: the skid-steer loader!

(They're the mini-bulldozers that often get called bobcats)

They've actually been around since the fifties (though originally they had three wheels instead of tracks!) and are different from their bigger dozer buddies not just in size, but in how the bucket's connected: to the back of the vehicle, instead of the front. They're extremely maneuverable, able to turn within their own length, and can do a wide variety of tasks.

(Including cleaning up. They were originally invented to help a farmer clean up after the turkeys in his barn!)

In a project like this, where access can be a bit tight, equipment like this is absolutely invaluable. Full-sized equipment might have trouble getting to the homeowners' back property, but these mighty minis can get back there and get the job done with minimal disturbance to both the homeowners and the neighbours.

The work continues.

(If you want to look into whether your property qualifies for a garden suite or laneway suite, reach out either by DM or by phone and we can work with you find out. Help contribute to solving Toronto's housing crunch, by contributing innovative new housing solutions to the city!)

Address

107 Munro Boulevard
Toronto, ON
M2P1C7

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 6pm
Tuesday 9am - 6pm
Wednesday 9am - 6pm
Thursday 9am - 6pm
Friday 9am - 6pm
Saturday 9am - 6pm
Sunday 9am - 6pm

Telephone

+14165296722

Website

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