Making a wise land purchase for your future dream home involves more than a view that pulls at your heart strings. The land's topography is one of the main determinants that influences the kind of home and lifestyle you envision. When in self-building mode, especially for green horns, we are sometimes inclined to be influenced by our emotions rather than reason things out. Our gut instincts tell us that we don't want to admit that buying land is a scary commitment. We wonder about our technical knowledge and the simple logic behind our choice. Let’s face it; once you have signed on the dotted line, you are locked in. Needless to say, it is strongly advised to acquire the land before the house plans. Topography affects everything.
When we were considering our purchase, we enquired with the Regional Municipality of Charlevoix-Est about specific bylaws. Better to have that naive look than feel like an idiot when you make a bad call. Once informed, you quickly lose your naiveté, but once the error is done you can stay stupid for a long time. Remember, one day you will be paying taxes to that municipality. It's time to see the kind of services you will have for the tax money you will be dishing out.
While looking at the possible building sites, maps in hand, Pierre and I walked along the wide fields sometimes battling with native vegetation. Unfortunately, we had not received the memo to wear long pants. After an hour of walking through the brush, our legs got scarred beyond recognition. When scouting out a building site in a rural area, the tourist in you comes out instinctively. Again, the eyes have it. We are influenced by what we see and how we feel when seeing it. Even though you may be enthralled by the view, you still need to play detective when looking at a field for the first time. It is hard to read the terrain especially when the markers are hidden under thick vegetation. In addition, the soil does not reveal its secrets although in our case, we saw the bare rock formations in some places. Another question mark is who owns the field next to yours? Your neighbors may have bought that piece of land as an investment and have no plans to build or it could be the opposite. You are buying your neighbors and their lifestyle sight unseen. Basically, you never know who you will end up with and also what they will build. Now is the time to be grateful for all those bylaws and limitations. You know there will never be a high-rise next to your humble abode. In our case, we are in a resort area and bylaws of the Regional Municipality of Charlevoix and Les Domaines du Ruisseau-Jureux ensure harmonized colors, noble building materials and any characteristic that may affect the construction of private homes. We chose to live in Saint. Irénée not only for the breathtaking scenery and friendly people, the arts, flora and fauna, but also for the Charlevoix cachet. We must preserve it. Finally, Mother Nature is an intrinsic issue. It is a privilege to live on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. Once you have seen the whales, seals and marine birds, one does not have to think twice. It's not everyone who can say they have whales in their back yard!
Why talk about Champlain? In 1626 he was the first surveyor of Canada. Just thinking about it, he has my deepest respect because I can visualize him taking out his sabre to cut through the alders from hell like we did. His job was to divide the lands of New France on large tracts of land along the banks of the St. Lawrence. Looking at our little piece of land in Saint-Irénée, Pierre and I sympathized with him, but as Champlain, we survived to tell the tale. We hired Dave Tremblay A.G. Tremblay & Fortin, Land Surveyors in Baie-Saint-Paul. They also have an office in La Malbaie. We chose Dave Tremblay because he had impressed us personally. We met him last year, in the dead of winter when we were scouting out property. Having found an estate lot to our taste, we wanted to make an offer, but we had to have photocopies. Not knowing where to go, we saw Dave Tremblay's office in Baie-Saint-Paul, and simply inquired about making copies. He could have refused. Not only did he allow us to make copies, but the welcome was warm. He even told us what we should look for in the specific area of interest. Consequently, we came out of his office, photocopies in hand and above all knowledgeable. Later that day, our tender offer was not accepted and as my mother would say, it was a blessing in disguise. A few days later we found an incredible piece of property. We had not forgotten Dave and for all these reasons, we opted to hire him for the surveying job knowing he would be a valuable member of our team.
Our first meeting on the field with Dave and his team was productive and informative. His explanations helped us visualize where the house could be located, the septic tank, and especially where the property limits were. He would also make a soil percolation test for the well. Dave took the time to discuss with our architects Bruno Verge and Anabel Arsenault from TergosArchitectural firm and Normand Duchesne, a local contractor who came to visit the field. Dave answered all our questions.
In all, we had everything in hand we needed to start the next stage of our project. Not only did we have all the documentation, but also a 3D representation of the topography that would serve the architects to locate our house in 3D too. This exercise would show the play of sunlight during the equinox and solstice through the windows of our house. Going back to Champlain, I can imagine him with a Garmin to emit a 3D image of all the land he was allocating while sitting with his laptop just placing the land tracts while the settlers were lining up, caps in hand.
Meanwhile, Pierre and I will be returning with our chainsaws and our weed wakers to free the beautiful rustic apple trees, lilacs and wild roses from all that insane brush. From time to time, we stop to watch the freighters go silently down the river imagining that one day soon we will be sitting on our beautiful terrace enjoying the view.
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