Can You Build A House In The Winter? | Canadian Luxury Builder Explains

Can you build in the Winter? Should you? This video will break down how a Canadian Luxury Home builder thinks and plans his builds in one of the harshest winters on the planet: Winnipeg Manitoba.

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Emmett Leo Homes is a luxury custom home builder in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Come learn with us as we build custom luxury homes. From multi-million dollar home builds, to massive luxury flips, Emmett Leo Homes is giving you an insider's look into the world of luxury homes, offering tips, tricks, insider looks, and inspiring ideas.

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Building a house is really exciting. But when you live in a cold climate like we do here in Winnipeg, where it can go from plus 40 in the summer to minus 40 degrees celcius in the winter to (that’s 105 to minus 40 fahrenheit for all my American pals) we have no choice but to build year round.

One of the biggest questions we get is whether or not we actually build year round, and how we plan for a cold weather build.

So lets dive in.

The biggest requirements for a cold weather build is planning. IN FACT, the winter is one of the best times to design and PLAN a home build, generally around the end of October or November. This is because the large custom homes that we build usually take about 6-8 months of planning and design to go through all architectural, Mechanical, interior design, estimating and procurement to take place. That puts us in a perfect position to start right when the building season picks up around the 2nd week of may.

BUT, if you’re in a situation where your build has to be built the winter for time or money constraints, HAVE NO FEAR. The biggest thing you have to do is change your mindset a bit and know that it WILL be slower, and there will be more work and planning involved.

So Yes, you can build during winter. And no, it won’t be an inferior home build. In fact, because we purposely add buffer time to the schedule, there may be some design elements that were not caught before that come up and get caught because of the extra time and reviews.

However, the number one consideration you face is quality. When it’s cold, humans naturally want to get back into the warmth. Therefore, it’s human nature for guys to think “it’s good enough” or you may see that 1/8th inch tolerances turn into about a half inch pretty quickly. So, what we need is different expectation about speed, while maintaining our quality.

The second is different installation methods. This can come from materials that NEED to be installed at a minimum temperature, or to cure once installed. Think glues, concrete, stone, or anything that needs to stick. If we need things to go on warm, but can be cold after, a warming hut, or a warm truck will do the trick. If the substrate you are installing on needs to be wamr, you will have no other choice but to heat and hoard the area.

Have another trick I didn’t mention? Leave it in the comments below.

So, as we walk through the build, the first part of the home to worry about in cold weather is the concrete foundation. This past year, we got an incredible amount of snow, almost 6 feet in total, during the construction of a large ICF basement. An ICF basement, or insulated concrete forms, uses foam blocks that go together like lego, and then we pour the concrete in the middle. The issues come up when it’s snowing, because not only can it drop snow in between the rows when you’re stacking them, but we can’t have the entire space where the concrete goes fill up with snow before the pour. This means that we have to add buffer times for covering, uncovering, ice melting, shoveling, and heating and hoarding.

Heating and hoarding is probably the most well-known strategy to build in the winter, This is done by creating a cover over any area with a tarp and adding a heat source inside. We use this for most concrete that needs to be poured in the winter, exterior stone or finish that needs to dry, like stucco.

After you consider your foundation and general framing, the most important milestones are getting to lock up, (which means that the home can be secured with windows and doors, and often with a finished and protected roof system, ) and the second one is to get electricity hooked up.

[alexbanks]

Glad you posted a new video! Always interesting and enjoyable!

[DeVoNmotorsports]

Well.. the good viton seals are usable below freezing and better one tonas low as -30 and some are good at higher temperatures some turn hard when cold and cut a grove in the crank, you can put a spacer or set it in a different position to start a new groove

[Okimâw]

well for winter I am currently make a A-frame Home 12f-12f by 16f on Pillars I found that you can get concrete that sets in 15-13 mins and 9 bags only costed me 98$ CND

[originalruckuscrew]

Generally for someone looking to get into becoming a builder or building homes to resell, is there a higher profit margin than buying an existing home and holding it by renting it out, then reselling for profit after a few years ?

[chrishayes]

I'm surprised there's no concrete designed with chemicals that create a slow release heated reaction. Similar to what's in a hand warmer.