Our Urban Village, a Vancouver Cohousing Community

Excavation underway

By Christine Rondeau

In the past few weeks our project has gone from the removal of the single family home on the site to a giant hole in the ground. It’s been astonishing to see how quickly progress has been made.

First a digger appeared on site and next thing you know, there’s a hole in the ground. Although our lot isn’t that large and our building won’t have underground parking, the hole they’ve dug is surpisingly big. They also sprayed shotcrete on the sides to secure the walls. Until a few weeks ago, I’d never heard of shotcrete.

Shotcrete is a method of applying concrete projected at high velocity primarily on to a vertical or overhead surface. The impact created by the application consolidates the concrete. Although the hardened properties of shotcrete are similar to those of conventional cast-in-place concrete, the nature of the placement process results in an excellent bond with most substrates, and rapid or instant capabilities, particularly on complex forms or shapes. Fascinating!

Once that’s all done they will pour the foundation inside this shell. Giant pipes have also appeared in the past few days. What are these for? No idea. We’re super excited to find out and see how this project evolves.