At Tuesday, March 10’s Carleton Place Committee of the Whole committee meeting, councilors heard from Chief Building Official Lennox Smith and Development Services Manager Joanna Bowes regarding the final details on regulating the use of shipping containers as secondary buildings. Since 2005 the province has taken the position that these containers (also known as sea-cans) are subject to municipal building regulations and require permits to be used as on-the-ground structures.

When staff first began looking into new bylaws and regulations on containers last fall, they proposed requiring an engineering report to verify their strength, and surface placement suitability as part of the requirements for approval. After reviewing other municipalities’ rules and seeking legal opinion on enforce-ability, in addition to property owner feedback, the need for a full fledged engineering report has been dropped which drastically reduces the costs of applications. The rationale was that the containers already meet stringent manufacturing regulations and if they weren’t modified from their original design, they could be reasonably expected to not present any risks. The only exception to this is the need for an air vent. Smith explained that an explosion that occurred inside a container in Ontario blew the heavy metal doors off due to the lack of a vent.

The rules will dictate that the containers cannot be stacked and must be properly anchored to the ground. Smith commented that tornadoes, such as the ones that affected the Ottawa area just 2 years back, could possibly tip or suddenly move an unanchored structure. He added that with the new version of the rules, property owners could pay just over $100 per container for a permit for a straight-forward application that needed no other relief from existing land-use regulations. Town staff is proposing amending the development permit bylaw to only allow containers on lands designated as industrial campus going forward, but existing units in other zones could remain once permits are obtained and providing they comply with other regulations such as set-backs for example.

Council’s committee approved the shipping container general regulations (a full council ratification is still required) but deferred the decision on development permit bylaw amendments as they entailed many other unrelated details which required further discussion.

Article by Brian Turner