Parking, servicing, and the lane itself.

How much parking does a Burnaby laneway home need?

Burnaby Zoning Bylaw No. 14815 requires 1.0 parking space for the first dwelling unit on a lot plus 0.5 for each additional unit. An existing house plus one laneway home calculates to 1.5 spaces, and because Part 7-1 rounds any fraction of 0.5 or more up to a whole space, the requirement is 2 spaces across the lot. Lots inside a transit oriented area or a frequent transit network area require no parking at all. Parking must sit at the rear where the lot is accessible from an abutting lane or street.

The formula, worked through

The rate is stated once in Part 7-1 and applies to small-scale multi-unit housing as a whole, meaning every dwelling unit on the lot counted together rather than each building assessed on its own.

Check the transit exemption before doing any of this arithmetic. If the lot falls inside a frequent transit network area or a transit oriented area, the entire parking requirement disappears, and with it the paving that would have competed against the permeable surface minimum and the outdoor amenity space each unit needs. It is the difference between a tight site plan and a comfortable one.

Where parking is required, Part 3-1.1.5.5 puts it at the rear of the lot when the rear is reachable from an abutting lane or street. It may be a detached garage, an attached one, a carport or an open pad. Only where there is no direct rear access, or where the General Manager Engineering accepts that extreme grade makes rear access unfeasible, may parking move elsewhere on the lot. A below-grade garage is allowed if nothing rises more than 1.2 m above surrounding ground except at the driveway, and nothing sits within 1.2 m of a lot line.

What the lane is actually worth

A lane changes two rules at once, which is why lots with one are worth more for this kind of project than lots without.

The first is the setback. Where the rear lot line abuts a lane, the lane yard setback is 1.5 m. Where it does not, a principal building at the rear observes the 3.0 m interior rear yard setback. That extra 1.5 m comes straight out of the building's depth, and it is subtracted from a dimension that has already lost 6.0 m to the separation from the front house.

The second is parking. The bylaw's default is parking at the rear accessible from the lane. Without a lane, either the parking has to reach the rear another way or it moves elsewhere on the lot with the City Engineer's acceptance, which usually means a driveway running the length of the property. That driveway is hard surface, and hard surface is what the 40% permeable minimum is measuring.

A lot without a lane is not disqualified. It is a harder site plan, and it is worth knowing that before rather than after the design fee. Run the feasibility test with the 3.0 m figure and see whether a plan still survives.

Servicing is the line that breaks budgets

Most Burnaby lots carrying an older house were serviced for exactly one dwelling. Adding a second means extending what is there or installing new, and the scope is set by what the City's engineering review finds rather than by anything visible on the property.

We are not going to publish a dollar figure for this, because there isn't an honest one to publish. Servicing cost is a function of the distance to the connection, the depth and grade at the connection point, the capacity of the existing service, whether the road or lane has to be cut, and how the City wants the second dwelling metered. Two lots on the same street can differ. What we can tell you is what to ask about, so nothing on this list arrives as a surprise.

The right time to raise all six is during early feasibility, before a designer is engaged. An engineering enquiry costs a few weeks of calendar time and gives you the scope of work that the rest of the budget hangs off. Skipping it is how an owner ends up with a permit-ready design for a building the lot cannot service.

The order that keeps the trench cheap

Servicing work is excavation, and excavation is disruptive to everything above it. Sequencing it correctly saves both money and the landscaping the owner cares about.

1. 1

   Confirm capacity before design

   Ask what the existing water, sewer and electrical services can carry, and what the City requires for a second dwelling. This answer changes the design, so it has to come first.

2. 2

   Locate the connections and the trench route

   Where the new services enter, and the path they take across the lot, decides where the parking pad, the fire access corridor and any protected tree roots can sit. All four compete for the same ground.

3. 3

   Do the servicing with the excavation

   The trench for the new building's foundation and the trench for its services want to happen in one mobilisation. Splitting them means paying to dig the same yard twice.

4. 4

   Landscape last, once

   Every hard surface placed before the servicing is complete is a hard surface at risk. Finishing the ground after the trenches are closed is the only version where the paving survives.

Frequently asked questions