Renovation Permits in Montreal and Laval: Winter

January does not stop you from renovating. It imposes conditions on anything touching concrete, it ruins the laying of a shingle, and it changes absolutely nothing about a kitchen. So what decides your schedule is not the temperature of the month: it is the date your application enters the queue at the borough or at the City. Here is where the line falls, item by item.

Concrete in cold weather: section 9.3.1.9 sets the limit

Pouring a foundation in February is not prohibited. It is conditional, and the conditions are written down. Section 9.3.1.9 of the Code de construction du Québec, chapter I Building, is clear: if the air temperature is below 5 °C, the concrete must be mixed and placed at a temperature between 10 °C and 25 °C inclusively, then maintained at at least 10 °C for the 72 hours following placement. It must contain neither ice nor frozen material.

What that means on site. The technical fact sheet on cold weather concreting, whose regulatory portion was approved by the Régie du bâtiment du Québec, sets out the rest: no snow and no ice in the formwork or on the ground where the concrete will be poured, no de-icing salt or calcium chloride at that spot, and the use of antifreeze is strictly prohibited. The permitted means of protection are heated shelters, blankets, insulating tarps, insulation, insulated formwork and chloride free set accelerators. In deep cold, the fact sheet warns that a single insulating tarp may not be enough and that it sometimes has to be doubled or tripled.

What happens if the rule is not followed. Reduced compressive strength, reduced impermeability, reduced durability. The fix is not cosmetic: plans signed and sealed by an engineer, or demolition and rebuilding of the foundations. The conclusion of the fact sheet is worth quoting as it stands: if the obligations of cold weather concreting strike you as too restrictive or too costly, it is wise to avoid the winter period.

Roofing and envelope: adhesion lost is never recovered

The question of asphalt shingles is not a question of worker comfort. The APCHQ describes the exact deficiency: laid late in the fall or at the start of winter, the shingles have an adhesive strip little or not at all exposed to heat, the glue is less active and adhesion is reduced. The result shows up later: the shingles lift easily in the wind and can be torn off the roof.

That is the trap with everything touching the envelope. The defect is not visible on the day of the invoice. It is visible at the first March windstorm, and above all it is visible at the buyer’s pre-purchase inspection, two years later.

What gets done indoors with no seasonal penalty

Montreal requires no permit for minor cosmetic work: changing the floor covering, repainting the walls, replacing cabinets, counters, a sink or a bath. The permit becomes required as soon as the work touches the foundations, modifies the structure of the dwelling, modifies a wall, load bearing or not, or increases the floor area, and for any work meant to modify the dimensions, the division or the use of the rooms.

Laval publishes the same logic as a table. No permit for painting, for renovating an existing bathroom, for renovating a kitchen. Permit required for adding a bathroom, a bedroom or a dwelling, for modifying an interior staircase, for adding a fireplace and a chimney. For an interior or basement renovation, the trigger is precise: a change to the dimensions of the rooms, to the number of rooms or to the structure.

The case of plumbing and electrical work. Montreal no longer issues permits for plumbing, electrical work and electric or gas heating. Laval does not require one either to replace an electrical panel, modify wiring inside walls or redo the plumbing. That does not mean this work is unregulated: it stays governed at the provincial level, and the licence required of the contractor remains the first thing to verify, as choosing a renovation contractor explains.

Renovation permits in Montreal: the wait is counted borough by borough

There is no single Montreal processing time. There are 19 counters, and only some of the boroughs publish a figure at all. Rosemont, La Petite-Patrie states its own without hedging: because of the volume of applications, a wait of 8 to 12 weeks should be expected before processing of the file even begins, depending on the nature of the work. At the end of the analysis, corrections may be required, which adds weeks. If the project needs a derogation or touches a heritage sector, count on a few months more.

The same borough puts numbers on the gap between a simple project and a modified one: for exterior cladding replaced in the same dimensions, the same materials and the same location, the average analysis time is 2 to 4 weeks; if there is a modification, it goes to 8 to 10 weeks. The City specifies that these times are indicative and vary with volume and with the complexity of the project. It also names the leading cause of delay: missing documents.

The cost and the file. Analysis fees are $9.80 per $1,000 bracket of work, with a minimum of $167.40 for an exclusively residential building, and they are not refundable. The estimate must include all costs, taxes in. The file calls for the certificate of location, the building data sheet, the quote or the estimate grid, scale plans, structural plans signed and sealed by an engineer if the structure is touched, and, in a co-ownership, the letter of authorization from each of the co-owners or a resolution of the syndicate. That last line surprises plenty of people: renovating a condo in a co-ownership explains how far the limit goes.

Renovation permits in Laval: 30 days, starting from a complete file

Laval publishes a grid of indicative processing times in calendar days. Renovation of a 1 dwelling home: 30 days. Additional dwelling: 30 days. Extension: 50 days. Pool: 20 days. The City adds the three conditions that matter: these times vary with the time of year and with the complexity of the file, a particular approval such as a PIIA lengthens them, and the count starts only once all the required documents have been received.

The rest of the calendar is written down too. You get an email on the state of your application within 5 business days. If it is incomplete, you have 30 days to supply the missing pieces; past that period, the application is closed and a new one has to be submitted. The fees are $92 for the first $20,000 bracket, plus $2.50 per bracket or part bracket of $1,000.

For the interior renovation of a 1 dwelling home, Laval asks for a scale architectural plan signed and sealed by an architect under section 16 of the Loi sur les architectes as soon as there is a change to the layout, to the structure or to the plumbing equipment, a structural plan signed and sealed by an engineer, and a recent certificate of location prepared by an arpenteur géomètre (land surveyor). Getting those documents takes time, and that time is spent before filing, not during.

Contractors, heat and protection: what winter adds to the bill

A winter site carries line items a June site does not have. The CNESST is explicit about the employer’s obligations in cold weather: heat the work station where possible, make heated temporary shelters available to workers, alternate work and warm up periods, and reorganize the work so outdoor tasks are done during the warmest part of the day. As an order of magnitude, the CNESST points out that at -23 °C with a wind of 40 km/h, the wind chill is -38 °C, and that at that temperature any exposed part of the body can freeze in 10 to 30 minutes.

Add the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning tied to combustion equipment, which calls for sufficient ventilation and for appliances installed away from openings. Every one of those measures is time or equipment, and therefore a line in a quote.

What I cannot tell you. No official source lets me put a number on a winter discount on a renovation price, or state that a contractor is systematically cheaper in January. What does check out is the other end of the calculation: protecting concrete in cold weather costs far less than fixing frozen concrete, and a permit file filed in winter is not waiting behind the spring queue.

Selling in spring: the permit gets applied for now

Here is the sentence I repeat most often to sellers in September. Rosemont, La Petite-Patrie puts it better than I do: for a spring job site, it is recommended that you file your permit application several months in advance, between September and December of the previous year. Add it up: 8 to 12 weeks of waiting, the analysis, the possible corrections, then the weeks of actual work. An application filed in April to list in May does not exist.

So the useful order is the opposite of intuition. First you set the budget according to what your sector can absorb, because your renovations will not add what you think to the value. Then you file the permit application. You carry out the interior work during the winter. You keep the permits and the invoices for question D14.4 of the Déclarations du vendeur form, which asks whether the required permits were issued. Then you list, in the month that serves your property type according to the monthly market numbers. If you are preparing a listing, the seller’s guide walks through the full order of steps.

Frequently asked questions

My contractor wants to pour my foundation in January. Is that allowed? Yes, if the cold weather concreting requirements are respected: concrete placed between 10 and 25 °C, maintained at at least 10 °C for 72 hours, no ice in the formwork, no antifreeze. Ask in writing which means of protection will be used and who pays for them.

Do the permit counters close in winter? No. Filing is done online in Laval as in Montreal, and Rosemont, La Petite-Patrie takes walk ins Monday to Friday. What changes in winter is not access to the counter, it is the length of the line ahead of you.

I am only redoing my kitchen before listing in April. Permit or not? In Laval, renovating a kitchen requires no permit unless you change the dimensions of the rooms, their number or the structure. In Montreal, replacing cabinets, counters, a sink and floor covering does not require one either, but touching a wall does.

My borough publishes no processing time. What do I do? Call the permit counter at 311 and have the filing date noted. The published times vary from one borough to the next and several publish none at all, which makes verbal confirmation all the more worth getting in writing.

To round this out, read choosing a renovation contractor and your renovations will not add what you think.

Work this winter to list in the spring? Write to me: we set the permit filing date before we set the listing date.

Georges Matar

Residential Real Estate Broker · RE/MAX DU CARTIER INC.

Contact Georges