What Newmarket actually asks for
From the municipality's own permit checklist:
- Heat loss and heat gain calculation to determine the capacity of the furnace required
- Drawings of the duct design and layout (by a qualified designer)
- Residential Mechanical Ventilation and Heating Cooling (HVAC) Design Summary
- Energy Efficiency Design Summary (EEDS) Form - Part 9 (Residential)
Schedule 1: Required when a homeowner or qualified designer other than an architect or engineer takes responsibility.
Verify on the municipality's own page →
Checklists change. Check the current one before you submit — and if the letter
you received names a document you have never heard of, send it to us and we
will tell you what it is.
The design temperature
Every number in a heat loss calculation depends on the outdoor temperature the
house is designed for, and the province sets it — not the designer.
Newmarket: -22 °C (-8 °F) — January 2.5% design temperature
January 1%: -24 °C · Degree-days below 18 °C: 4,260
Source: Ontario Building Code SB-1 (2024), Table 2 — Climatic Design Data. Basis: listed in SB-1.
A calculation run at the wrong design temperature is wrong by roughly the
amount the temperature is wrong by, and it is one of the commonest reasons a
reviewer sends a package back. If you are comparing quotes, ask which design
temperature the designer is using before you compare anything else.
What each document actually is
| Document |
What it is |
| Heat loss and heat gain calculations |
The room-by-room load. Everything else is sized off this. |
| Formula sheet |
The working behind the numbers, so a reviewer can follow them. |
| Thermal load calculator |
The envelope assemblies and areas the loads were built from. |
| Air leakage calculator |
The infiltration assumption, stated rather than buried. |
| Residential ventilation summary |
The OBC 9.32 ventilation design, on the HRAI summary form. |
| Duct design and layout |
Supply and return sizing, register locations, cfm per room. |
| Energy Efficiency Design Summary |
How the house meets SB-12, prescriptive or performance. |
| Radiant in-floor design |
Loop layout, spacing, manifolds and lengths. |
| Hydraulic load calculations |
Flow and head for a hydronic system. |
Who is allowed to sign it
You hire a qualified designer. They complete the Schedule 1 Designer
Information Form with their BCIN and take responsibility for the design.
You are the owner, building on your own lot. Ontario Building Code
Division C, Article 3.2.5.1.(3)(b)(i) exempts an owner who designs a house they
own from the designer qualification requirements. You can file the documents
yourself. The calculations still have to be correct — the exemption is about
who may design, not about the standard the work has to meet.
Tell us which applies and we will tell you what you need before you pay.
What it costs
|
Includes |
Price |
Turnaround |
| Heat loss and heat gain |
Room-by-room loads, worksheet, design conditions, equipment sizing basis, assumptions, seal page |
$395 |
48 hours |
| Full mechanical package |
The above plus ventilation design, duct design and layout, EEDS, and radiant layout where applicable |
$695 |
48 hours |
Forty-eight hours from complete plans and payment. If the building department
asks for a correction to something we got wrong, we fix it and reissue at no
charge while your application is open.
See a complete sample package →
Common questions
Do I need all of these documents?
Not always. A heat loss calculation alone satisfies some permits; a new
dwelling with a hydronic system needs close to the full list. Send the plans and
we will tell you which.
The department has already asked and my build is held up.
That is the most common reason people call. The 48-hour turnaround exists for
exactly that.
My HVAC contractor says he will size it.
He may be right about the equipment. The building department still needs the
documents, and the Code requires equipment capacity to be based on the
calculated design heat loss.
I'm adding a basement apartment, not building a house.
Different job: no drawings, an existing furnace, and a check that it can carry
both units. Here is how that works → The
design temperature and the checklist above apply to it just the same.
Does an ICF or high-performance house change the answer?
Same procedure, different inputs. The result usually comes out substantially
lower, and more of the difference comes from air sealing than from the wall's
R-value. We run that comparison on every job.
Start
Send your plans — we'll tell you what you need before you pay →
Building in Newmarket: what changes the design
Newmarket is the York Region seat, with an older core around Main Street and large subdivisions built out from it. It runs a degree colder than Aurora on the design charts, and that one degree is already built into every number in our package.
We see a lot of Newmarket homeowners finishing basements as rental units, adding a storey, or replacing an old furnace with a cold-climate heat pump. All three change the load on the house, and all three are places where a square-foot guess leads to the wrong size of equipment.
Older homes near the core often have small return air paths that were never right. When we design for an addition or a new unit, we look at the whole system so the new rooms do not steal air from the old ones.
Common Newmarket projects we design for
- Legal basement apartments
- Second-storey additions
- Cold-climate heat pump switches
- Older homes near the downtown core
What to send us
- Floor plans and elevations, or a clear sketch with room sizes
- Window sizes and type (or the window schedule)
- Your fuel: natural gas, propane, oil, electric or heat pump
- Anything special: radiant floors, a garage or shop, a second unit
What the Newmarket examiner looks for
The building department wants a CSA F280 room-by-room heat loss at the Newmarket design temperature (-22 C), equipment sized from that number, a duct or piping layout, ventilation that meets the code, and the designer's BCIN on Schedule 1. Miss one and the permit comes back. We send it all together so it goes through the first time.
Have plans ready? Send them in and we will call you back with a price. Want the background first? Read what a full HVAC design package includes.