A third-of-an-acre street the District would not allow as the main access to a 99-lot subdivision, where connecting to the new sewer can cost $25,000.
Where Havies Road sits, and the other places we attend
around Davis Bay. Every name on the map is a link.
Between Nestman Road and Laurel Avenue
Havies Road runs between Nestman Road and Laurel Avenue on the slope where Davis Bay meets Selma Park, inside the District of Sechelt. It reaches Highway 101, and BC Transit Route 1 lists a stop as Hwy 101 and Havies Rd, sitting between the Nestman Road and Heather Road stops. Documented civic addresses include 5189, 5201, 5228 and 5238 Havies Road, carrying the postal code V7Z 0B9, while the new development at the Laurel Avenue corner still uses the old rural code V0N 3A2. Unlike most of this hillside, the ground along here is level.
The District would not accept it as the main access
When the 99-lot subdivision off Laurel Avenue went through its hearing, Havies Road was raised as too narrow to take the traffic. Nestman Road was designated the main access instead, and sidewalks along Havies Road were imposed as a condition of the development permit, together with a multi-use pathway on Laurel Avenue and a five per cent park dedication. A road a municipality has formally decided cannot serve as the principal entrance to 99 houses has no spare width in it. One contractor's truck parked on the shoulder obstructs it, and the construction period has run from August 2022 onward. That matters at the moment a service vehicle or a fire truck has to reach an absent owner's property.
Connecting to the sewer can cost $25,000
Sechelt council adopted a new sewer local service area covering the Havies and Nestman Roads area. Design, construction and commissioning are paid for by the property owner behind the subdivision, the Homei Group. Inside the new subdivision a per-lot service connection runs $3,000 to $5,000. For the roughly 80 existing residences along Highway 101 between Nestman Road and Selma Park Road, connecting costs between $5,000 and $25,000 each. The estimated annual sewer tax is about $920 a lot, and the development adds about one per cent to flows at the Sechelt Water Resource Centre. A previous council gave the bylaw three readings in July 2022 and the incoming council reviewed it on 11 January; staff told them the bylaw had to be adopted for the area to be inside the sewer service area at all. So this hillside was entirely on septic until the mid-2020s, connection is optional rather than compulsory for an existing house, and on any given property the honest answer to whether it is on sewer or septic is that somebody has to look.
Level lots of about a third of an acre
5228 Havies Road was built in 1974 and runs to about 2,000 square feet on a lot of 12,790 square feet, roughly 140 by 104 feet. It has a natural gas fireplace, a covered patio, a workshop, a family room, a lower entrance suited to a separate suite, a pond, RV parking and storage sheds. Its 2019 property tax was $3,502. The listing records municipal water supply and a septic system, a paved and private setting, and a five minute walk to Davis Bay beach, the hiking trails and the seawall. Sheds, a workshop, a pond and an RV on a third of an acre make a long list of things standing outside a locked house, and outbuildings on a big lot are what construction and property thefts in this part of Sechelt have consistently gone after.
New houses next to fifty-year-old ones
The subdivision bounded by Nestman and Havies Roads is 99 single-family homes held as a strata, on lots of 500 to 900 square metres, built by Homei Properties. It broke ground in August 2022 and is still going up. That puts newly finished houses, many of them not yet occupied, directly alongside detached houses from the 1970s on much larger lots, some of them still on septic and some now connected to a sewer main that did not exist a few years ago. Those two groups of buildings fail in entirely different ways over a wet winter, and neither group has many neighbours in a position to notice.
What a check on Havies Road covers
The septic tank lid and field, or the new sewer connection and its inspection chamber, whichever the property actually has
Wet or soft ground over the field, and standing water on a level lot after heavy rain
The workshop, the sheds and the covered patio, with every lock and hasp tried
RVs, trailers, boats, mowers and power tools parked on the lot
The pond and its edges, overflow and any pump serving it
The heating running and holding, or the main closed and the pipework emptied
The natural gas fireplace, the furnace and the hot water tank, with a smell test at each
Construction damage to the verge, the driveway and the fence line from traffic on a narrow road
Letters, parcels and anything propped at the door
Photographs of all of the above, dated and filed before that day ends
Most household insurance calls for an empty house to be attended on a set cycle through the heating season by somebody competent, in many wordings inside four days, or the water turned off and the system drained instead. Wordings vary, and a house on septic may attract conditions that a connected one does not. Read your own policy before deciding how often somebody needs to attend.
What it costs
A scheduled check at Havies Road is
$55 a visit, plus
$10 travel. The travel charge is the same
everywhere between Gibsons and Egmont. There is no minimum term and no joining fee.
See the full price list.
Where these facts come from
Every figure, date and quotation on this page was taken from one of these. They are
listed so you can read them yourself.
