Custom Home Design Across the Maritimes:
Engineered, Permit-Ready, and Built by the Same Team

Generally no. In New Brunswick, residential buildings of three storeys or less and under 600 m² don't require a licensed architect, and NS and PEI have similar exemptions for houses. What your plans must do is meet the National Building Code of Canada 2020. Pythagore's design is handled by a team with a background in engineering. For a typical permit, that usually means engineered roof and floor truss designs, and, depending on your foundation, structural design for an engineered slab or the required rebar detailing for frost walls and footings. Those engineered components are prepared by qualified engineers, and as your project manager we make sure they are done and built into your plans, which is exactly the kind of detail our background helps us get right.

The complete plan set your building department needs to issue a permit: scaled site plan, foundation and structural plans, architectural drawings, plus energy-code compliance documentation. Whether your permit goes through the City of Moncton, the Southeast Regional Service Commission, Halifax Regional Municipality, or a PEI municipality, we prepare the full set and handle the submission.

Custom house plans in Canada typically run from a few thousand dollars for straightforward designs to $10,000+ for complex homes. At Pythagore you receive a fixed design fee in writing after your free consultation, the exact cost, before any work begins. And when you build with Pythagore, that fee pays off twice: your design and pre-construction agreement fee (quotation, work schedule, building-lot assessment, and design) is fully credited toward your build.

It moves in stages. The design itself typically takes two to four weeks. Once the design is set, we have the roof and floor trusses engineered, which is required for the building permit and usually takes another two to four weeks. We then apply for the permit, which is generally about one to three weeks for a typical custom home, depending on the municipality and the complexity of the build. Homes that need additional structural engineering can add a few weeks at each stage. Because design, engineering, and budgeting happen under one roof, there is no extra delay handing plans to a separate builder afterward.

Our best work, and your best outcome, comes from design-build, where budget and buildability are baked into every drawing. That said, every project starts with a conversation. Tell us what you're planning and we'll be straight with you about the right path, even if it isn't us.

All three Maritime provinces. In New Brunswick: Greater Moncton, Shediac and the southeast, plus Fredericton, Saint John and beyond. In Nova Scotia: Halifax, the North Shore and the Valley. In PEI: Charlottetown, Summerside and across the Island. We're based near Shediac, NB, and take a limited number of projects per year, so every build gets genuine attention.