Nicon Developments Limited - The Green Carpet

Lawns are an integral part of our landscape, from providing a lush background for your plants to awarding a soft cushiony surface for lounging and play.

Lawns, doing their job!

Whether you have a new lawn, or are caring for a long established one, mowing it is more than cosmetic. Leaving your lawn looking crisp and clean, mowing promotes new growth and density – a thriving “green carpet”.

The key to producing a fuller lawn is to make sure you don’t cut off too much of the leaf blade. Professionals recommend that you remove no more than one third of the grass height for optimum healthy turf.

Grass grows at different rates through out the season. Therefore, let the height of the grass be your guide to a mowing schedule. This rule of thumb is especially helpful during the fast growing periods of spring and fall here in British Columbia.

Remembering to regularly sharpen your mower blades will prevent shredding the grass and leaving it with a ragged appearance. With sharp blades, you will produce clean cuts for a good looking lawn; best cut when the grass is dry.

Sun, water and fertilizer affect how fast your grass grows. During normal conditions, you can mow the lawn a bit shorter and your lawn will re-grow with little stress. But during the peak warm season, keep the grass on the longer side to shade the soil.  This will allow the lawn to retain moisture, which reduces watering.

Communities dealing with watering restrictions have become increasingly common. Even if watering is banned, and your grass turns brown, it is just dormant and ceasing to grow. Luckily, grass is very resilient.

Should water restrictions be imposed, when you are allowed to water, water thoroughly to maintain deep root growth.  Only 1 to 2 inches of water each week is needed by your lawn to stay healthy.

For more tips on how to mow like a pro, fertilize and winterize your lawn, visit : http://www.ehow.com%3elawn/ or lawncare.net

Nicon Developments Limited - What's in a Name?

When the name is Nicon Developments Limited, it means experience, integrity and a track record for customer satisfaction that spans more than thirty five years.

And we are honored to be recognized with awards for excellence in our work and contributions to community that attests to that.

Since 1976, Nicon has developed and built more than just homes, commercial projects and lifestyle communities. We have developed a reputation as a builder who understands and listens to the needs of real people.

According to our customers, they’ve had excellent experience with our dedicated construction team. How do we know? Because we ask them. Our aim is to create the best building experience possible, before and after completion.

At Nicon, we are proud of the quality of products and attention to detail that goes into every new home we build and every project we complete. Our customers appreciate the meaningful, lasting items that we include in our homes like top quality products, efficient floor plans and well-designed storage.

From the foundation to framing to interior finishes, we build value for our customers from the ground up. Value that translates into pride of ownership and peace of mind that we will be there for you from start to finish.

And we take satisfaction in our Built Green program, using sustainable building practices; creating smart, healthy and energy efficient new homes for you and your family.

Excitement. Pride. Satisfaction. There’s nothing quite like the feeling you’ll have when you hold the keys in your hand, and soak up the feeling of ownership.

And you can rest assured that we’ll take great care to make sure that feeling lasts for years to come.

So what’s in a name? Everything if the name is Nicon Developments Limited.

A Building Partner you can trust.

Landscaping Hedges for Deer Control

Here on Vancouver Island, deer within new home developments like Trumpeter Pointe on Quamichan Lake creates a challenge to homeowners. You may come home to find deer in your yard as they have adapted to browse areas in urban and residential environments. New fertilized lawns, flowers and shrubs provide them a great source of nutrition.

Your initial selection of landscape plants and those for hedging that are more resistant to deer may help.

A popular hedging material is Arborvitae (Thuja plicata). The “Green Giant” variety can reach 20 to 30 feet, and can withstand yearly trimming to the desired height. Alternatively, choosing the dwarf variety will keep it in scale for your yard.

Mexican Mock Orange (Choisya ternata), a hardy evergreen shrub with fragrant clusters of white blossoms, is great for any sized garden. It can reach 8 feet, and requires little attention apart from a yearly trim. It is known to be deer tolerant with leaves having a pungent orange aroma.

Italian Buckthorn (Rhamus alaternus) is another good choice for hedging. Fast-growing, evergreen and tolerant of pruning, Buckthorn’s narrow form is useful on property lines with today’s lot sizes and setbacks.

Another favorite, although slow growing, is Boxwood (Buxus sempervirens). Readily available in most nurseries, it is an excellent choice for a formal garden. Depending on the variety, it can grow 3 to 20 feet tall, and withstands pruning to retain its shape.

Protect your landscape investment by planning ahead to minimize deer damage. Include a bit of homework and a visit to your local nursery to select deer resistant plants as part of your control measures. When purchasing a home from Nicon Developments, we will provide our new home owners details on all the plants on their new property.

There are several internet sites that offer lists of flowers, ornamental plants, trees and shrubs that are good for your area.

For more information you can check out the following websites:

http://www.gardenswest.com/qry/page.taf

http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/cos/info/wildlife_human_interaction/docs/garden.html

http://gardening.about.com/od/gardenproblems/a/DeerResistant.htm

Nicon Developments Ltd. : Award winning builder is a true Vancouver Island success story

“Published in the Vancouver Island Business Examiner April 24/2011”
DUNCAN - Nicon Developments

Ltd. is a true Vancouver Island success story. Nicon Developments with more than a dozen Gold and Silver CARE Awards under its belt from the Canadian Home Builders Association is a leading developer and builder of quality residences.

The driving force behind Nicon Developments is Nick Woywitka. Woywitka literally grew up in the industry. His parents owned a lumber yard in Alberta and lived on site. By age 10 Woywitka was driving the forklift and serving customers in the yard. His father sold the business in 1967 and moved the family to Duncan. Woywitka moved back to Alberta in the spring of 1972.

Needing a job, he wrote his real estate exam and qualified the same day. But real estate wasn’t the career for him. Three months later he took a job as a clean-up contractor for a residential facility, repairing deficiencies after construction. Three weeks after being on the job, he was promoted to the position of superintendent. “I didn’t even know how to spell it at the time,” Woywitka says. “So I was handed the keys to the van and a couple of boxes of files.” The company he worked for was building about 400 houses a year under the supervision of four project managers. Each manager, Woywitka included, was responsible for 25 homes each quarter.

If each home came in on time and on budget, the project manager received a bonus. Woywitka recalls that he spent his first quarter learning the ropes and his next three quarters collecting the maximum bonus. At age 23 he was outperforming everyone else. “I was really good at scheduling and delegating,” he says, recalling that he spent every Saturday inspecting every house under construction that he was responsible for and drawing up the next week’s schedule for each.

One of the secrets to his “on-time and on-budget” success was his relationship with the sub-trades that he had to share with the other project managers. He offered them a share of his bonuses – the enticement worked like a dream. “I wasn’t in it for the money,” he says. “I was out to prove something to myself.”

In September 1974, with another cold Alberta winter setting in, Woywitka moved back to Duncan. Looking around for something to do, he noticed a new subdivision starting on Sherman Road. Unfortunately all he had was a 1972 Chevy Monte Carlo, a trunk full of tools and $1,700.

He suggested to the realtor on the subdivision that he sell him a lot for $1 with the guarantee that once he built and sold the house, he would pay the full price of the lot and give the real estate company the listing. The company agreed. He offered the same deal to the lumber yards and other suppliers – they’d get paid when the house was finished and sold. “And that’s how I built my first spec home,” Woywitka recalls.

With that house under his belt, Woywitka took on a wide variety of odd construction jobs. He did dry-walling, cabinetry, painting, concrete work – everything except electrical. He learned to build fireplaces by paying a bricklayer to sit in a lawn chair and drink beer while he instructed him and told him what to do. Two projects later, and Woywitka was an accomplished bricklayer.

In 1976, Woywitka founded Nicon Developments Ltd. Within a year he was hiring staff and beginning to delegate while he managed his projects.

A couple of years later he got into the insurance restoration business – literally by accident when the ceiling in his home fell down due to frozen pipes. The insurance adjuster who came to look after the claim said he couldn’t get hold of a restoration company immediately and suggested Woywitka take on the restoration work himself. In very short order, the insurance company was sending him more restoration work.

Woywitka hired a project manager for the new division of his company and very quickly, he was handling about 350 files a year until he closed that division in 2002. In the early 1980s, Woywitka brought an expert commercial project manager to Duncan from Alberta and Nicon Developments became known for a wide variety of commercial projects including:

• Fuller Lake Arena 
• International Plastics, Duncan
• Fulford Harbour School, Saltspring
• United Buy & Sell, Duncan
• Public Works Canada, Calgary
• Drillwell Enterprises, Duncan
• Chemainus Safety Building
• Ministry of Forests, Chetwynd
• Cowichan Community Centre
• Chemainus Dinner Theatre
• Cowichan Hatchery, Duncan
• Lighthouse Pub & Bistro, Port Renfrew

Woywitka says, “We’ve built everything from a Theatre and community centers to hockey arenas and even a dam. We’ve built schools, we did a fish hatchery for the federal government on Boys Road and we’ve done lots of multi-family projects on the island and in Alberta.”

In 1997 Woywitka opened a second office in Airdrie Alberta just north of Calgary to build single family and multifamily homes. For the next seven years he commuted back and forth, building 160 units with a sales manager on site at the development.

In 2004, after closing the office in Airdrie, he began to focus strongly on residential development in the mid-Vancouver Island area, first with the Heritage Park Development in Ladysmith and then with Pondside in Duncan. The company’s multi-family new home projects include:

• Heatherton, Duncan

• M’Akola Housing, Duncan

• Nanaimo Lions Housing
• CMHC affordable housing, Duncan
• Rockwood Terrace, Duncan
• Oakgrove, Duncan
• Waterton Place, Nanaimo
• Silver Springs Terrace, Airdrie

Nicon Developments’ current project is Trumpeter Pointe on the shores of Quamichan Lake in Duncan. Of 66 lots, 17 are lakefront and 30 are already sold. Nicon Developments develops the lots and builds spec houses on its projects. Every home at Trumpeter Pointe is Built Green Gold or Platinum certified. Woywitka says, “We make sure that we build to reduce maintenance and improve air quality and lower heating and cooling costs. The houses that we’re building at Trumpeter Pointe are quality. We’ve even gone so far as to put in tankless hot water heating.”

Building for environmental sustainability is important for Nicon Developments, Woywitka says, noting that Trumpeter Pointe was a sensitive project that took years to approve.

He notes that Trumpeter Pointe sets a new standard for development on Vancouver Island lakes. The greatest of care and attention went into planning and designing every detail of Trumpeter Pointe to preserve and protect the habitat and ecosystem, as well as to minimize the impact of storm water runoff and riparian zone disturbance. Extensive consultation with the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Provincial Ministry of Environment, freshwater specialists and a professional arborist focused on the singular goal of protecting the lake. “After all, Quamichan Lake is the focal point of Trumpeter Pointe,” Woywitka says. “And this local treasure needs to be kept safe so it can be enjoyed by generations to come.”

In addition to creating bio swales for storm water management, Nicon also built a sewer system that not only handles all the waste water for the subdivision but dozens of neighbouring homes as well, taking them off old and problematic septic systems. Not only has Nicon Developments won a host of CARE awards, it also received the prestigious Master Builder Award from the New Home Warranty Program in 1993 and Woywitka received the Job-Site Innovator Award in 1990 from CMHC in a Canada wide competition. He was recognized for his time and money saving innovation for accurate placement of foundations.

Woywitka says his future ambitions include building more residential communities like Trumpeter Pointe. “My preference now is to develop environmentally friendly communities,” he says. “We’re looking up and down the island right now for a new project. I don’t know where it’s going to be yet – but I can’t stop. We’ve got really good staff. I try to put the vision and the projects together and they do a great job.” He says he loves the challenge of the work and never grows tired of it. “You’re dealing with so many different aspects of a development, right from the politics to the concrete. But the most enjoyment I get from a project is when it’s done and I stand back and know – that’s what I did.”

Nicon Developments Ltd. is at 2922 Allenby Road in Duncan.

www.nicon.ca
mailto:info@nicon.ca