Taunton Road Splits Pickering Into Two Different Basement Jobs

Second units and basement work in Pickering

South of the 401 you are in 1960s, 70s and 80s subdivision stock — Bay Ridges, West Shore, Amberlea, Liverpool, the older parts of Rougemount and Dunbarton. Those builders poured shallow basements. Head height is the entire conversation, and it gets settled with a tape measure before anybody talks about layouts. North of Taunton, in Seaton and the newer Duffin Heights pockets, the houses are recent, the basements were poured tall from day one, and a second unit is mostly framing, mechanical separation and paperwork.

Our flagship work is the separate side entrance and walkout: the excavation, the retaining walls, the door and frost protection, and the drainage that keeps the stairwell dry. That is typically a three-day build once we are on site. It is also the piece most homeowners get backwards — they finish the interior first, then discover the entrance is what governs whether the unit can ever be registered.

HMH Construction Inc. runs out of a Mississauga head office, we have been building in the GTA for over 25 years, we are WSIB covered and fully insured, and we handle the Pickering building permit and the Additional Dwelling Unit registration in-house. You are not the one chasing One The Esplanade.

Pickering requirements

### What Pickering currently allows

The City permits up to two additional dwelling units on most residential properties — specifically those containing a detached dwelling, semi-detached dwelling, block townhouse or street townhouse. You can put both units inside the main house, or one inside and one in a separate building in the back or side yard. Each unit has to be genuinely self-contained: sleeping space, its own bathroom, cooking facilities including a stove or oven, and either a separate entrance or doors that partition the suite off from the rest of the house. Everything is built to the Ontario Building Code.

### Pickering has two approvals, not one

This is the part that catches people. A building permit is one process. Additional Dwelling Unit Registration is a second, mandatory process under City of Pickering Municipal By-law 8040/23, with its own online application and its own one-time fee.

The registration cannot close until construction is finished and the unit has been inspected by both Pickering Fire Services and Building Services. Only then does the registration certificate get issued to the owner by email. So a basement that is "done" but not registered is not a legal second unit in Pickering — it is an unregistered one, and that distinction matters to your insurer and to any future buyer.

We sequence the build around that final joint inspection rather than treating it as an afterthought.

### The pre-approved ADU catalogue — genuinely unusual

Pickering partnered with the Town of Whitby, using federal Housing Accelerator Fund money, to pre-approve a set of five detached ADU designs. They have been pre-reviewed against the Ontario Building Code, which speeds up approval and construction considerably. You can see them at pickering.ca/ApprovedADU.

Two things worth knowing before you get excited: a building permit is still required, and zoning compliance is still reviewed against your specific lot — setbacks, coverage, servicing. The catalogue removes the design-review delay, not the site-specific one. Very few municipalities in this region offer anything like it, and if a detached garden suite is what you actually want, it is worth starting there rather than with a custom drawing set.

### Ceiling height in south Pickering stock

For an existing house, the Building Code's compliance-alternative route allows a basement second unit at 1.95 m (roughly 6'5") over the required floor area, with 1.85 m permitted under beams and ductwork. That sounds generous until you measure a 1968 Bay Ridges bungalow.

A lot of south Pickering basements land within a few inches of that line — sometimes over, sometimes just under, and often over in the open areas but under at the main beam and the return trunk. When it clears, the job is straightforward. When it does not, you are into bench footing (cheaper, eats perimeter floor area) or full underpinning (expensive, gives you real height and a proper walkout landing). We measure at multiple points — under the beam, under the ducts, at the stair landing — and tell you which one you are looking at before you spend money on drawings.

Rougemount, West Shore and the older Rosebank streets are a mixed bag because those areas were developed in stages from the early 1900s through the 1940s and again through the 1960s and 70s. Two houses on the same street can be forty years and eight inches apart.

### Ravine and valley lots — TRCA before you dig

Pickering's urban area is boxed in by watercourses. The Rouge sits on the west boundary, Petticoat Creek runs through the middle, Duffins Creek forms the eastern edge, and Frenchman's Bay opens to the lake in the south. All of it falls under the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.

That matters for walkouts specifically, because a walkout means excavating and permanently altering grade. If your lot backs onto or sits near regulated valley land — common in Rougemount, Highbush, Rosebank and along the Duffins corridor in Village East — TRCA clearance comes before the shovel, not after. We check the mapping at the quoting stage so it does not turn into a six-week surprise.

### Low-lying lots near the bay

On the flatter lakeshore lots down toward Frenchman's Bay, we detail walkout stairwells more heavily than we would elsewhere in the GTA — deeper drain, larger capacity, and a discharge route that has somewhere to actually go. A stairwell drain that backs up once will find its way into the finished suite. This is a build-quality call on our end rather than a municipal rule, but it is the right one on those lots.

### Whitevale and the heritage hamlets

The hamlet of Whitevale is a designated Heritage Conservation District under Part V of the Ontario Heritage Act (By-law 4074-92), covering roughly 35 properties. Exterior work there — and a separate entrance is exterior work — goes through heritage review on top of everything else. If you are inside the district, tell us early. It changes the timeline, not the feasibility.

### Fees

Note that City of Pickering building permit fees increased as of July 1, 2026. We build current fees into the quote rather than working off an old schedule.

### Who to call

City of Pickering Building Services: 905.420.4631. City Development: 905.420.4617.

Or call HMH at 905-749-4608 and we will walk your basement, measure the head height properly, tell you whether the lot is TRCA-regulated, and give you a real number for the entrance and the suite.