Build Permit

Tue, Jan 29, 2019

We’ve resolved the truss issue. The guys came up with some clever way to attach the truss to the wall of the master bedrooms, so the truss will now float over the 4x10 above the garage door opening and that beam won’t carry any roof load. Chris was able to email in a redline sheet with this update and the county confirmed that met their needs.

That all happened yesterday.

I received an email today stating to call the front desk. The examiner had completed everything and we were in good order there. Woot woot!

The front desk said we were set, and we just had to come down to sign some paperwork and pick up the permit. I asked if it could be mailed, and she said it could, but we would have to pay a fee first. Naively, I thought this fee was some kind of shipping fee. Nope. We owe a little over $4,000.

The $800 you pay when applying for the permit is just to cover the examiner’s time. Kinda hard to believe $800 covers that given how much time was spent on our plans. Anyway, this new balance is made up various taxes and fees from the county and state. It’s based on square footage of the home and projected construction costs.

I spent a couple minutes trying to understand how they arrived at the various amounts, but I just don’t see the point. I ain’t going to be able to argue with the county. A check is in the mail and they’ll have it by the end of the week.

I expect we will get our official permit by mail next week!

This is a major accomplishment. When we first started this process, we thought obtaining the build permit would be a trivial task, and we hardly devoted any consideration to it in the schedule. Now that we’ve gone through it, I think it may be the hardest part of the whole build. We haven’t really started building so maybe I will have a good laugh at this thought in the future.

Even though this process has been much more difficult than we anticipated, it’s given us a lot of confidence in our plans. They’ve held up to close scrutiny by the county and we’ve addressed issues with the slope head on. I never really mentioned it, but I was losing sleep over thoughts of the house sliding down the hill. All the major uncertainties in the plans have been addressed and we’re more prepared to begin the construction.

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