The city has approved our plans and handed over building permits which means it’s now safe to show the house to you!

In the posts below this one, you can read about a few of the hoops we had to jump through to get this project approved.  Wind Bracing, Environmental Impact, and Heat Loss/Heat Gain Studies are just a few examples, but there was one city issue that could’ve changed the whole look of the house. You see, they didn’t “like” the pitch of our roof – for clarification, the powers-that-be approved the completely flat roofs, they just wanted the top roof changed to a steeper pitch.

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The strike worked* – we have permits!

*This is, obviously, a false statement. The city does things in its own time. We just happened to time our ‘work stoppage’ well.

That’s it – no more tending to the property until the city releases building permits.

(Hard working in-laws photoshopped with protest signs.)

For the past few weeks we’ve been waiting for the house design to pass Energy Compliance. This step is different from the other environmental impact studies we’ve already been through. A Certified Green Building Engineer handles this part of the project. If you’re looking for a new occupation, I highly recommend going back to school to become a Professional Engineer with certification in Energy Management and Green Building. These people are in high demand.

I find all this energy compliance stuff sorta funny considering the house we currently live in has a literal hole in its wall. Built in 1929, this house has a mail slot that goes from the front porch right through the wall and drops the mail straight to the living room floor – the door-flap meant to hold the mail in place gave up its job about forty years ago. I do my best to stanch the flow of cold air-conditioned air being sucked out of the house, but there’s only so much a wadded-up t-shirt can do. On particularly hot summer days, solicitors have been known to hang around the front door far longer than needed to read the “No Soliciting” sign. The blast of cold air flowing from that mail slot might have something to do with their loitering ways.

To add insult to injury, we live on particularly flexible soil so the house and its pier and beam foundation have essentially ridden a roller coaster over the last eighty-four years, which means this house is full of cracks that rival the Grand Canyon. There are neither enough wadded up t-shirts nor enough cans of spray foam insulation to shore up this house.

I love the home we’re in now. I think the tiny footprints that lead to our front porch – and the note that named the owner of those little feet – are fantastic. I love that my child grew up in this house. I adore my neighbors. I’m grateful we now have central heat and air. I’m thankful we replaced the original electrical wiring (wrapped in linen!) with modern wiring encased in insulation and conduit (hooray for fire retardation!). But energy efficient this house is not. I’d like to see what Mr. Certified Energy Management Engineer would say about this place.

This week was moderately stressful. We were told the foundation of the yet-to-be-built-house must be 586 feet above sea level. The land on which we plan to build is 540 feet above sea level. That’s a difference of almost fifty-freakin’ feet! That’s sixteen feet higher than the house on the hill across the street from us. Here’s an accurate artistic representation of what I imagine a house at 586 feet above sea level might look like:

After wearing my fingernails down to proper nubs, we learned it was just a typo – the requirement is only 536 feet above sea level.

So that’s good news.

On the not-so-good-news front, we still don’t have building permits from the city. Now they want a topographical survey of the land. This will take weeks to accomplish. On the upside, we’ll be able to use this survey to better plan future landscaping and outdoor spaces (but that only helps if we ever get to build this freakin’ house).

We paid fees last week. Who knew you had to buy a water meter? Sure, they’re attached to almost every house in the U.S. – but did you ever think about who shelled out the cash to put ‘em there? Now we know.

Here’s a partial list of fees to pay before building permits are granted:

Water Impact Fee – $840

Sewer Impact Fee – $665

Water Meter – $176

Roadway Impact Fee – $670

Parks Linear Development – $536

Parks Neighborhood Development – $643

At a cost of $1179, it’s guaranteed that I will wear a linear path between the house and the closest neighborhood park.

The title to this post is a little misleading (and possibly a teeny bit overdramatic). My sanity hasn’t really started eroding – at least not yet. Check back in six months and I might tell you another story. But I’m not one to miss a chance at clever (and possibly a teeny bit overdramatic) wordplay.

Here’s where things stand: We must provide more environmental impact studies before the city will issue building permits. Specifically, they’ve requested erosion control drawings from the architect. He says this is a typical request for commercial projects that are larger than one acre. We are not a commercial property on a large expanse of land, but apparently we are special. Hooray.

Now I’m looking more closely at our neighboring lots. I’m hopeful the house across the street had to go through this erosion control exercise too.