Building Department, Round 6.825

So... after getting that mildly threatening letter from the county, and being told that we have to get a surety bond to renew our residence permit...

After telling them that the original inspector told us we didn't need one...

After contacting multiple online surety bond companies and being told that we can't get a surety bond for simply moving/disconnecting a trailer...

After contacting multiple local surety bond agents and being told the same thing...

After calling the building department and having them refer us to the local agent that supposedly does these surety bonds...

After driving to the recommended agent's office...

The agent looks the building department's form and says he can't write a bond for simply moving/disconnecting a trailer.

He calls the building department and tells them this.

Now the building department says we don't need one.

This is my face right now

On the plus side, now I can use that money for building materials instead of a stupid bond. We also went ahead and renewed the building permit and I can start doing some preliminary work on the site. It's still too cold to start on the masonry, but I can get things ready. I want to hit the ground running this spring.

Dealing with the Building Department, Round 6.5

I actually don't know what round this is. Really, I don't think there are rounds. It's more like a continuous melee.

But whatever.

Yesterday I got a letter from the Building Department telling me my building permit expired. Well, duh. The next step is masonry. I can't exactly do masonry in below freezing weather, now can I? So, why would I renew the permit until I can actually work?

They also said my temporary residence permit expired. What? I was under the impression that it didn't expire.

So I go down there.

Getting the building permit renewed: $125. I knew that. No paper work involved, so there's a bonus.

The residence permit didn't expire. She said my surety bond expired.

Oh, boy.

When we first got started on this project, I read about the surety bonds. These bonds are a guarantee that once building was complete we would remove the temporary residence from the site. Some of the county's sources said we would have to pay a bond for the travel trailer, others said we didn't. So I asked John, the first inspector I worked with. He said we didn't have to pay it. There was no reason to pay it because a travel trailer doesn't have to be removed; we just stop living in it.

But, nooooooooo. Now it's a different story. Now they want a bond. A $5000 bond.

They have to have this bond. How else will can they be sure that after we build our house we won't live in a trailer next to it?

Who does this?

No one. No. One.

No one builds a house so they can live in a trailer in the back yard.

It's already against zoning regulations to do so. We could be fined for doing so. But it is such a threat that they have to have a bond to make sure that they can fine us and get paid.

Really?

Really.

Yeah, really.

So, I'm getting bond quotes now. Later I will eat country ribs and beans. And whiskey.

UPDATE: One of the bond underwriter people persons called us back. He can't give as a quote because he can't write a bond to guarantee something like this. So, there this saying about asses and holes in the ground...

Pouring the Foundation aka More Things Are Happening!

Quick but pivotal update tonight: we have achieved concrete. I may have jinxed myself with the last post on being almost done, as three days later we had a catastrophic collapse around 85% of the trench.

Now, I'm not going to say that I wish I had stuck to my guns and refused to compromise on my original plans. However, When 6-8 inches of mud has fallen into the bottom of a trench, it is significantly easier to clear it out when the rebar is only three inches high than when it is 24 inches high.

So I spent many uncomfortable weeks straddling an awkward metal cage, which is held together with sharp pointy wire. I lost about three gallons of blood in the process and ripped the crotch out of five pairs of jeans.

Being that we are rapidly approaching winter, I was afraid we would run out of appropriate weather for pouring concrete. I think we managed to hit the last warm snap of the season. Thanks, global warming! Thanks, El Nino!

This morning I was all set to get my daughter to school and come home to pour some concrete. I started this journey by stepping off the porch, rolling my ankle, and falling right on my face. I thought, oh no, a wonky ankle is going to totally fuck up my day.

Oh, but the Fuck-up Fairy wasn't done with me yet.
I drop off my kid, start heading back, my tire blew out, and I skidded into a ditch.

Mind you, this is the tire that I just replaced in May. This is also the one day I decided not to put on jeans and went out in my PJ bottoms. No one is going to see me, right?

Wrong. Everyone dropping their kid off to school that day got to see me in my jammies yelling at my tire in a ditch. C'est la vie.

So, Mom to the rescue (thanks, Mom!) I get dropped off just in time to do 2 hours worth of prep in 45 minutes. So much panic.

All the drama aside, it's done. We worked 13 yards of concrete into a 24 inch high,134 foot long footing before breakfast. Before coffee even.

Level up.

Here's a few photos of before and after. There was too much to do to take any "during" photos.

I am disappointed that Jack did not supervise us at all through the pour. The little snot slept through the whole thing. Oh well. Here's a photo of him snuggling his grumpy cat plushie anyway.

Now I can relax a bit. The next step is to build four courses of architectural blocks on top of this footing. I'm not going to have enough warm weather to get anything significant done on that front, so it's time to head to the garage for some wood working.

Update on the Foundation Redesign and Other Things

After what's felt like a horribly long time of getting nowhere, things are finally coming together. We've had a break in the rain. The trench was cleaned out, the sides have been mostly repaired, and we're just about ready to have another inspection.

After talking with the inspector, he had a suggestion that would speed things up and make it a bit easier on us. Instead of pouring our footings 10 inches thick, we're pouring it up to 24 inches and laying a cinder block stem wall on that. It's costing us a little more and requires us to do a bit more rebar than the original plans. I've been a bit stressed out about that because I've never done rebar like this nor did I have a lot of time to go over the code. I really hope I got it right, because there's not much time left before cold weather sets in. No pressure, right?

This required three pieces of rebar running horizontally and vertical rebar placed every four feet. The verticals had to be placed just so since they will be running through the cavities of the cinder blocks. To make sure I was on the mark I ran the lines on the batter boards and checked my placement with a template of the cinder blocks.

Jack decided that cats are more interesting than rebar. I agree.

So here's more Jack:

Beyond the rebar, we've just been enjoying a quiet summer on the prairie. Our garden has done pretty well for the first year. We have a tiny black cat that has been hanging around. We're calling her Beyonce. She loves to sing, and since all our cats are boys she is the single lady.

No photos of her yet. She's still very skittish.

We have some prairie sunflowers that have grown on the property. Normally, I dislike sunflowers. A lot. Sunflowers are what interior decorators use when they want a place to be Kansas-y. I always associate them with truck stops, gas station bathrooms, kitschy gift shops, and the girls locker room all throughout the 90s. OK, that last one was just Elizabeth Arden's Sunflowers, but it still sucks.

These sunflowers, however, are MY sunflowers, so they're totally different. I love them. The bees really seem to like them too so they are definitely staying.

Edgar is still doing well.

I put up our mailbox and started decorating it. I'm painting mushrooms from my favorite 1970s enamelware set, and yes, the stems look like dicks. Ha ha, dicks.

diiiiiiiiiiicks

The farmer that owns the surrounding land came through and hayed. Now we have large hay bales.

Yeah, they're really not that interesting.

Not us though. We don't really want the grasses cut and hauled away. We're letting it grow wild for now and will be mulching it so we can help restore the top soil.

Damn long-grassed hippies.

I've done some work down in the tree line. There's flat spot that I want to turn into a meditation garden. It sits under a huge oak tree and next to our little stream. Right now it's full of flowers...

Awwwww.

... and a giant honking orb spider.

EEEEEEEEEEEE

That's pretty much it for now. I've had some new stuff happen as far as the trenches go since I started this post, but that will wait for now. Hopefully I'll be sharing some concrete pouring in the next week or so.

Holy Crap, Things Are Happening

Yes! Things are happening. We've had our little house at the build site for a couple months now and thing have been steadily moving forward. One of the latest additions is a mobile wifi hotspot so that should make keeping the internet up to date much easier.

So, let's catch up.

We have actually been ready to start digging the foundation since mid-April, but the weather has been quite uncooperative. It rained.

                                   

                                                OH MY GOD DID IT RAIN

This month we've received about ten inches of rain, which is more than three times the normal monthly average. On the plus side, we've learned where all the low spots on the property are. On the down side, some of our neighbors have had their fields flooded.

The excavation we dug for our root cellar has become a pond.

                          

Complete with tadpoles.

Tiny sperm-frogs!

With all this rain we've only had four full days of sun. Why so little sun? Oh, because we expanded our solar electric system and mounted the panels on a nifty solar optimizing swivel mount. Of course. Mother Nature gives zero fucks about my ability to produce electricity. I know how it is.

Now with 90% more swivel

Jack does not approve of solar energy. Jack wants to watch the whole world burn.

We have our cats out here with us now. I was afraid that they wouldn't like the change, but that has not been the case. Jack has really enjoyed the new stomping grounds. He has effectively murdered all the rodents that were holed up in our shed. Given the poop and damage they were inflicting on our stuff, I'm not terribly upset by that.

Sweet, sweet murder

I've kept busy getting the gardens started. I started a bunch of plants from seed earlier this year. This year I was pressed for time so I just cut three garden plots. Eventually, I hope to have several raised beds.

Tomatoes, peppers, and okra

It's been tricky keeping all the plants happy with all this rain. The tomatoes and pepper are doing well, as are the rhubarb, melons, strawberries, and brussel sprouts. The okra doesn't seem to like the cooler weather, the onions the goji berry bush have gotten too much water, and I lost the sweet potatoes to root rot. Plus with the ground as wet as it is, weeding has been a pain in the butt.

Gutter berries

If the weather people are not lying to me (YOU BETTER NOT BE LYING *fistshake*) the weather should be clearing up soon and we can start the foundation. We tryed mowing the grass down and it was so wet that it destroyed the drive belt. So, I took the grass whip to the build site.                          

Whip it good

I braved the western swamp to measure out our setback and get the first stake put in place. Once the ground dries up a little more we can put up the batter boards.

Until then, we'll just relax a bit and enjoy the scenery.