<p>We cared and had the seller get party wall agreements with both neighbors because our walls zigzagged along the property lines. I agree that there are many folks that DO care and will walk if the property isn’t properly permitted because at any point a stinker neighbor can make things bad for them.</p>
<p>I agree. People care. And if they don’t care, they should care, because non-permitted work may impact their ability to make other changes later. </p>
<p>My wife and I care. Walked away from one purchase when non permitted work was found. </p>
<p>Valid points. About 50 years ago a prior owner enclosed the front porch on this property by placing cheap aluminum windows onto a railing, without the proper post supports. It was not done in a ‘workmanlike’ manner, very shoddy work. Not to mention that the porch area was about 4" below adjoining wood living floor with linoleum floor tiles. It was really weird.</p>
<p>While trying to get these permits there were a lot of questions from the City about this enclosed covered front porch. Luckily, the County ‘building records’ had this porch labeled as ‘enclosed covered porch’ and no one could really tell if that meant fully enclosed with windows, or just a railing with a roof. So, just to be safe I included ‘converting’ this square footage into ‘liveable’ square footage and bringing it up to code.</p>
<p>If a future owner tried to get permits to do something with this house, they would have encountered quite a mess with this unpermitted enclosed covered porch - depending on what they were trying to do and whether the future building inspector got nosy and looked around the entire house.</p>
<p>Exactly!!</p>
<p>VICTORY at last!!!</p>
<p>As of 2pm PST today i have an approved permit. It was touch and go during the structural review but I was actually able to answer some hard questions. He said I did an excellent job pulling everything together as a homeowner. </p>
<p>Then several more lines to stand in and another $1,500 payment for inspection fees that I wasn’t prepared for.</p>
<p>BUT, officially cannot start construction because the City insisted on a preconstruction inspection to make surea plane isnt ggoing to hit the house or something 
I’ve already scheduled that for Monday. We are on our way!!</p>
<p>Great news!!! Congrats!!!</p>
<p>Wow!!! Congrats!!! Fingers crossed for Monday. Enjoy the break and pour yourself some (maybe a lot of) bubbly. :)</p>
<p>Thank goodness! I hope you can relax and enjoy your Thanksgiving!!</p>
<p>cb, at some point earlier you had mentioned letting your crew go for a spell. Are they still on call and ready to go on Monday? Congrats on this good news:)</p>
<p>We are technically starting work 8am Friday. We have a lot of things we need to get fixed before City inspector walks in on Monday. For example, my roofer built a new roof structure for the Utility Room and the structural engineer barfed all over it and has specified a massive roof structure in the plans. I couldn’t argue my way out of it. We are going to fix that on Saturday and pretend we always had this nuclear bomb shelter roof It is not going to be easy. Pretty much have to tear off all the plywood sheathing and start all over</p>
<p>We have all kinds of ridiculous other requirements - so we have a lot of cleaning and storing of materials to do</p>
<p>PERMIT COST:</p>
<p>Just in case anyone wants to go through this agony. Most homeowners just hire someone and have no idea what a grueling back/forth, drive everywhere, spend a lot of money this permit ordeal is. Of course, they are paying a huge amount of hidden cost to have someone else do it.</p>
<p>CITY PERMIT, RECORDING AND INSPECTION FEES: $2,730.50
DRAFTING SERVICES (and a lot of nickel and dime stuff he charged like ‘site visits’) $2,930.00
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING SERVICES (extra for site visit) $2,800
TITLE 24 Report $220
Plan Copies $352.50
City Parking $174</p>
<p>TOTAL COST TO DATE = $8,987</p>
<p>More costs to come:</p>
<p>Special Inspection - $200
Duct Special Inspection $150</p>
<p>So, basically you need to add $10,000 to remodeling costs just for all the permits and all the ‘services’ required to get approved</p>
<p>Parents, tell all your kids to grow up to become a Structural Engineer. Not only does this guy have a good paying day job with a City but he makes about $500/hour moonlighting on plans. I honestly do not think he spent more than 5 hours on my project.</p>
<p>We spent all day cleaning up, getting organized, storing things and opening up foundation and walls to get ready for inspections. On Saturday, we have to take down the entire Utility Room roof and build it up again because we have to have larger hip rafters </p>
<p>I loaded photos of how nice and clean we look before the storm hits. Also, loaded a picture of our newly installed tankless water heater. I decided that we had to get the water heater in because there is no way to test the copper hot water lines until you can run water through them, especially need to run hot water because it causes the copper to expand. </p>
<p>Amazing progress, coralbrook! So glad to hear many of the hurdles have been jumped!</p>
<p>Fingers, legs and eyes crossed that the inspection goes without a hitch.</p>
<p>The inspection on Monday is the City’s required ‘construction pre-inspection’. This is required because the poor guy has to waste his time coming to make sure a plane will not hit the house and double-check all the ‘self certification’ forms we filled out - and the structural engineer stamp on the plans - that certifies that we are not obstructing the flight path. We have a hill behind us that slopes gently about 80 feet higher ( an 8 story building) above the back of property. Plus, neighbor behind (the one who dumped all the dirt and concrete) has a high guest house right behind our property with a roof deck on it that is about 15 ft higher than our property.</p>
<p>So, a plane would have to take off from San Diego Airport, go about 11,000 feet and barely miss the top of the Point Loma peninsula, take a 90 degree sharp nosedive straight down and miss all the two story houses surrounding us and nose dive straight into our small 1,000 sq ft property. Honestly, I think the plane would need an Air Force guided missile system in order to target our house.</p>
<p>But, I figured out the specifications that required all this nonsense. Any property within 20,000 feet of a large airport (qualifying as having a runway longer than 3,200 ft) that is higher than 100 feet above the runway ground level (in our case the runway is about sea level) must be certified by FAA. We are 12,500 feet as crow flies from the end of the runway. And, we are 155 ft above sea level, even though we are on the downward back slope of a hill between us and the runway. I saw all of the City structural engineer calculations that put us into the ‘certification’ requirements.</p>
<p>In our City you cannot call for inspections ‘out of order’. So, I have to do this inspection first, then I can immediately call for foundation inspection the next day. I am preparing, and hoping for, the fact that he might pass our foundation inspection while he is on the property to save another trip. We are going to be in a little trouble because the City wants a foundation inspection of the ‘forms’ and rebar inside the foundation walls. After the inspection you get your concrete poured into the forms. he’s not going to be happy about the fact that the concrete is already poured. So, we drew diagrams of every piece of rebar inside the forms and all of the drilled and epoxied ‘tie ins’ that were installed. Tie Ins are where you drill long holes into the existing foundation. You put a piece of rebar into those holes at an angle and epoxy in with some special expensive epoxy stuff. These pieces of rebar are about 10" into the old foundation and about 2 feet in new foundation and then concrete gets poured into the new foundation - tying the two foundations together with a strong bond.</p>
<p>Good luck on the inspections- you’ve built it right, hopefully he will see that. </p>
<p>New business opportunity for cb:</p>
<p>[Teach</a> how to flip homes—for a $34,000 fee](<a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/news/this-man-wants-to-teach-you-how-to-flip-homes—for-a--34-000-fee-150349468.html]Teach”>This reality TV star wants to teach you how to flip homes—for a $34,000 fee)</p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>Enjoy your weekend as much as possible. I expect you will be running flat out from now on out. </p>
<p>Yes, on the Fortune Builders seminars. Most of the guys that have the flipping shows use those shows to move on to the ‘get rich quick seminars’. Than Merrill had the TV show that moved from Connecticut to San Diego area. The show lasted only 3 years and then they moved on to the seminars for the big bucks.</p>
<p>I see only about 4-5 houses a year that their flipping company - CT Homes - actually turn over. But, they have an interesting business model. They get all these people through the seminars. Some pay $34k for the ‘master’ program. Then they teach these people to be wholesalers. Wholesalers send out post cards, knock on doors, do a bunch of research to find vacant homes, etc. Then they get into contract to buy a distressed property with a Seller (usually outside of the MLS and no real estate agents involved) and turn around and transfer the contract for a fee (they don’t have cash to buy the house themselves or they don’t have ability to do the flip themselves) Guess what! they usually transfer to CT Homes for a fee of about $5k to $8k. In other words, these people paid Fortune Builders for a master program and then do all the leg work to find properties and CT Homes get their properties.</p>