cb, you are gaining valuable experience. At some point, I envision, when you get tired of all this, you’ll be able to become a “flip consultant” or some such, at $300 an hour. 
In the meantime, keep on chugging – I think this one is definitely going to be a homerun!
Any day now i’m going to get a TV show!
And then I’ll set up some Get Rich Flipping seminars and advertise on local radio.
NOT
Could you imagine how frustrating and boring it would be for viewers to watch the weeds grow for 7 months trying to get one project completed??
But, but… Think about the drama that can be added! How the permitting department and CB work together to save an airplane from crashing into CB’s flip! I think it calls for Harrison Ford to play the pilot of the doomed plane. 
Then CB can say, “Get off my flip!”
I have fire sprinklers in my house. Unless someone told you they were there you wouldn’t notice them. They look like flat round metal disks that are flush with ceiling. Some of mine are white and others a color that matches the wood beams. Our house was a total rebuild so I’m not sure how they would install them in existing construction.
Do the fire sprinklers get activitated by heat? If activated by smoke, I might be in trouble… occasionally we have a toaster incident that sets off the smoke alarms.
I have been researching fire sprinklers all weekend. One of the things they keep emphasizing is that the sprinklers are independent, so if one goes off all the others do not go off. They are activated by heat, not by smoke alone. The trigger is 155 degrees
In reading through the building codes I think I only have to sprinkler the new addition portion of the house. Since we are going to all this trouble, and most of our ceilings are opened up, I am going to try to add the sprinklers into the basement and garage areas (which are the usual suspects to start a fire), the kitchen and the hall bedroom area.
My main concern is to try to keep the new load on water meter to a minimum. That is the huge cost and effort involved here. As far as we can tell we have a 3/4" water main and I’m hoping that will meet the load.
Well…regarding the sprinklers…wouldn’t they only add water load if they went off? And really no one would,be doing the laundry, taking a shower, flushing the toilets or running the dishwasher if the sprinklers go off? Right?
Make sure you have a sprinkler in the laundry room. Dryers are the leading cause of house fires and the inspector will want to see one there.
Regarding what activates them - I heard a terrible story about how a friend went out one morning and saw a car parked on the street with all the windows down. There had been furious wind and more than an inch of rain the night before. Apparently it was a BMW and it has some safety feature that opens all the windows, to prevent anyone from getting locked in, if it thinks the car has fallen into a lake or something!
Agree about the laundry room. Neighbor is a forensic engineer who works for an insurance company. He has shown us, more than once how dryer lint ignites!
This thread made me check. My laundry room has a sprinkler. I made a trip through my house. The only rooms without a sprinkler are 2 bathrooms. I’m not sure why as the other baths and powder room have a sprinkler. Most rooms in my house have several. We have lived here 18 yrs and have had just one incident with the sprinklers. Last year in the middle of the night the bell went off. We checked the entire house and no smoke or fire nor did the sprinklers activate. My H was able to disconnect the ringing bell. It was a water leak at the outside valve causing the pressure to drop. As I understand it the pipes always have water in them. The valve outside has a pressure gage. My H considered not fixing it and just having the sprinklers non operational, I vetoed that. We had our system installed by a company that only does fire systems. I think sprinklers can give you a break on fire and homeowners insurance.
Coralbrook - are they requiring you to have all the smoke detectors linked. Where if one goes off all the alarms in the entire house sound off?
Yes, all the smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors are hard wired with battery backup to a single circuit (cannot be on different circuits throughout the house). If one goes off, they all go off… or at least that is the way they are supposed to work. We have already installed the ones in the existing portion of the house, including smoke/carbon monoxide combo in the basement. We needed to have them installed to pass final inspection on the electric re wire permit.
I’m just self learning about the fire sprinkler systems, but my understanding so far is that bathrooms and closets do not have to have sprinklers.
I am going through every single City comment in detail. I am seeing a lot of just plain stupid misses by the design engineering firm that did the plans.
Missing carbon monoxide detectors
They did not label the tempered windows (see previous conversation with draftsman about why he did not label the windows - he told me to go read the codes and figure it out myself when I was trying to do the window order!!!)
Missing exhaust fans
Missing design for dryer venting
missing a lot of standard ‘notes’ that are supposed to be on the plans
And, in my opinion, he should have caught the FAA Self Certification requirements (an engineer has to add a note and sign for certification that building is ‘shrouded’ by other homes and/or natural terrain). In our case, the homes to the east are higher elevation and are shrouding this property.
Roof drainage and slope drainage on site plan
and on and on and on
Since the laundry room is located in the portion of the house that is considered ‘addition’ it will definitely have fire sprinklers
I’m eager to see how you deal with this design engineering firm once you are done with them. If you want to write them a scathing letter, you have all the information you need in this thread, since every time they dropped the ball, you remarked on it here. Or do you want to make your displeasure more public? Or are you just never going to use them again?
Haven’t decided what I’m going to do. The issue isn’t really with the engineer himself, it’s with the bill of goods I was sold on how streamlined it was going to be if I brought the whole project in house to his firm.
My old school draftsman would have covered at least 80% of the issues found by the City. I had assumed that they would be as thorough as he always was.
Probably never going to do a project of this magnitude again. Time will tell if it is even going to be worth it.
I suspect that financially it will be worth it. Emotionally? Only you can decide.
At the end of the day…this house is going to be fabulous.
The engineering firm sold you a bill of goods. If I recall, you just wanted the drawings on CAD so they could easily be manipulated. What you got was the engineers “engineering” the job. Some of it was probably worth it…but it sounds like residential of this type (renovations with additions) is their expertise.
Plus, it also sounds like yours was a smaller job, and they sort of squeezed you in between the big jobs.
They really should have been more honest with you up front…and I hope you find a way to let them know,that they actually cost you money.
Would you recommend them? If not tell them why.
The engineering firm has really caused issues with their delays and misinformation. In their defense, this is a BIG project … probably more than they realized at first. But they should have fessed up to that early in the game.