On Wednesday afternoon I took our beautifully precise architectural drawings to the county building, to complete our building permit application. It’s a little crazy that our old house is almost to the ground before we actually have the building permit for the new one, but we’ve been going on the assessment of others that once we have all the other permits, the actual building permit is a shoe-in. The beginnings of our application have been wasting away in somebody’s file drawer for the past six months, while we’ve exhausted ourselves leaping hurdle after hurdle that the stiff-jawed county staffers have laid before us.
First, there was the variance issue. The house is 30’ wide, and sits on a 30’ wide lot. Which is made worse by the fact that back in 1908 somebody’s survey string must have slipped, because the house is one foot, seven inches off of its lot. I’ll spare you the months of trying to get a property line adjustment, and of trying to buy 15’ of land from our reluctant neighbor to the west.
Ten foot setbacks on a 30’ wide lot means a ten foot wide house. So to rebuild in our original footprint means that step one is to apply for a variance. But in the twisted logic of the collective mind of county government, step one becomes step two, and before applying for a variance you must do step one, which is to apply for a building permit, plans and all, which will be rejected by the building division because you don’t have a variance.
The land use department and the building division share a front desk and office space in the old yellow brick building on the corner of spruce and 13th. Yet somehow the only communication between the two that we have seen evidence of is that the building division must have hollered across the room to tell the land use department that a building permit had come in without the required variance. The land use department then informed us that we needed one. Which, of course, we already knew.
Then it turned out that step two was really step three, because the historical preservation board got wind that a hundred year old building was about to be torn down, which meant a review and board meeting that had to happen before the county commissioners could hold their meeting to review the variance. Add two months to the process, and a whole other story to tell you later. Then there was step four, the site plan review, a lengthy examination that required our plans to be mailed to every resident of Eldorado Springs for their complaint or approval.
So I arrived at the steps of the county building in a celebratory mood, with three engineer-stamped sets of plans rolled neatly under my arm. It was a sign of great progress to finally be back at step one. By the time I walked back down those steps an hour later, my mood had turned to stomach churning rage.
I had laid the plans on the counter and told the woman who rose from her beige government desk that I was here to complete our building permit. This generated some confusion about why we had filed a building permit and were bringing completed plans six months later. I reminded her about the step one, step two process, which seemed to jog a vague memory of that section of the rules and regulations book. But the search for the permit file took a good ten minutes and the enlisted help of three others in the office, until one said “maybe it’s in Robin’s desk”, and the thin brown file was finally produced.
The first warning sign was the look on the woman’s face when she opened the file. “Oh, this one”, she said, drawing out the three words over a good ten seconds. “I’d better go get Larry.” Larry came to the desk in a green button down shirt, without a word and without even a glance of eye contact. I focused on the wrinkles in his forehead and his prominent white eyebrows as he leaned over the plans, making a series of urgent and worried grunts. Minutes went by. I could almost hear the gears of his brain grinding together as they searched for some critical piece of information. If I ever have to watch a doctor prepare to give me a fatal prognosis, I imagine it will be easier than this. I tried to make contact by throwing out little pieces of information and asking short, simple questions. Still, all I got was the top of his head. No response. Finally, he pulled the site plan out of the file folder, which shows our new house resting 1’7” from the east property line and 3’ from the west. “Oh, this one”, he said. And that is when he told me about the ASTM E119 fire rating test, and that because our walls are less than five feet from the property line, they have to pass this test with a score of one hour. This means, he explained, that a raging fire from either the inside or the outside of the house has to take one hour to burn through the wall. If our west wall was two feet further back from the line, they wouldn’t care if the fire could burst right through and burn us to a crisp. Larry also tells me that there can be no windows in the east wall unless they are fire rated to one hour, which he informs me can only be accomplished with very special glass block made in Japan, at a very special price. He makes me a copy of a page from a three pound volume of building codes, and adds that he’s not even sure if the extra special glass block will be allowed. Then he delivers the knockout blow by telling me that our painstakingly designed west wall, the one that faces the million dollar view of Eldorado canyon and the high serrated ridge of South Boulder Peak, can have no more than 25% window space. He is showing me a very confusing chart of distances and fire ratings, and I hold down my burning anger enough to tell him that I am having a hard time interpreting the chart. “I’ve been here 20 years and I don’t understand it either”, he says. My confidence in Larry as someone who may help us get through this quagmire drops to zero.
I want to run out of the building and collapse on the steps. We have just spent $3400 on these drawings, thousands more in permit fees and consultations, six months of meetings with county officials, and three years of plan revisions to come up with a 25’ wide house. But this is the man who will either approve or disapprove of our building permit. So I stay standing at the desk, and struggle to find that tone that says ‘I am someone who is not going to be pushed over’, without saying ‘I am unreasonably angry and will be returning tonight to bomb the county building’. In an only slightly bumpy voice I say “I can’t believe we have gotten to this point without hearing this information”.
But I am standing with an enforcer of rules, on the wrong side of the desk. It is 4:00 on the day before Thanksgiving, and Larry tells me he won’t be back until Monday. I still need to buy a turkey breast and a box of stuffing. I walk out of the office carrying the twisting prognosis in my gut, with only half of the information I need. I want to run straight home to tell Rebecca the awful news, and at the same moment I am dreading the thought of ruining her excitement. We have a four day weekend to imagine the worst.
First, there was the variance issue. The house is 30’ wide, and sits on a 30’ wide lot. Which is made worse by the fact that back in 1908 somebody’s survey string must have slipped, because the house is one foot, seven inches off of its lot. I’ll spare you the months of trying to get a property line adjustment, and of trying to buy 15’ of land from our reluctant neighbor to the west.
Ten foot setbacks on a 30’ wide lot means a ten foot wide house. So to rebuild in our original footprint means that step one is to apply for a variance. But in the twisted logic of the collective mind of county government, step one becomes step two, and before applying for a variance you must do step one, which is to apply for a building permit, plans and all, which will be rejected by the building division because you don’t have a variance.
The land use department and the building division share a front desk and office space in the old yellow brick building on the corner of spruce and 13th. Yet somehow the only communication between the two that we have seen evidence of is that the building division must have hollered across the room to tell the land use department that a building permit had come in without the required variance. The land use department then informed us that we needed one. Which, of course, we already knew.
Then it turned out that step two was really step three, because the historical preservation board got wind that a hundred year old building was about to be torn down, which meant a review and board meeting that had to happen before the county commissioners could hold their meeting to review the variance. Add two months to the process, and a whole other story to tell you later. Then there was step four, the site plan review, a lengthy examination that required our plans to be mailed to every resident of Eldorado Springs for their complaint or approval.
So I arrived at the steps of the county building in a celebratory mood, with three engineer-stamped sets of plans rolled neatly under my arm. It was a sign of great progress to finally be back at step one. By the time I walked back down those steps an hour later, my mood had turned to stomach churning rage.
I had laid the plans on the counter and told the woman who rose from her beige government desk that I was here to complete our building permit. This generated some confusion about why we had filed a building permit and were bringing completed plans six months later. I reminded her about the step one, step two process, which seemed to jog a vague memory of that section of the rules and regulations book. But the search for the permit file took a good ten minutes and the enlisted help of three others in the office, until one said “maybe it’s in Robin’s desk”, and the thin brown file was finally produced.
The first warning sign was the look on the woman’s face when she opened the file. “Oh, this one”, she said, drawing out the three words over a good ten seconds. “I’d better go get Larry.” Larry came to the desk in a green button down shirt, without a word and without even a glance of eye contact. I focused on the wrinkles in his forehead and his prominent white eyebrows as he leaned over the plans, making a series of urgent and worried grunts. Minutes went by. I could almost hear the gears of his brain grinding together as they searched for some critical piece of information. If I ever have to watch a doctor prepare to give me a fatal prognosis, I imagine it will be easier than this. I tried to make contact by throwing out little pieces of information and asking short, simple questions. Still, all I got was the top of his head. No response. Finally, he pulled the site plan out of the file folder, which shows our new house resting 1’7” from the east property line and 3’ from the west. “Oh, this one”, he said. And that is when he told me about the ASTM E119 fire rating test, and that because our walls are less than five feet from the property line, they have to pass this test with a score of one hour. This means, he explained, that a raging fire from either the inside or the outside of the house has to take one hour to burn through the wall. If our west wall was two feet further back from the line, they wouldn’t care if the fire could burst right through and burn us to a crisp. Larry also tells me that there can be no windows in the east wall unless they are fire rated to one hour, which he informs me can only be accomplished with very special glass block made in Japan, at a very special price. He makes me a copy of a page from a three pound volume of building codes, and adds that he’s not even sure if the extra special glass block will be allowed. Then he delivers the knockout blow by telling me that our painstakingly designed west wall, the one that faces the million dollar view of Eldorado canyon and the high serrated ridge of South Boulder Peak, can have no more than 25% window space. He is showing me a very confusing chart of distances and fire ratings, and I hold down my burning anger enough to tell him that I am having a hard time interpreting the chart. “I’ve been here 20 years and I don’t understand it either”, he says. My confidence in Larry as someone who may help us get through this quagmire drops to zero.
I want to run out of the building and collapse on the steps. We have just spent $3400 on these drawings, thousands more in permit fees and consultations, six months of meetings with county officials, and three years of plan revisions to come up with a 25’ wide house. But this is the man who will either approve or disapprove of our building permit. So I stay standing at the desk, and struggle to find that tone that says ‘I am someone who is not going to be pushed over’, without saying ‘I am unreasonably angry and will be returning tonight to bomb the county building’. In an only slightly bumpy voice I say “I can’t believe we have gotten to this point without hearing this information”.
But I am standing with an enforcer of rules, on the wrong side of the desk. It is 4:00 on the day before Thanksgiving, and Larry tells me he won’t be back until Monday. I still need to buy a turkey breast and a box of stuffing. I walk out of the office carrying the twisting prognosis in my gut, with only half of the information I need. I want to run straight home to tell Rebecca the awful news, and at the same moment I am dreading the thought of ruining her excitement. We have a four day weekend to imagine the worst.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment