Permit Me, Please!

My contractor friend, Homer Bentnail, was standing out in the driveway with me looking at my newly installed metal carport next to the garage.

                “It wasn’t that bad,” I said. “It only took four months.”

                “Well, it was your own fault,” he said. “You applied for a permit. You should have just had them come out in June when they called and had them put it up.”

                “Wait a minute, this is brand new construction thirty feet from the road. Any county truck driving by would notice it right away and he’d come pulling up into my driveway and ask me to show him the permit.”

                “To which you would just tell him, ‘I didn’t know I needed to have a permit.’ It’s better to get the job done and ask for forgiveness later. They might slap you with an after-the-fact fine and then you move on with life.”

                “So, if you had a customer who wanted a new garage built thirty feet from the main road, would you build it for him without engineered plans and a permit?”

                “No, of course not. I could lose my contractor’s license for doing something like that. I’m just saying that you made a mistake going for a permit.”

                “I happen to know of a friend of mine who put up a shed on his property without a permit,” I said.  “An inspector driving by noticed it and stopped in and asked him for his paperwork which he didn’t have. The inspector slapped a red notice on the shed saying that until corrections were made, the shed was unusable and if anyone went inside, the owner would be fined $5000.00.”

                And so, we went around in circles with the permit topic for over thirty minutes.

                The carport idea started many years ago when Cheryl came out of retirement and started driving school bus. Her car was always parked outside, next to the garage which housed my nicer, more expensive car. I would lie in bed some mornings listening to her grumbling outside as she used the broom to wipe the snow off her car before going to work. Sometimes she had the audacity to wake me up from a sound sleep with the continuous rasping sound of her ice scraper going back and forth on her front windshield.

                “Hey, I am trying to sleep!” I’d yell from the bedroom window. Then I heard the front door slam and snow boots stomping up the stairs. Opening the bedroom door and flipping on the lights, she threw an armload of snow on my head.

                “I want a garage!” she yelled.

                In the months and years to follow, she brought up the garage topic just to annoy me and I ably dismissed the idea. And why, you ask? Well, there is the lumber cost of a stick-built garage. Add to that the hourly rate of a contractor, the engineered plans, the concrete pad, and then the permits. The total cost of a project like that was just out of the question. So, Cheryl continued to park her car outside, exposed to the elements. I might add though, that on the really inclement nights, I offered to let her park her car in the garage, as long as she mopped the melted snow off the floor.

                Then one day, four months ago, I was driving through an older development outside of town and I saw in the driveway of a home, a metal carport. It had a red roof with red siding and was big enough for two cars, and it was attractive. I wouldn’t mind putting something like that up next to the garage, I thought. It can’t cost that much. I wonder if Cheryl would go for it. So, I drove home, picked her up, and showed it to her. And she said, yes. Now to find out where the owner bought it.

                Walking to his front door, the owner came outside and was only too happy to tell me where he’d bought the building and how much it had cost him ten years ago.

                “Did you have to get a permit?” I asked him.

                “Well, let me think,” the old geezer said, rubbing his chin with his thumb and pointer finger.  “That was such a long time ago. But now that you mention it, I think I did get one.”

                “Thanks,” I said. “We’ll go check on pricing and maybe I’ll get one.”

                On the next Sunday after church, Cheryl and I drove out into the county and found the company that was selling the carports. The owner gave us pricing for an 18 by 25-footer and showed us color options for the roof and the siding. The total out-the-door price was $2800.00. Well, that was a heck of a lot cheaper than the price of a stick-built garage, and it was a no-brainer.

                “How about a permit. Do I need to get one?” I asked.

                He hemmed and hawed and asked where I lived. When I told him, he said, “I’ve never had anyone from that area say they had to get a permit.”

                So, I paid the non-refundable deposit after Cheryl picked the colors she wanted. We were told that the manufacturer out of Oregon would be giving me a call when they were ready to come up and install. I was also given a sheet of requirements that had to be met before they would erect the carport. These items included having the ground level and having two feet of clearance around the perimeter of the building, plus gas and power lines were to be marked. These things were all doable.

                Monday morning, I decided to stop by the Whatcom County Planning and Permits center, just to clarify if I needed a permit. Bringing in the color brochure, I asked the young lady at the counter, “Do I need a permit to put one of these up in Whatcom County?”

                “You most definitely do,” she answered. “An unattached shed less than 120 square feet does not require a permit, but your carport is 450 square feet and as soon as you drive rods into the ground and anchor it, it is a permanent structure.”

                So, the dealer of the carports wasn’t being truthful and didn’t have signage stating that if you buy a carport in Whatcom County, you will need to go through the permitting process. The permit lady helped me set up an account on the computer and printed me off a list of what they required.

                Maybe a seasoned contractor would understand the terminologies of what was being asked but I didn’t have a clue. Like for instance, site plan, elevations, engineered drawings, and to start the permit process, it cost me $150.00.

                “Hmm. This could be harder that I thought.”

                Going back home, I called the manufacturer in Oregon. “Hey, as it turns out, you can’t put up a carport in this county without a permit which your dealer didn’t tell me. I am going to need engineered plans from you.”

                Now, you would think that a company who manufactures the buildings, would have engineered plans to send out to a buyer to help them get their permit.

                “Well sir, some counties require permits, and some don’t. There will be an additional fee for us to send you the plans drawn to the county’s specifications. Being that the carport will have to be built to the County’s specifications now, the additional materials will also be added to the cost of the carport. Do you want us to continue with the process?”

“Cripes! I’ve already lost $500.00 in  non-refundable fees. Yes, I want you to continue!”

“I will send you a PDF form for the specifics that the county needs and you send it back to me when it is filled in,” he squeaked in his mousy voice.

                The form came to my computer, and I took it to the Planning and Permit Police and let them fill in all the numbers that they wanted, such as the ability to withstand a hurricane and the weight of twenty feet of snow on the roof. I then sent the specs to the manufacturer and started my wait.

                In the meantime, there was a permanent lean-to building on the site of the carport that had to be torn down and since they needed two feet of clearance around the perimeter to construct it, I had to cut down two rows of hedge trees. Then I had to level the ground which looked level already. To do this I bought four pieces of rebar and hammered them into the ground in the corners of the 18 by 25 foot dimensions. Next, using my unskilled mind, I ran a string from one corner to the next and using a line level, I tied that length tight. Then went to the next corner and tied it off when it was level. This also worked going to the third corner, but when going from the third corner back to the first corner, the string was three inches too high.   

                “What the heck?”

So, I untied the string from the  corners and started all over again and after leveling each corner, I ended up with the same result.  Returning to the starting corner – three inches too high.

                “Yah, string and line levels never really work well for that distance,” Homer told me over the phone. “Better use a laser level.” I went to his house and borrowed his laser level which to an experienced contractor would make total sense and of course the contractor would know how to use one. After a short demonstration, I returned home to find out that my level-to-the-eye gravel pad was actually five inches high on one side. After a few hours digging with a trowel on my knees and tamping, the two 25-foot runs for the carport base were level within a quarter inch.

Next, I got an email from the Planning Police which told me that if I didn’t have all my required paperwork into their office by a certain date, the application would be tossed out, I would have to open my application over again and it would cost another $150.00. This required yet another trip to the planning office to explain to them that my plans were being drawn and I couldn’t do anything until I received them. I got a smirk from the woman behind the counter as if to say, “We’re going to wear you down until you have a nervous breakdown.” I am so lucky to live only four miles from the county office, since I made multiple trips there to have them explain to a layman what it was that they actually wanted.

My next job was to figure out how to draw a one-square-acre land parcel with all the buildings, power lines, septic and freshwater pipes on an 8 1/2 by 11 inch piece of paper for the county site plan. After buying a 100-foot tape measure, Cheryl and I walked the property and measured everything, getting the distance from the road to the house, the width of the driveway, and the footprint where the carport would sit. All the numbers and sketches were put on a piece of notebook paper. Then, I found some graph paper and I looked at the numbers.

                Let’s see. Looking at the county’s example of what a site map looks like, 1-inch equals 10 feet. Heck, I can’t fit that on an 8 ½ by 11 inch piece of paper. Let’s try 1-inch equals 30 feet.

                By the time the one-acre parcel was drawn to scale, the entire house was the size of a postage stamp and the area for the proposed carport was a quarter by half inch. Oh well. I’ll add a magnetic north arrow at the top and the scale of 1” equals 30’ and it will have to be good enough. Amazingly enough, it was good enough. Actually, I was told that in the old days, site maps were drawn on the face of napkins and handed to the inspector.

                After a few weeks wait, I was called by the mousy voiced sales representative from Oregon.

                “Your engineered plans are ready sir. We will need a deposit of $2644.43 and we will send them to you. The remainder of the cost will be paid at the time that the carport is installed.”

                My deposit was now up to the cost of the originally quoted carport and there was more to come. I gave him my credit card number and moments later, PDF files of my engineered plans showed up in my email box. Now all I had to do was compile all the necessary drawings and information converted to PDF and send them via email to the County.  I breathed a sigh of relief realizing that I had made the County’s deadline and now it was in their ballcourt.

                Weeks later, I received a letter from the County stating that the permitting process was complete and for $850.00, I could download all my permit paperwork. 850 flippin’ dollars. What are you going to do? They’ve got me right where they want me.

                With permits now printed, I made a call to Oregon and told them to put me on the schedule. Three weeks later, two workers drove up with all the steel on a trailer and put it up in two hours.

                Homer and I stood out in the driveway looking at their finished construction.

                “Well, let me just add this up,” I said. “The original quoted price without a permit was $2800.00. The upgraded, engineered carport came to $4596.26. The fees to the Whatcom County Planning and Permits department were another $1000.00 which means my $2800.00 carport ended up costing $5596.26.”

                “Yah, but look at the bright side of this,” Homer added. “You won’t get awakened by the sound of Cheryl scraping the ice off her windows anymore.”

                “So true,” I said. “So true.”

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