Preliminary County Visit

This was probably my most dreaded checklist item yet. 

It, however, went surprisingly well! 

At the beginning of June, I decided to walk into the county office with four children 4 and under. I have to say, they were very kind to our children and extremely accommodating. The whole ordeal took about an hour, so towards the end, their patience was a little stretched, but they did well.

Anyway, let's talk business...

This is going to completely vary from county to county and even from parcel to parcel. 

I had to bring along a site plan, which my tech husband of course, had to design online with a scale depicting exactly where we wanted the home. You really only need a rough, hand-drawn, site plan though for preliminary information. 

The county then looked up the parcel and lined me up with the necessary departments to determine development feasibility. 

In our case, this was Development Engineering, Fire, and Resource Management.

The fire safety checklist was already familiar to me since HiLine went over it. It is a little confusing. We are supposed to install a kitchen sprinkler head in order to meet the required 100% for safety. The odd part is, no sprinkler company or plumber is willing to install a single sprinkler due to insurance issues. I guess we may be installing it?! That ought to be interesting....to be continued lol

Resource Management walked me through all the restrictions listed on the parcel. This included but was not limited to wetland certification, drainage control plan and geological assessment.

The wetland won't be an issue due to the house being outside the buffer zone of the pond. The drainage control plan by an engineer is a maybe at this point. We may be able to draw one ourselves OR we may have to pay someone 3k to draw one. Take a wild guess on which I prefer ;)

 The GeoTech we hired shortly after and he determined there is no landslide hazard (yay!). 

That sums up my visit! It all sounds kind of intimidating, but I think it will be fine if we tackle it step by step. My only concern is the amount of time all of this permitting takes and how staggered it all is.