We've been hit with bombshell after bombshell of disheartening house news recently, plus one potential bonus.
The Good News
The good news is that on May 4, Skylar sent us an e-mail saying that NW EnergyStar would like our new home to be featured in their EnergyStar Pilot Project. In Skylar's words, the idea of this pilot is to introduce builders and consumers to high performance and zero-energy homes and to highlight what is possible with current building technologies. They want to promote the technical details of our home, but also to capture our perspective on the high performance aspects of our project. Not only does this sound exciting to us, but as a partnership, this potentially means that some manufacturers may donate some of the mechanical equipment for our home, offsetting some of our costs. We're excited about both proselytizing about energy-conserving homes and saving money on our house project.
A Challenge
However, as is frequently the case, the good news has been offset by a variety of challenges. One is our driveway: The current entrance to our property actually encroaches on our neighbor's land by a few feet. It's a tiny amount of land, but a big problem: The county won't give us permits to build a driveway on someone else's land. We could move our driveway, but unfortunately our electrical hook-up, which has been patiently waiting for us at the front of our land for 10 years now, is right smack in the middle of where we would need our driveway to be -- and we can't move it. So our choice is to either move the driveway far to one side, which would require a much sharper turn onto our property and a lot of extra grading of the land (which has a good one-foot or so drop-off to the road at that point), or to get an easement from our neighbors to use their land for our driveway. Rick and I discussed this, and we decided it would be easier and much more aesthetically pleasing to keep the current driveway -- if possible. So I called our neighbors, Norris and Deenie Grahn, who were the original owners of the entire ridge, and they were more than willing to help: Yes, you can have the land. We don't want to charge you. Let us know what we need to do. Thank goodness for sweethearts in this world!
This is great news! We could perhaps annex the land onto our property, or create an easement. Either way would require some money -- hiring a surveyor, filing forms with the county, maybe an attorney -- so we needed to figure this out.
Permit Sticker Shock
And then the challenges got serious. A week or so later, Rick called me to give me a heads-up on the building permit fees. We had a line item in our house-building budget for the building permit: $2,000. We don't recall where we got that number, although I suspect we asked various people and heard "a couple thousand." At any rate, I was stopped short when Rick told me that the various permit fees would total nearly $16,000. Sixteen thousand dollars!
In short order I found myself at the Washington County offices to double-check the numbers. The very helpful lady confirmed everything Rick had told me and more. What I didn't know (and what, in retrospect, I should've asked the county ahead of time) is that there is not "a" building permit; there are many, many permits that are involved in building: the actual building permit (which, incidentally, is right in our budget at $1,500), the plumbing permit, the electricity permit, the mechanical fee, development compliance fee, plan review fee, surcharges for most of these fees and permits, and school fees (to the tune of $1 per square foot, which all by itself eats up more than our allotted "building permit" budget).
In addition, I discovered that because of the size of our house (more than 3600 sq ft, including garage) and its distance from a fire hydrant, we are required to have a fire sprinkler system in the house. And of course pay the mandatory fire sprinkler permit fee. Cha-ching!
I also learned that to build a house (and a driveway), you need a grading permit -- which requires inspection and approval by a geotechnical engineer. Cha-ching!
The building fees were part of what we expected to pay separately from the building costs, but these extravagant fees alone made us fear for our house since our budget was already squeaky tight before we learned of the extra $14,000 in fees. Now we had to add fire sprinklers and geotechnical engineers.
We had planned to file for the building permits at the same time that SEA gave the final, engineered plans to Hammer & Hand for their final costing, but now we were worried: If Hammer & Hand's cost went up at all, we wouldn't be able to afford to build the house. Instead, we decided to wait to file for the permits until we knew that Hammer & Hand's final costing worked within our budget. We're not in a hurry and can afford to wait an extra couple of weeks to start building, but we cannot afford any further budget adjustments.
Driveway Direction
While pondering these new budget problems it occurred to me that I hadn't heard any new information about the driveway issue, which would inevitably cost even more money one way or the other, so I called Rick; he hadn't learned anything new, and we decided that I would follow up on this. At this point, I knew that I had to line up every single budget item to get a crystal clear picture on whether we'd be able to afford this house, so I visited Washington County again. What I learned was this: Our parcel is zoned differently from the Grahns' parcel (we have 3.15 acres, and AF-5 zoning, and they have 80 acres, which is a totally different kind of zone). It is not possible to transfer pieces of land, no matter how small, among differently zoned parcels. Our only option is an easement.
To get an easement, I must hire a surveyor to create a legal description of the land in question. I don't know yet how much this will cost, though I do know I have to align the schedules of the surveyor, ourselves and the Grahns. (Thankfully, the Grahns are retired and their schedule shouldn't be a challenge.) We can either hire a lawyer or complete a pre-existing easement legal form to spell out the easement specifics, and then we file it with Washington County so that it is appended to the legal description of both of our parcels.
It sounds reasonable. I think I'll work on that next week and see how reasonable it really is.
The Final Blow
Hammer & Hand sent us their final costing on Tuesday, May 22, and with it the final blow on our project: Their cost had gone up hugely. Apparently their previous estimate included some misunderstanding on the thickness of the walls and footings required for our house, which accounted for much of the increased cost. In addition, upon further examination Bryan and I learned that this costing does not include some other things that we thought it would. We are setting up a meeting for this week to determine exactly what is and is not included on this costing -- but at this point this house is well beyond the budget.
However, before we make any commitments, Bryan I need to do some research. There are budgets within the Hammer & Hand costing for lighting, plumbing fixtures, counters, flooring, cabinets and so on. Due diligence, from our perspective, means knowing exactly what we'll be spending on these items; this will help us make the most accurate budget possible. We will meet with Hammer & Hand to see what else we need to include that they haven't. And we will go from there.
In the meantime, I will pursue the driveway easement. Whatever happens with us and our land, someone who builds on it will need that easement -- and for our budget purposes we'll need to know how much it costs, or whether we need to give up on the easement and just move the driveway.
It's not over yet, but it's not looking good.
