Permits, schmermits

OR, How I Learned to Loathe City Hall...

You know, I have to admit that I entered this situation with a fair amount of naivete. I honestly thought that we were doing the right thing by going by the book: get the permit, build everything to code, get the inspectors to sign off on our work, the whole nine yards.

Oh, stupid, stupid me.

The first inkling that we might not have taken the correct approach was when we got an email with six comments about things we needed to address on our permit before they could issue it. Now, when we applied for the permit we were told, reminded, warned, and reminded again that the plumbing and electrical work we planned would require separate permits. We were also forewarned, before even going in to apply, that we would require a "dye test", a procedure designed to figure out where our drainage connects to the City's storm sewer. So imagine our surprise when the first three of the comments concerned plumbing issues...

The first question concerned the water service to our house: the inspector wanted to know what size the pipe was leading off the city's main water supply. Okay, you'd think, that's a fair question; we ARE putting in a second bathroom, and we might need to upgrade the water service. I thought so too: that is, until I went in to talk to them today and when the inspector didn't believe me when I told him it was a 3/4" pipe. So he looked it up on the computer and confirmed it.

What?

Why the ever-loving-Jesus didn't he just look it up in the first place?

But it gets better. The second comment he had was reminding us that the plumbing was going to require a separate permit. No shit, Sherlock. Thanks.

The third comment was even more helpful. The inspector wanted us to verify that we had a perimeter drain system that was connected to the City's storm sewer, which would require a dye test. Did I mention that we already knew that? Did I mention that I had actually applied for a goddamn dye test THE SAME DAY I applied for the building permit?

Much like the case of the size of the water service, this was probably too much work for him to check. Of course, we already knew the drains were connected, but we didn't know on what side of the house. And when they conducted the dye test on Monday, we found out that our drains are so badly clogged, we have to have them cleaned before they'll be able to conduct the test properly.

The last three comments... well, those are the ones that burst my bubble of innocence, if you will. Not so much for what they said, as what the end result of addressing them has cost us.

The first of the relevant comments was to provide something called a "mechanical ventilation checklist 'A' for the principal exhaust fan". When we asked our HVAC guy about this, he just shook his head and said, "I was afraid of that. You guys got yourself a real bastard of an inspector."

The mechanical ventilation checklist is a document that outlines the area, ventilation, and airflow through every room in our house. It's essentially just a giant pain in the ass, and another excuse for the guys down at City Hall to make our lives difficult. Our HVAC contractor needs to fill it out, but he can't fill it out until we've done the framing, and we can't do the framing until we get the permit. Got it?

"Paging Joseph Heller, paging Mr. Heller. Would Joseph Heller please report to the Engineering counter."

Oh, and the best part? When I went in to get a copy of the mechanical ventilation checklist 'A' for primary exhaust fan, they didn't have any copies of the updated one for 2004, so they gave me one for 1998 with the assurance that "it's the same one. It should be fine."

The second relevant comment was simple enough: they wanted us to indicate on the plans the location of the interconnected smoke alarm.

"Sure, no problem: where would you like me to put a little circle with an arrow and "Smoke alarm" written next to it? Anywhere in particular? No? Great. By the way, wouldn't an interconnected smoke alarm be something that gets covered on the SEPARATE electrical permit? Oh, there, too? Great. That's just f-ing great..."

The last of the comments, well, that's the one that broke us.

The comment itself seems innocuous enough: "Indicate height of basement area, including height under beams."

The conversation went something like this:

Stupid Don: "It's an even seven feet to the bottom of the floor joists, and the support beams are 8" thick, so it would be 6'4" to the bottom of the beams."

Jackass Inspector Type: "Oh."

SD: "Oh? Oh, what? That didn't sound like a good 'oh' to me. What's the minimum height requirement?"

JIT: "Well, it's actually 7'6", but we admit that's a little ridiculous, so we'll accept 7'... but your beams are well under that."

SD: "Yeah, but they're not that bad, right?"

JIT: "Well, what you could do is cut out the beams, and raise them flush with the floor joists."

SD: "Cut out the beams."

JIT: "Yes."

SD: "The beams that hold up our house?"

JIT: "Yes."

SD: "The 60-year-old beams that are an integral part of the structure of our house, and support the floor joists above? You want us to cut them out?"

JIT: "And raise them flush with the joists, yes."

SD: "Are you barking mad?"

The City actually expects us to remove part of the structure of our house to satisfy a totally arbitrary minimum height requirement. The only other option we have would be to frame in underneath the beams (adding extra support at the necessary places - which would entail opening the concrete floor to install pads) and then cutting into the beams in order to install doors.

Needless to say, we didn't budget an extra $10,000 for either of those options. Nor do we happen to have an extra $25,000 kicking around, which is what it would cost to raise the house by a couple of feet and pour a new foundation.

I didn't bother to tell him that the 7' was unfinished height, and putting in a floor and ceiling were going to drop that by at least a couple of inches.

But this, this right here, this is why people don't get permits. It's not because they don't want to pay the fee, and it's not because they don't want to build it properly, and it's not because they have an irrational fear of authority (although I'm beginning to think I'd sympathize if they did). It's because City Hall makes it so damn HARD to do the right thing. There's so much bureaucracy, so much red tape, so much petty politicking that people like us, who are just trying to make our own house a little more comfortable, get ground up and spit out, and told we aren't allowed to do it.

Despite the fact that every other house in our neighbourhood has a finished basement.

Oh, and the best part? The War Department got another email yesterday, this one from somebody in the Land Development office. He had three comments that he wanted us to address. The first was, and I will quote it in its entirety, "New services are charged as per the City's standard fee schedule."

I'm not exactly sure what kind of response he was expecting to that. Maybe, "Uh, ok?"

The second comment was asking us to submit a site service plan detailing compliance with City standards. Even the jackass inspector type this morning thought this was weird and asked me no less than three times whether we were doing any renovations to the exterior of the house that might possibly require a full site service plan. He was that confused by this guy's involvement in the process.

The last comment?

"Our records indicate that the present structure is not conected to the City storm system. The structure's drainage system must be dye-tested to confirm its status."

I give up. I am City Hall's bitch. If this were prison, I'd have to give them all my cigarettes. Read more...

Walls and holes: pinker and deeper, respectively

So, the walls in the basement keep getting pinker, and the hole in the yard keeps getting deeper.

First up, the walls, the walls, the hideous walls!




Our more observant readers (hah!) might notice that the red tape looks a little different than it did in the first few shots of the Dread Wall of Pink. That's because a "friend" pointed out that we weren't using Tuck Tape (tm) but rather the cheap-ass Canadian Tire equivalent. Not good enough, says our "friend". Apparently, the inspectors have been known to insist on Tuck Tape (tm), and force users of the non-name stuff to CHANGE IT. Bastards! So, yes, I replaced ALL of the tape with Tuck Tape (tm). (Thanks, Heidi. That's just great.)

I'm starting to like the walls, actually. I wonder if Amy would let me paint the whole room this color when it's done. I think our supervisor kitty approves, too:



(We were going to make him foreman, but we couldn't find a hard hat in his size. But truth be told, I think he shows more interest in the work than I do, sometimes.)

As for the hole, it's hard to tell we've done ANYTHING just by looking at it, but we've actually made good progress. We've laid bare the weeping tile all the way from the edge of the gravel to the corner... now we have to move the gravel so we can dig underneath it. To give you an idea of why this prospect does not exactly fill me with glee, here's a cross-section of what we're digging through:



The hardest part of getting through that isn't the clay, surprisingly enough - though the clay tends to generate a fair amount of swearing on its own, I assure you. It's the thrice-cursed river rock at the bottom: it's impossible to push a shovel into it, so you wind up with these piss-ant little half-scoops all the time, and it takes FOREVER to move it out of the hole.

Anyway, we're taking a night off to go see Pirates! Arr! (Which is EXACTLY the sound I make getting off the couch after digging all day. Go figure.) Read more...

The Dread Wall of Pink

Well, another day, another couple of hours toiling in the salt mines... er, basement.

We've been busy washing concrete and cutting down rigid foam insulation to glue to the foundation. Apparently, this creates a vapour barrier, meaning you don't have to deal with the plastic stuff on the inside of the studs. And given our experience with plastic vapour barrier in the garage, we don't want to deal with the plastic stuff. We suck at it.

Anyway, here's the end result:



I call it the Dread Wall of Pink. The War Department calls it a job well done. (You see why we don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of these projects, eh?)

Here it is from another angle (different angle, same piece-of-shit camera):



And here's me, threatening to use the knife on Amy if she doesn't quit taking pictures of me with the shitty camera and get back to work:



Meh, it beats digging, I suppose.

Also, after much discussion and poking about with metal objects near live wires, we finally determined that the electrical panel is NOT attached to the cabinet around it, and have begun removing said cabinet:



I really hate "gentle demo", where you have to be careful about breaking shit. Gimme a hammer, and let me beat the shit out of something! Wooo!

I mentioned something a couple of posts back about cleaning concrete not being easy to photograph? Well, the wavy line in this picture puts the lie to that!



Yes, you DID just take a closer look at old concrete. How's that for value for your entertainment dollar, eh?

PS - the word "shit" in this post was added solely for Fred's benefit, because he complained about the lack of swearing on the site. We'll have none of that shit around here. Read more...

Empty spaces

Just in case you were wondering, here's what $355 worth of junk removal service will get you:



(A big yellow patch of grass?)

Anyway, we got some weather suitable for digging and attacked the trench in the back yard for a couple of hours. While the War Department systematically dismantled the fence so we could access the side yard, I was digging carefully around the downspout, being careful not to crack the clay tile. As I scraped up a load of debris, a clump of earth fell away from beside the downspout, revealing this:



Apparently, the previous owners of the house preferred Becel over I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Who knew?

I'm still not entirely sure what the former tub of margarine was doing there, but it seems to have been put to use as some sort of makeshift gasket between two portions of the clay pipe.

Anyway, I'd post a picture of the trench in its current state, but by the time I finished digging for the day, I couldn't lift my arms. You'll just have to wait. Read more...

Cracks and whatnot

I thought I should get a better shot of the crack that started it all. It's kind of hard to see in the first pictures, so here's one with the big bastard front and center - with a yardstick for comparison.



"Gee golly, I don't know how ANYTHING got through that!"

To be fair, the war department did spend a little time chipping out the cement from the previous repair job (conservative estimate: 30 years ago), but that's still a pretty big crack.

Here's a shot of the basement in its current state:



That's from the bottom of the stairs, and shows the general working environment, as well as the fortifications we had to erect in order to keep the damn cat from stepping in the (corrosive) crack sealer we used to fill in the hairline crack in the slab. Pretty tidy, eh?

Not so our poor overloaded workbench:



More later, hopefully showing more progress. Not that the effort we'll be expending to clean the walls will show up very well on film.... sigh. Read more...

Progress is ... uh... progressing

Yes, we're still working on it. But much of what we're doing is finicky and boring, and doesn't lend itself well to pictures. Stuff like washing walls, moving electrical lines, buying bathroom vanities (shut up - it's a cardboard box, you don't want a picture of that), sealing cracks, washing off the cats' feet when they step in the crack sealer, stuff like that.

Speaking of the cats, you may be wondering what they do while Mummy and Daddy are downstairs toiling in the sheer drudgery.



Yeah. Who's the small-brained mammal now, huh? Read more...

Demolition time!

(Click on the pictures for a larger view.)

First up, the crack in the foundation through which the second flood came.

Before:



After:



The desk I built so lovingly from unwanted office furniture:

Before:


Here's the same corner from the other side of the wall:



Goodbye, desk!



Goodbye... uh, everything? What the...



Yes, that's really the same corner. See our awesomely secure and stable mounting for the alarm box? That's some quality construction right there! (Shut up - it was late, and I had a nail in my eye.)

You may be asking yourselves, but guys, what happened to all that kick-ass 70s style paneling?

Oh, look, it's all neatly stacked outside:



Scary bit? There are NO nails in that pile of wood. We pulled them all out. Because we're dumb. Read more...

A little background

All right, pictures! Well, in a moment...

Let's begin with a little background as to why we're undertaking this particular renovation at this particular time. This past winter was one of the most severe, in terms of amount of precipitation, in the history of the city. We got more goddamn rain in two months than we usually see in a year. It was absolutely brutal, and our poor neglected perimeter drains and storm sewer couldn't keep up. We had a little bit of a flood.

Case in point, the Backyard:

Nice green fence boards, eh? Yeah, it was pretty wet.

At any rate, thanks to a few inches of water in the basement, we figured that it was time to deal with the basement. One thing led to another, and we wound up deciding to renovate the whole thing, and put in a second bathroom while we were at it.

The first step in this was to figure out how bad our drains really were, and to determine where the problems lay.

Commence digging!


Fun times, that.

Anyway, that's the current state of the backyard. More about the basement shortly. Read more...