PT 5: 2024 Garage Build – Permitting
The final boring post before the action starts!
Once the Plans came back, the next step was to get the permit submitted. I officially submitted my permit request on June 14, 2024.
In order to submit the permit, I had to accumulate a few additional documents beyond the plans from JDS:
- Owner Exemption Affidavit (Notarized)
- This is required since I am an unlicensed contractor, performing work on my own residence.
- Wastewater System Affidavit (Notarized)
- I don’t quite understand this one, but it must absolve the county for any liability related to my septic system.
- Impervious Surface Calculation Worksheet
- Form provided by the county to clearly outline the square footage of non-soluble surfaces on my property.
- Site Plan
- Marked up prior survey, showing the proposed changes with setbacks, square footage, etc.
- Attached is the “Approved” plan, with the county adding the markups at the top center and right indicating approval.
I didn’t know it yet, however I made a critical error at this step, which ended up delaying my work by about a month. The issue is that I marked up a survey PDF I retained from purchasing my house 10 years ago, using a software called BlueBeam Revu. After making these markups to show dimensions, proposed changes, etc, I saved the survey PDF and uploaded the file. Unfortunately, when I uploaded the file to the permit portal, the alignment and readability of the markups was screwed up, leading to some confusion. What I should have done was “flatten” the document after making the markups, rendering the markups permanent and not able to be changed.
Reviewer 1
The initial reviewer, Tiya Shields, had some misunderstandings regarding the impervious surfaces. The comment entered was:
Please note that we are seeing conflicting impervious amounts. One area shows the garage to be 2327 sf and another area shows the proposed at 785 sf. Keep in mind that your addition can’t be larger than your main dwelling which you have listed as 1503 sf. Please either attach a document explaining in more detail or complete the impervious worksheet located under the attachment section of the permit (TS, 06/17/2024)
I decided to include a letter to respond to this, so I attached that to the permit and resubmitted within 24 hours (06/18/24). I did make a couple of mistakes in the document, See if you notice – the answers are down the page a bit
The first question related to the change in impervious area. This confusion was understandable, as the impervious amounts are difficult to understand, especially if you look at hundreds in a day and don’t have familiarity with this property. I used BlueBeam to markup the areas of current impervious that would be covered by the foundation (remain impervious), and the areas that would be added as impervious (currently covered with grass or natural area). Although the total footprint of the garage is 32×47 = 1504, the increase in impervious is only 785sf based on the already impervious gravel areas.
The second question related to the overall size of the addition. This makes no sense, but it does appear to be a rule in the county. I suppose if you wanted to add on a second, time, you could keep going and going to get the full size you wanted? Maybe I will find out in the future. This goes back to the “Gross Floor Area (GFA)” discussed in Part 1. In this case, the reviewer was unclear about the GFA of my house and the addition. To this day, I don’t know if I did it all correctly, but its done now. I excluded “garage” area from both calculations,
Mistakes:
- In the first paragraph, I incorrectly refer to the garage’s first floor area as 1486 (not 1504).
- In the table, the Gross square footage of the house and addition are flipped.
- In the table, I refer to the proposed garage impervious area as 1503 (not 1504)
The permit reviewer did not notice these issues (or if they did, let it slide), thankfully.
The county took a few days to review the letter, and Tiya came back with additional questions:.
need dimensions on deck and rear distance line from rear of addition to rear property line all the way to the dark black line (TS, 06/27/2024)
Now this comment, coming back after over a week, was ridiculous and irritating. The site plan provided not only had dimensions listed for the deck, its a scaled survey drawing with an included scale reference. It would be extremely easy for any competent person to determine any dimension on the drawing page with a ruler or software.
I dutifully included additional dimensions for the reviewer, and resubmitted the site plan, within 24 hours (06/28/2024). The document was reviewed and the Site Plan was approved on 07/03/2024 (6 days), for a total duration to pass Reviewer 1 consisting of 3 iterations and 19 days.
Reviewer 2
Reviewer 2 was the Wastewater review, and I expected this to be easy. Unfortunately, this would be where I made mistake #2.
Reviewer 2 was Avila Breeze, who called me on 07/05/2024. I happened to be driving at the time, so I was unable to take notes in realtime. This person had some questions about the location of my septic, and I was trying to explain that it was not clearly located on the original permit, however I knew where it was located and it was outside of the work area. I then understood they requested me upload a drawing showing my estimated location for the tank and lines. In hindsight, I don’t think this was the ask, as the wastewater approval went through on 07/05/2024. In the moment though, I thought the right thing to do was to upload another Site Plan. When I did this on 07/05/24 however, it reversed the Reviewer 1 approval I received on 07/03/2024.
Reviewer 3
Reviewer 3 is License and Plans, conducted by Spencer Scott. On 07/08/2024, He reached out via Phone and asked me about the permit request. Spencer had two questions:
You have checked all 4 Trades on Owner Affidavit. What Plumbing work will be done?
When submitting my permit, I did check the box for all 4 trades, even though I knew no plumbing was planned. The form was a bit confusing, and it did not add additional cost to request a plumbing permit. In hindsight, this was a mistake, as it automatically added Plumbing License checks, Plumbing Plan Review, and Plumbing Inspections to the system.
Wake County does not recognize “OFFICE” in Single Family Dwellings-Offices have been changed to “STUDY” & “LIBRARY”
This issue was mentioned in Part 2 – and this is where it came back. There is no such thing as an “office” according to the county, so the two upstairs conditioned rooms needed to be re-named. Thankfully, Scott was accommodating and offered to revise the plan for me, on the spot, and re title them as “Library” and “Study”, which do exist in the county’s terminology.
With that quick conversation on the phone resolving those two issues, Spencer approved the permit. This is when I realized the issue with the site plan, as the permit should have been issued following Spencer’s approval.
Reviewer 1, Again
When I uploaded the revised site plan for Avila, the permit got placed back in Tiya’s queue for approval. To make matters worse, Tiya had seen and approved the site plan that was affected by the “flatten” error, so when she received the plan for the second time, it looked completely different to her.
Thankfully, I had reached out via the phone to ask about what was happening, and I was able to speak with her, which is when I figured this all out in my head. After explaining, she seemed to understand, and was able to get the plan approved for the second time fairly quickly, on 07/15/2024.
Reviewer 2, Again
Because I went around again for the site plan, a second wastewater approval was also required. The issue here became that the reviewer required a second notarized affidavit form. I don’t understand why the first one was now invalid, but this was solved with another printed form, another trip to the bank, and getting it uploaded for her.
The second wastewater approval came on 07/16/2024
Approval
3 days later, on 07/19/2024, the final approval step was passed (some background approval process) and the permit was issued. The fee was assessed at $657.