House and Barn plans are APPROVED!!!!

February 25^th

Our house plans have finally been approved!!! Amazing how heavy that weighed on my outlook for the project. After a week of more set backs it is nice to have a portion of the approval process finished!

Set back #1

I went to the Fire Authority (Riverside County Fire Department Head Quarters) on Wednesday last week with the understanding that I needed to turn in an approved site plan (which I had) and a copy of the “parcel map conditions” (these include the required distance to a hydrant and other fire safety regulations) which were determined when the original 20 acres was subdivided in the early 90's. When I got to the offices in Riverside the site plan and conditions were accepted but I also needed a letter from Rancho California Water District stating where the closest fire hydrant is located and if it is within 500ft of our proposed driveway. Bummer! It would have been nice to have gotten that done sometime in the preceding three weeks while we were waiting to get the site plan approved. So off I went to the water district when I got back to town. They charged $300 dollars to send an employee to our lot and measure from our driveway to the closest fire hydrant (it is ~60 feet from the corner of our lot and ~150 feet from the driveway). Our entire lot is not more than 450 feet wide.

Set Back #2

Yesterday (Monday) I called Suzanne Webb at the Building and Safety department to ask what other permits and/or approvals we would need to secure before we could “pull” our first permit to start building. She mentioned that the letter for the Architectural review done by our Community Services District (CSD) mentioned the need for an encroachment permit paid to the CSD to ensure our driveway was constructed correctly. The cost...$2500. Now to be fair this is a deposit based fee and as long as the “inspector” doesn't have to make multiple trips we should get most of it back. But talk about sticker shock! That is half what we paid for our house and barn plans to be checked and there wont be any engineering or other calculations involved for the driveway. It will pay for an inspector to ensure that a 20 foot wide by 30 foot long section of our driveway which crosses the right of way between our lot and the asphalt road will be build to their specifications. Wow... :(

Suzanne also reminded me that we need to get verification that we are not moving more than 50yards of soil on to or off of the lot. This was something I had forgotten about. I am glad Tom, Kimberley's dad, is a Civil engineer(one of three options for verifying we are not moving more than 50 yards of soil) who can write a letter stating that he has verified that we are within the allowable limits and don't need to obtain a grading permit. Phew!

So to date, our house plans have been approved and the Planning department has approved the designated use of the land (minus 50% to conservancy). We have remaining: school fees to pay, the septic system to finalize, the Fire Authority approval with the water district letter, and complete the Grading verification. Once these are done we can pull our first permit and get started!

I am hopeful that the septic system, Fire Authority, and Grading Verification will all be finalized in the next two weeks. The School fees should be “quick” as well. I just need to write the check...but you never know...:)

:)