We have permits!

Judgement Day!

I got a call from the City of Toledo yesterday to come down to City Hall to sign some paperwork for the building permits.  I was met by someone my sister went to High School with (Jed Cohen), who apparently was on his first day as the Toledo City Planner.  Small world.

There were a few things Adair didn't fill out correctly on the application to the County, so I had to fix some things and autograph some others.  I also had to write a short "Wetlands Preservation Plan", which basically means I need to stack hay bails at the bottom of the fill area to prevent the newly dug dirt from flowing in to the wetland.

Heaven forbid the DIRT mix with the WET DIRT!

Jed informed me that me entire application was going back on the desk of the "Head Cheese" in the morning (which would be today) and that I should know something by this afternoon or Monday at the latest!

I also got a call from the PUD yesterday complaining that my conduit run was at LEAST 5' longer than they originally thought... so the grumpy union guy said that MAYBE it would be done today, but most likely Monday... as apparently it's REALLY difficult to drive the 1.5 miles and cut more cable...

Adair's final site evaluation is on Wednesday, so we should be ready to start the foundation on Thursday! 

PUD says "Wrong!"

The PUD showed up to install the wires and found this:

An hour of my life, and about a gallon of sweat later.... it looked like this

Last I saw this morning, the conduit had been installed to the transformer, but the wire had not been run and the meter was not installed.  We did get the "Green tag" from the county indicating they inspected the temp power setup, but I have no idea what PUD's schedule is.  I'm a little bitter about the experience since they seem to have treated me differently than they treat CoastCom.  Honestly, I think the PUD guy just didn't want to get hot digging, so he made up some thing about how I had to do it for him.  Totally lame

I HAVE THE POWER!

I hate making a blog post without pictures.... so insert cliche' late 80's cartoon character "He-Man"

 I HAVE THE POWER!

OK, now that that's out of the way....

Friday, I went to the County and purchased a temporary power permit ($68.50).

This weekend was somewhat productive.  Our ditch is now completely filled and we installed a temporary power pole near the PUD handhold.  It turns out that the temporary power pole is not something you can simply go down to Fred Meyer and purchase for $50.  Go figure.  I made some calls to local electricians to figure out exactly what I needed.  It would have cost me about $500 to go down to Platt and build myself a new one.  Add to that, the $12 8' ground rod and the $50 in direct bury power cable.. and I was looking at close to $600 for the stupid thing.

Enter E2 Electric in Newport.  Rich was nice enough to "rent" me a temporary power pole for the 6 months during construction.  He supplied everything except the ground rod ($12) for a cool $200!  It turns out that normally electricians will install a temp pole at your location for free if you use them to wire your house.  Since I have 0 control over WHO wires my house, I had to get creative.

The PUD will be on-site in about 30 minutes to run the wire for my homesite.  They are running 400amp rated wire so I can upgrade my service down the road once the shop is complete.  Once the County completes the inspection, they will "green tag" my power pole.. and the PUD will install the meter.  Once the power is done, I will be READY FOR SITE INSPECTION!

Back- breaking weekend

As we wind down towards the start of construction, it becomes easier and easier to envision ourselves in the new space.

Dad and I spent half-day Saturday, half-day Sunday and all day Monday working on the property.  Dad drove the machine which left me as the 'ditch man'.  Apparently there are all sorts of protocol items that the 'ditch man' should know in a formal construction operation.   This was NOT a formal construction operation :)

Things we accomplished this weekend:

Ditch dug from the transformer to the home-site.  

One 3" conduit for power and one 1" pipe for water.

Our water meter was installed last week, so I had to tap into it.  

Note there are 2 couplers there.... it turns out one should WAIT for the 

PVC to dry before turning on the water.  Lesson learned.. the hard way.

Temporary water installed.

Power hand-hold installed, ready for the PUD

Home-site cleared and graded. 

Home stretch!

I met with Josh yesterday on the way home from Lincoln City to discuss some issues we were having with the foundation plan.

Bad news:  Our "Tall-Crawl" aka daylight basement was going to require Engineering because of lack of lateral support for the back wall.

Good news:  Josh thinks there is enough in the foundation budget to cover most of the costs to pour a slab.  The slab will provide lateral support for all 3 concrete walls, and is something that we would have done anyways further down the road.  Plus it gives us a LOT more usable storage downstairs (like, 1560 sq ft).  Can you say temporary shop??

It was either spend $1000 now on Engineering plus whatever funky they would require... or buck up and spend $3k - $4k now for the slab and eliminate the Engineering costs.  $1k now and $4k later, or $4k now.  Easy decision.  Especially since we had budgeted $15k for the site prep costs, and I've spent about $800 so far on rock for the road.  Good thing we have an excavator!  Taking DIY to the next level, and saving about $10k.

In other news:  I picked up about 800' of conduit and PVC today for the water, sewer, communications and power.  Were going to finish up the dig-out and run our conduits this weekend.  Josh said our floorplans will arrive next week and we can apply for permits at the same time.  Were about 2 weeks out before the foundation is poured!

Conduit!

No pics of the build, but here is Tyler :)