We now have the building permit and are cleared hot to start! The process was a bit convoluted but in the end it all worked out. Yesterday we had a bit of a concern due to possible requirements for stormwater management system installation requirements and the near-term elimination of the position in the County that reviews and approves those permits. After some discussion with the erosion control planners we agreed to install a rainwater management system which will likely tie into our drainage systems and allow collection in a cistern. The erosion control mechanism is important due to the slope of the land and the cistern will help us harvest rainwater for landscape irrigation. Having the metal roof will clearly increase our ability to collect clear rainwater. We saw a system at one house on the Green Homebuilders Tour several weeks back and were impressed with it at the time. We will do some research for rainwater collection and stormwater management to make sure we control the erosion and use the collected water to irrigate our landscaping.
The surveyor was scheduled to visit the site earlier today and clearly mark the house site and driveway centerline. We removed the "billions and billions" of marking flags on the property yesterday so we have one clear set - earlier flagging efforts had been very zealous to say the least. With the soils engineer (septic field location) and the surveyor adding to the collection we had places on the site it was looking like a mine-field of markers. We did leave the main/repair areas for the septic marked since we won't be disturbing that area immediately.
We'll start posting pictures of the progress on clearing the land tomorrow if all works as planned. This is an exciting part since what we've been visualizing may soon be reality. It's going to be hard to see those nice trees come down but fortunately we can save most of the larger oak trees. We have some pretty large pines that may be site-milled to provide our T&G ceiling for the family room and maybe even the covered deck. The oak that we do have to harvest will be seasoned a bit longer before we use it for projects around the house. There are also small amounts of walnut, cedar, and other hardwoods but unfortunately not much poplar which will be what we use for the wood trim (stained, not painted).
We should have our order finalized for the Hoco windows by the end of the week. We're still in limbo on the fire rated door between the garage and the house. I plan to visit the Fire Dept to discuss the requirements with them. The requirement as we understand it is for a 20 minute fire-rated door but we need to have specifics to order a door and specify the wall opening. We did have one reading of Code that said we could not have glass in the doors but many public buildings meet code by using tempered glass or installing wire-mesh glass. The main point is to allow occupants to escape to safety before the door/window fail (burn through). More research to follow on this subject! Our next quest is the skylights - we have found a source that claims R-20 but so far we haven't been able to get any test data supporting the claims. The manufacturer is Tubular Skylights. The use of dead-air space is paramount to their claims to it appears that installation methods and techniques are crucial to maintaining the started R-value.
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