How do I hate Thee. Let me count the ways.Pima County Development Services is not on my happy list. They put a kibosh on our house plans. They are holding us to code on a stick built house when our house is NOT a stick built house. Their issue is that the over two-story north wall of the house was not going to have any bracing in it, but though "code" says that walls have to have bracing every 12 feet. We tried to see if we could get them to budge on it since but they are government officials and have no hearts inside their bodies. The options that were presented to get around the "code" were going to be too expensive and were going to change the aesthetics that we were going for with the north half of the house, so we are having the house redesigned.
What does this mean? It means we get to wait even longer before we get to start construction and we have to wait for the mechanical engineer, who was a big bottleneck in completing the first design, to get his portion done. The waiting continues!
I do want to say that there is one person worth their weight in gold down at the county, Tom Drzazgowski. He is the deputy chief zoning inspector and has been extremely helpful in getting through the permitting of our "Water Pumping and Storage Facility" (aka: a well used by more than one lot). He has also been available for me to pose some hypothetical situations and how we could get through all this red tape with the least amount of hassle. It just goes to show that there are good people every where, even in the Dream Crusher Department.
4 comments:
Dream Crushers! I'll get the toliet paper and eggs all you gotta do is show up.....
This is terrible. The county is full of lifetime bureaucrats. For that matter, so is the city. When I tried to get a permit to do my interior remodel job a couple years ago, they wanted me to prove that the house was far enough from the property line... for a house whose walls had been there for 55 years!
If it were possible, I'd march down to their little kingdom, I mean office, and tell them off for you. I say forget them and let them keep their permit.
By the way, I found an advertisement in the latest issue of Fine Homebuilding for insulated concrete foam block. It may be worthwhile to check it out:
www.amvicsystem.com
Also, Taunton press, the publishers of Fine Homebuilding has a website with a bunch of green building ideas. See:
www.greenbuildingadvisor.com
Sorry Ben.
An I thought the military was bad about rules and regulations. Pima is a four letter word you know.
Please post more...your adoring public is waiting!
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