Punaro Glen Construction: Beginning of September

We have a hole in the ground!

Only problem… we don’t technically have a building permit yet. They can’t set the footers until they have the permit. We’ve been stuck in this loop of the building inspector saying he’s going to issue the permit, but first wanted the fire chief to give an opinion on the driveway. That delayed a week. Then the fire chief apparently wants to issue a letter saying that due to the driveway they will issue a letter saying that their services may be limited (if they can’t get up the hill). Fine. But it’s taking them several weeks to issue the letter and the building inspector wants me to have the letter before issuing the permit.

So I met with him yesterday, hoping he had the permit or at least the letter, but all he wanted to do was give me a printout of a section of the code and tell me how important he feels sprinkler systems are. To which I said I didn’t disagree, but since they’re not required by code and not included in our budget, we likely wouldn’t be adding one. That’s despite the fact that I asked our builder to get a couple quotes for them just to see how much it would be. We know people that spent $20,000 on a sprinkler system, so I’m not that hopeful it’s going to be affordable.

The builders want to get pouring the footers this week, so we’re hoping all this will be resolved by tomorrow. We’re on a deadline now where we have to close the construction loan by the end of this month, so the foundation needs to be poured and they need to get a spot survey showing where the house is placed on the land before we can do that. All we can do is keep nudging people along in the right direction.

Oh, and drink. Why not toast the groundbreaking with a can of wine from Point of the Bluff Vineyards and have a little picnic in the hole? We know how to class it up!