Building Permit Status #3

by J Scott June 5, 2014

I guess things can change quickly down at the permits department. Yesterday, we were still waiting for several departmental approvals on our Building Permit, and today things are looking like this: Here is the status on the county website as of today: Looks like each of the departments has signed off other than Sediment Control. […]

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Building Permit Status #2

by J Scott June 4, 2014

It’s been two weeks since we submitted for our Building Permit, and things are still moving forward. I posted last week that the application had been accepted and was propagating through the system. Here is the status on the county website as of today: Based on this, it appears we have Zoning and State Highway […]

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Construction Loan Officially Approved

by J Scott June 3, 2014

It’s been three weeks since our construction loan was conditionally approved, and today we got the final approval. The fact that we’re self-employed, the fact that we’re getting a construction loan instead of a conventional loan and the fact that we’re building the house ourselves have all contributed to the approval process stretching out, but […]

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Engineering Services Bid: Fisher, Collins & Carter

by J Scott May 30, 2014

In my post detailing the bid for my ECP/SDP (engineering/site plans), I mentioned a bid for $2300 for “Other Construction Services.” These are the engineering services required during construction to ensure that everything is being done as indicated in our ECP/SDP plans. While I could use any engineering firm to handle these services, there are […]

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Dumpster Bid: Bobby’s Pottys

by J Scott May 29, 2014

Most of our contractors will require that we provide a roll-off dumpster on-site to discard trash and debris. I’m hoping to keep the number of dumpsters we’ll need to a minimum, but I imagine we’ll need at least three throughout the project (maybe more). I’ll likely be using Bobby’s Pottys for our porta potty needs, […]

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Porta Potty Bid: Bobby’s Pottys

by J Scott May 28, 2014

One of the common after-thoughts when doing a big construction project is having a porta potty (portable bathroom) onsite for your contractors. While it may not seem like a big thing, when you have contractors leaving the site to find a bathroom or horrifying your neighbors by going behind a tree, you realize that upside […]

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Building Permit Status #1

by J Scott May 27, 2014

One of the nice things about our county government is that much of the planning/zoning/permit activity is available online. This includes a detailed status of where permits are in the review process. By hopping on the website, I can get a good idea of the real-time status of my building permit — here’s where things […]

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GRADING PERMIT!

by J Scott May 26, 2014

We were expecting the Grading Permit to take about 2 weeks to get approved and issued, but it got done in just a little over a week. I received the following email the other day: This email is confirmation that your grading permit #G14000152 located at 5148 BONNIE ACRES DR , ELLICOTT CITY, MD 21043 […]

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Utility/Ground Work Bid: South Carroll Backhoe

by J Scott May 23, 2014

After the seemingly ridiculous bid we got on the water meter installation the other day (which did allow us to get our permits), we had another company come out to give us another bid on the work (South Carroll Backhoe, Inc). Not only was the bid for the utility work a good bit less, but […]

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Pre-Construction Appraisal

by J Scott May 22, 2014

As part of our construction loan, the bank ordered a pre-construction appraisal on the property. Basically, this is an estimation of the value of the property we planned to build based on today’s values and our specific building plans. In order to get the full loan amount, we needed the appraisal to indicate our house […]

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Building Permit Application Submitted

by J Scott May 21, 2014

Finally! We’ve submitted for our Building Permit… After getting the Water Meter installation bid last night, I called the head of the utilities department first thing morning to see when I could stop in to complete the process. He first started to tell me that he was busy for the next couple days, but then […]

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