Almost ready to start...

Last week, after we got notice that we had our partial building permit, I contacted the survey company to get them started on staking out the lot. I also followed up on Friday that they had all they needed. I then arranged with the excavation crew. Excavating *may* start this Friday. Their previous job was due to be finished Thursday, so they'd start on ours on Friday or early next week. Monday is a holiday, so they'd likely start on Wednesday.

MrDinks and I went to the lot on Sunday and set up the time lapse camera. So we'll soon have video of our weeds growing.

Foundation will be scheduled once the excavation starts. We decided to go with BIL's guy. He won't do the insulation, even though we sent him a document produced by the federal government recommending this as the way to go. We'll have to do the insulation ourselves once he's done.

I'm still working on getting a framer lined up. They all say they're too busy to start on our job in the next month. That might be okay, given other delays. But not a single one has even given us a quote. So I'm not sure how I can even get them scheduled. Hopefully that means nobody else is scheduling them, either?

Then, this afternoon, I got an email from the survey company asking when I wanted them to do the staking. Um, what? I thought it was going on right now! I told them the diggers were coming on Friday, so they'll be staking tomorrow (Thursday). They then called Ryan for some clarification, and apparently told him that they're staking it out tomorrow. Phew.

I am also finalizing the ensuite bathroom design. I have been considering this shower base. It's the Fleurco Urbana. It has storage underneath the bench. We'd build the wall around it such that you could access the back storage from the toilet room.

However, this baby takes about 3 months to order in. If this is what I want, I need to order it now to get it here before we're plumbing the bathroom. We should probably have it before we frame.

So, I need to confirm that there's nothing out there I want to tile the floor of the shower, and the shower bench with. If not, I need this base. So I'm back to visiting tile show rooms.

This has led me to discover the floor tile I wanted for the ensuite is discontinued. My second choice is also discontinued. Every other ugly or expensive stuff I saw 6 months ago is still around. And not much is new. So, I'm back to visiting EVERY show room. In my defense, though, in the case of the floor tile, I tried to order it in May. It was nice enough and cheap enough to be worth storing it for 6+ months. But it was backordered. Now, it is no longer even on display in the showroom.

I've learned my lesson. When I pick something, I will order it. I won't wait until a month before I need it, I will buy it NOW.

Just gotta decide first. :)

Permission to dig

We got an email from Ryan this morning that he went into the city and got our building permit application submitted.

Yesterday, I was still skeptical. Ryan was again asking for the "deck engineering". After emails, texts and voicemails, we finally got on the phone. BIL was right, he was talking about the porch posts. Ryan predicted the city would want us to show the support for the posts. That's what BIL has been saying all along. But Ryan didn't think it would be good enough to just show sono tubes and rebar. He thought they'd want an engineer letter confirming that was the proper support. BIL had said they wouldn't. Ryan predicted he would be sent home at the counter.

I convinced Ryan to try to submit it. If they wanted an engineer's letter, we'd get it. If we didn't apply now, we could spend another 2 weeks getting more engineering done, and drawings updated. That could be a waste of time if the city didn't need it anyway.

He agreed, and went down and submitted the application. They said nothing about the porch posts. They want an engineer's letter for the header above the garage door. But they took the application and we need to provide that when we get it. They also wanted the front windows on the 3rd floor lowered. Ryan pulled out his pen and white out and changed that on site.

And then he got our partial permit, which allows us to dig our foundation while they review the application.

So, now I need to book the survey, excavators and foundation crews. I also need to find a framer. The survey will probably be done next week. The excavators are booking about 2 weeks out. I am waiting on one guy to update his quote, and then we can pick one.

I still have to find a foundation guy who will do the exterior insulation at a reasonable price. I called one guy today whose name was on a couple of construction site fences. He scoffed at the "short notice" I was giving him. Still digging up other potentials. 

No BP...

So, I was right to be skeptical. When Ryan said last week, "I have an appointment on Tuesday," he meant NEXT Tuesday.

He doesn't actually need an appointment. He can go in any day and wait in line. And I understand that he's a busy guy, and standing in line at the city isn't the best use of his time. Or anyone's really. But we need to get this going. So he could have just fixed the drawings and sent them to me and I could have taken them in. But no, he figured he had another week to sit on these small changes.

With my harassment yesterday, he figured out I was expecting this today, so he agreed to go in on Thursday. Ok, only 2 more days.

Then tonight, he sent me an email asking for the engineering for the deck posts. Engineering for the deck posts? Who engineers their deck posts? The deck is less than 2' off the ground. Plus, if this was necessary, why not ask for it 6 days ago when we decided the engineering was done? BIL was CC'd on this, and he called me to talk me out of going to Ryan's house with a shovel.

He thinks Ryan is referring to the porch posts, not the deck posts. How does an architect not understand the difference between a porch and a deck? There are posts at the front of the porch, holding up a roof. BIL is waiting for Ryan to put these posts on the drawing. They don't need to be engineered, they just need to be put on the drawing so everyone knows where to put them.

So, we wait on Ryan. 

The eve of applying for a building permit. Maybe?

So, the new home warranty issue has been put to rest. Progressive confirmed the registration almost immediately, and I was able to download a certificate that we need to print out for the the building permit application.

The question of the joists on top or inside the foundation wall has also been resolved. At some point, Ryan decided that we had the head room to put the joists on top of the wall, and it's apparently cheaper to build, so he drew it that way. And he didn't tell us he changed his mind.

In the back corner of the building, the city has asked us to increase the grade and slope it so that no water drains from our property onto the neighbour's. Apparently it wasn't properly graded when the neighbour's house was built, since these used to be one yard. But even though we're required to increase the grade, we're not allowed to make the house higher. So a couple inches of dirt will come above the concrete wall and butt up against our rim joist. The plan is to wrap this in "blue skin" to waterproof it. The engineer asked about it a couple of weeks ago, and everyone was in agreement.

So then, when I noticed the drawings were changed I asked about it, raising a whole lot of misunderstanding. Rather than talking to me and confirming, Ryan simply sent me an email and agreed to change the drawings. I finally got him on the phone to ask about the ceiling heights. He said that the joist location wouldn't change. If we (or the engineer) wanted to have the joists inside concrete, we would make the concrete wall taller to come higher above grade. He thought the engineer wanted this because of the rim joist meeting grade in the back corner. He forgot we'd already discussed this with the engineer.

I confirmed with BIL that he doesn't see an issue with the rubber wrapped wood meeting grade. So, nothing needs to change in the drawings or engineering letter.

Now, we just needed to have Ryan update his drawings to show the location of the concrete supports for the posts. He commented on Thursday that we could apply for the BP "next week". (So, this week.) On Friday, I texted him asking if we were going to be applying on Monday (today). He replied that he had made an appointment for Tuesday (tomorrow). I may have done an embarrassing little dance when I got that text.

I got a call today from someone I was waiting on a foundation quote for. He told me we had no foundation engineering done. I told him it was in the second engineer's letter. He told me that was just the pad/footing design. The other letter apparently didn't have any foundation stuff in it, and it couldn't because the engineering was done by the truss company, and they only know wood. We have to go to another company to get the concrete stuff engineered. What? But didn't we hire them to do the engineering because BIL gets them to do his projects? So I called BIL. Nope. He has never used this company to do foundation engineering. Apparently I am the one who told him that they do foundation engineering now. Crap. I don't remember saying that. So, apparently we paid them to engineer a couple of pieces, but we still have to pay someone else, and we probably won't have it by tomorrow. Just as I'm about to phone MrDinks and let him know BP day is getting delayed, the foundation guy called me back. He made a mistake. He hadn't expected to find what he was looking for in the same letter as the wall engineering, so he missed it. But they have absolutely done the engineering we need.

At this point, I realized that we're going to need a line in the budget for alcohol. I'm going to need a lot of it over the next year.

When MrDinks got home, he just laughed when I told him that the foundation guy said we didn't have foundation engineering done. Apparently it was HIM that told BIL that the truss company offered this service now. I'm not sure how he knew that. I'm the one who has actually spoken to them. And I'm not convinced MrDinks listens to me when I relay these messages. But, he was right. (I probably shouldn't admit that online.)

Meanwhile, I am pretty sure Ryan is going to need some paperwork from me in order to apply for the BP. But I haven't been able to reach him. He hasn't asked for the NHW paperwork. And he hasn't asked for the names of the trades we're planning to use, which is required for the application form. There's also a document that MrDinks, BIL, or I need to sign, promising to use a waterproof exterior material. (Why? Are there people cladding their houses in marshmallow? Who knows? But it's in the BP application checklist.) Ryan hasn't asked for that. I texted him this morning asking about the form we have to fill out to determine the cost of the BP. The form includes the square footage of the different areas of the house, the number of fireplaces, what type of heating we're using, etc. He replied this evening that he hadn't filled out the form yet. I asked what time his appointment is tomorrow, and he hasn't responded. I'll bet you can hear my sigh.

I'm not confident this is actually happening. Or, if he makes the appointment, is he going to be sent home for not having all the right pieces?

I'm focusing now on lining up surveying, excavating and foundations. On Friday, BIL contacted the first excavator I have a quote for, and he said he's busy until the end of August. The last quote I got was too vague, so BIL isn't comfortable using him. Buh. So we have to contact a couple more people.

I now have 3 quotes for the foundation. A guy I found on Google has quoted really low. His quote is really vague, except for where it explicitly excludes stuff. I think we'll skip him. The guy BIL recommended is the mid-price quote. But he won't insulate the foundation beyond what is basic code. He claims it can't be done because it would affect the water proofing. But Ryan has done it, and the environmental consultant has recommended it. This guy just doesn't know how to do it. The 3rd quote (the guy who gave me a heart attack today) is higher than the first 2 combined, but he's doing the proper insulation. I'm going to try and get the contact info out of Ryan for the guy who did his foundation.

Surveying is rather straight forward, and will likely be done by the end of the week. I'm just not in a hurry to get it done too soon before we get the BP in. 

New Home Warranty, part III and Foundation Engineering

Early last week, the 2 mortgage brokers and the lawyer I had left voicemails for called me back.

The interesting information from the lawyer is that even if we were going with a builder, the new home warranty (NHW) is useless. She has clients who bought warrantied homes who then spent 6 years in legal battles trying to get their issues addressed by the builder and warranty provider. The other thing is that the inspections would probably never happen, so we shouldn't worry about that clause in the contract.

The first mortgage broker confirmed that the NHW was definitely required. Her opinion was that even if we convinced someone we were *allowed* to sell the house, and if we could find someone willing to buy it with the huge risk that it had no warranty, that no bank would give THEM a mortgage. She did suggest one of the other companies that provide a NHW to owner-builders. It's one of the companies who had previously not returned my call, Blanket Home Warranty. But she insisted that they have a much better program for owner-builders. So I tried calling them again. I left a voicemail for 3 different people this time, and got a response from 1.

Blanket wants an $860 application fee, which I thought was much better than Progressive's $4k. But then the guy kept talking. If you're approved, they want a $5000 enrollment fee. Their security deposit is $15k, and is held for 5 years instead of Progressive's 2 years. I don't see how the mortgage broker thinks this is a better program for owner-builders.

I had the guy send me the application forms so I could see if it was at least less restrictive than Progressive. Nope. Blanket's form required a lot of personal financial information, which is completely unnecessary for an owner-builder.

Progressive's $14k suddenly looked like a steal.

The other mortgage broker was much more optimistic about the whole NHW thing. He didn't think a bank would care about the NHW. If the government approved our exemption, then that should be good enough for the bank. As for future buyers needing it for their mortgage, he said no bank has ever asked the status of a home warranty before, and he couldn't imagine they'd start now.

We decided to try getting the warranty through Progressive. We figured there would be some new road block, so we might as well get it started so we could find out what it was. At least now we knew that if they were going to be dicks about it, we could go for the exemption. But getting the warranty appeared to be the quickest and least risk.

We submitted our paperwork, sent them a cashier's check, and as of today, we have a new home warranty for our house.

Last week, I got someone on the phone at the province to tell me the name the email about the website access would be coming from. I searched on that, and apparently it came in on June 24. Gmail filed it away somewhere I couldn't find it. MrDinks got his access about 5 days after we applied for it.

So now that we have approval from Progressive, I filled in the web form to register the warranty with the province. Apparently now Progressive has to confirm the registration, and then we can apply for our building permit.

Meanwhile, we got the engineering letter, and Ryan said we were ready to apply as soon as we got the NHW. With the engineering done, and our supposedly final drawings, I started sending them for quotes for our foundation. At this point, I noticed a problem with the drawings of how the main floor joists meet the basement walls.

Most commonly, the floor joists sit on top of the basement wall. But in newer in-fills, where height is restricted and people want high ceilings, the floor joists are mounted inside the basement walls. So the main floor sits lower to the ground. Ryan has been saying since the beginning that we'd be doing it the newer way. But on the engineering drawings, they show the joists sitting on top. I realized that's how Ryan had drawn it, so the engineer based his drawing on that. I phoned Ryan to confirm how this is supposed to be. He replied by email that the joists are supposed to be inside the concrete walls, and that he'd change his drawing. However, that was on Friday, and there are still questions on what this does to our ceiling heights and basement depth. Is the basement wall staying the same height? Or being made a foot taller? If it's the same height, does the basement need to be dug deeper? Do we get an extra foot of ceiling height on the main floor? Is there a mistake on dimensions somewhere? Waiting on Ryan.

Additionally, BIL noticed that our foundation was incomplete. The locations of pilings under the posts are missing. Ryan agreed to add these to his drawings, but needs the engineer to tell him how big they need to be. So I contacted the engineer, who essentially said, "Oh, you wanted us to engineer the foundation, too? We just engineered the walls."

Really? Do people really get one engineer to do the walls and someone else to do the foundation? I don't know all the stuff that needs to be engineered. I didn't know I had to specify it all.

So they've updated that part, and Ryan needs to add it to his drawings. And then, maybe, we can apply for building permits. I'm a little afraid that by typing that, I've unleashed a new monster of a road block that we're going to come crashing into. 

New Home Warranty, part II

So, two weeks and many phone calls later, we still don't have the new home warranty, and we haven't applied for an exemption yet.

First problem, access to the government website where we apply for the exemption or register the warranty. Still don't have it. After a week, I called the 800 number, and they submitted the request again. Of course, this was after assuring them several times that the response was NOT in my junk folder. This time, she promised 3 days, max. So, 3 days later (subtracting weekends and Canada Day) I called again. I got the same person again, Deanne. She said that since it hadn't been a *full* 3 business days yet, it technically wasn't a problem, and she refused to escalate it. Apparently you don't count the day you request, and they have until 4pm on the 3rd day, so she was confident it would show up in the next 2 hours. But just in case, she submitted it again. And just in case, I submitted it again from my other email account, AND I submitted a request with MrDinks' information. We have to wait another few days before attempting to escalate it again. But I think it's fairly obvious their process is broken. We've now got 5 requests in that have slipped through the cracks. If it's automated, is the automated process even running? If it's a guy entering in the requests manually, has he been showing up for work? I'm skeptical that the issue is too many owner builders trying to register their warranties that he's simply overwhelmed. Other aspects of this issue are telling me we are the first owner builders to attempt to build a house in Alberta since this law was enacted.

As I mentioned earlier, the first company I talked to simply doesn't deal with owner builders. One of the 3 companies who I left voicemails for returned my call 3 days later and informed me that they don't deal with owner builders. The other 2 completely ignored my call. So that leaves Progressive Home Warranty as the only company that will sell a "warranty" to an owner builder. However, their program is written for builders, and we have to follow the process for builders.

This is how it works. For the first 2 years from the time we move into the house, the builder (us) is responsible for any issues. If the homeowner (us) reports an issue to the builder (us) and the builder (us) refuses to fix it, the homeowner (us) can report it to the warranty program who will act as a mediator between the builder (us) and the homeowner (us). If they agree with the homeowner (us), and the builder (us) still refuses to fix it, then Progressive has it fixed and takes it out of the $10k security deposit we provided. If the fix exceeds the $10k, they bill the builder (us). In case you haven't noticed the issue here, if we complain to them about an issue that we refuse to fix, they'll use our money to fix it on our behalf and bill us for the remainder. I can absolutely, 100% guarantee this will never happen. But nobody believes me. Well, maybe they do, but this is the process. They don't have a process for people building for themselves. They believe they are doing me a favour letting me give them $14k. I'm not sure if that applies to Builder Me, or Homeowner Me. But they're doing one of us a favour.

They're actually operating on the assumption that despite our protests, we're really building this house to sell. Because, in their opinion (and evidently the opinion of the other 4 companies who won't even talk to us), if we were really building it to live in, we'd get the exemption.

Assuming we weren't our own builder, would this be a worthwhile program? Not likely. In the event of the mediation, if they see a clear fault on the part of the builder, they cover it and charge the builder. But, they have a long term relationship with the builder. How often are they going to side with the homeowner? The majority of the time, they step back and suggest the builder and homeowner go to court. Well, that was $14k well spent! And the $14k is ALWAYS paid by the homeowner. The difference between new house buyers and owner builders is that owner builders pay it directly. New house buyers pay it as part of the cost of the build. It might be a little less for a buyer, since the security deposit comes back to the builder (or gets spread over multiple houses). But they are still going to pay the costs of fronting the security deposit.

After 2 years, up to 10 years, it becomes an insurance policy on the structure and exterior envelope. So we get "something" out of it.

Another issue I have with this program is that we have to agree to random inspections, and ANYTHING they don't like, for any reason, at any time, we have to change. We're already required to do city inspections, which we're paying for, (we pay a 3rd party engineer to inspect, and then we pay the city to read the engineer's report) and now we're paying again for a more thorough, random, and even more binding inspection. If the Progressive inspector wants something changed, not only do we have to pay to change it, but we have to pay him another $250 to come back and re-inspect it. And, I suspect that we may need to pay the engineer to re-inspect it, too. At least the city inspector has clear guidelines to follow, and even then there's often calls made at their own discretion, but it's predictable based on experience of the trades. The city inspector doesn't have carte blanche to stop the build if he thinks the windows should be 6" bigger than the plans called for. The Progressive account rep assures me it's just anything that doesn't meet code, or isn't, in their opinion, "quality". She doesn't understand the concept that "quality" is subjective. Besides, the contract is written such that ANYTHING may need to be changed. If they are just concerned that we're building to code or better, then put that in the contract. Don't word the contract such that absolutely anything, at any random time, at their sole discretion, must be changed at our expense. But it's worded like that because they want the freedom to force the builder (us) to make changes they feel the homeowner (still us) would want.

To me, that's just too much of a risk. The odds that a person we give free reign is going to impede our build somewhere along the way just to justify his existence? That seems extremely likely. It's a bigger risk than the possibility that someday, we might want to sell and will not be able to buy this coverage retroactively. So, we're going for the exemption. As soon as we get access to apply for it. Wait, how does this affect our mortgage? Better call the bank.

First person I talked to at the bank, our designated contact for our land mortgage, was comically clueless. She told me that the bank would require us to get the warranty because they believed that by qualifying for the warranty, it somehow assured the bank that we are qualified to build a house. No, it means we are qualified to write a check for $14k. Eventually, she confessed that she hasn't setup a build mortgage in years, and never for this bank. Better talk to someone who can at least sound like she knows what she's talking about. The second person stated that the bank requires the warranty because the house can't be sold for 10 years. If they put a mortgage on the property, and we default, they can't sell the property either. So they don't want to loan money against it. That's a really weird (and unlikely?) part of the law, but it's the same thing that the city employee told Ryan, and what the first provincial employee told me.

I then asked Progressive about buying the "warranty" later, if we decide to sell. If that's a possibility, then the bank shouldn't have an issue, right? Well, Progressive has never been asked to sell that, so they won't promise they ever will. And it would be a risk to them to offer a warranty or insurance on work they weren't allowed to inspect during the build. So the cost of the "warranty" would go up to reflect that risk, if they would even offer it at all. I guess we're back to getting the warranty upfront.

Now, to figure out how to provide the security deposit. We can hand this random company $10k and hope they are still around in 3 years (assuming it takes a year to build the house, HA!) and can be convinced to give it back without interest. Or we can set up a letter of credit through a bank. The first thing I've learned about a "Letter of Credit", is that "credit" is not the kind where the bank loans you money. It's the kind of "credit" that means there's a balance in your account. So instead of a letter assuring someone that the bank will give us money if we need it, it's a letter telling them we've set aside money and the bank will give it to them whenever they ask for it. And despite the fact that it will never be drawn on as long as we own this house, the bank will not issue the letter without us setting aside the money. Yet another group of people who can't seem to believe we would never make a claim against ourselves and then refuse to act on it.

Hmm, can I claim against warranty if MrDinks isn't completing the honey-do list? Yeah, probably not.

The second thing I've learned about a letter of credit is that they cost a lot of money to set up, and possibly take a lot of time. So even if we can get an account with 1% interest, the letter of credit will still cost us about $400 over 3 years. And it might take the bank a month to figure out how to create an account for us, and write a letter.

The third thing I've learned about letters of credit is that they don't typically issue them to individuals. The builder is supposed to have set up a company. What about if the builder is the homeowner? You're supposed to get the exemption. Are you dizzy yet?

I finally found the actual text of this law online. Like most laws, it's confusing. I can see how people are interpreting it as "the house can't be sold for 10 years." But I can also see how there was an intent to allow people to get the exemption, and if so, then they need to disclose the lack of warranty to a potential buyer. So, now we hire a lawyer?

But, it doesn't matter how *I* interpret the law. If the bank won't give us a mortgage, we're stuck. We can come up with the money to build without a build mortgage. But, we'll probably want to get a line of credit on it at some point. If we can't get a build mortgage, we can't get a HELOC, right? At the start of this, I was under the impression that only one bank would give us a build mortgage. There was only one bank willing to give us a mortgage on bare land. So it would stand to reason they'd be the only ones willing to mortgage a build, right? Actually, no. Apparently once you have land, they all want in on the build financing. So now I have messages in to 2 mortgage brokers to find out if any of them have interpreted the law in our favour.

And in the midst of all this, I'm stuck between this poorly planned law and MrDinks. I'm the one calling and talking to these people, and reading the rules. So he's frustrated with the law, and only has me to yell at. Our first home building marriage arguments. Thank-you, Alberta!

And for icing on the cake, we got a letter from the city today threatening to fine us if we don't do something about the weeds on the lot immediately. Well, within 7 days. From the date of the letter sent a week ago. You know what our plan for the weeds was? We were supposed to dig a freaking hole! We were supposed to be digging and driving huge trucks over the dirt so weeds wouldn't have a chance to grow. We've been going over regularly and mowing the boulevard and spraying the bad weeds, but that's apparently not enough. Apparently one of the neighbours complained about the eyesore of an empty lot. And the city can't make a connection between their own roadblocks and the fact that there's an empty lot. Different departments, you know. (Even though the law causing the current problem is provincial, it specifically says we need the warranty before the city can ISSUE the building permit. We could theoretically be letting the city go over our building plans while we wait on the exemption or the letter of credit. But the city is adding their own level of ridiculousness to this by not allowing us to APPLY for the building permit until the warranty is sorted out.)

So, right now, I'm ready to throw in the towel. Arguing with MrDinks, giving more money to all the governments, so we can live next to assholes who make bylaw complaints? Anyone want to buy some dirt?