[Cob] (no subject)

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, Scott Van Kirk wrote:

> Jilly,
>
> Just my 2 cents. If I were in your shoes, I would call up the building
> department and explain the situation to them.  Get them on your side.  I
[snip]
> don't have a lot of experience or money.  Assuming that they will be the
> enemy from the
> outset seems like a mistake to me.  If you go in with that attitude, they
> will respond in kind.

While it might be a mistake to assume they are the enemy, it is a good
idea to be very careful about what you reveal to them early on, if they
know who you are, where you live and what you are planning, it could make
things difficult for you if you decide to go renegade and your building
department is one of the hostile ones.  If you can, check around with
others who have built in your area to see what the local building
department is like, and initially talking to them anonymously or in very
general terms might be a good idea.

Keep in mind that while there are many very good helpful building
departments, there are often limits to what they can allow / overlook, but
they might be happy to let you "get away" with doing something that they
cannot offically approve/know about.  There are also some very hostile
building departments who will go out of their way to cause trouble for you
just because they can.  In the area where I live the building department
has such a bad reputation that local conventional builders generally avoid
doing projects in this county if they can find work elsewhere, and home
owners doing conventional projects which they got permits for, swear they
won't apply for permits or deal with the building department again.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy at deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
                      |    Embedded Systems, Real-time, Device Drivers
Phone: (800) 467-5820 | Networking, Scientific & Engineering Applications
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