Yes, survive is in fact the correct word when talking about building permits. They are no fun. I like to write, but even writing about building permits is no fun. So let me offer my condolences in advance for the time you will have to spend dealing with permits.
The very first step in getting building permits for your new home is to call the city or county you plan on building in. When you make this call, make sure you have all of your information handy to be able to answer questions. They will want to know exactly where you want to build, and a few other general details before they can send you the correct forms.
When I made my first call to Grant County building department I had preconceived notions about how our interaction would be. People had warned me that it would be a pain to go through all the necessary steps. They said it would take forever, that they were very strict, and that it would cost a lot of money. It WAS a pain, it DID take forever, and the requirements WERE very strict, but …….My mistake was made when I assumed the people at the building department were out to get me. I seriously made that phone call feeling like I was headed to battle. I thought I would have to fight everything, search for ways around things, and deal with difficult people. The reality is, the people that work at Grant County building department were, and are, there to HELP me. From day 1, they were incredibly kind to me. The receptionist wrote notes on my packet to guide me in the right direction, she sent me extra papers whenever I asked, and she gave me updates on my pending permits. The man in charge of reviewing my building plans and helping me through the paperwork was just as helpful as the receptionist. When I told him I was going to be the general contractor of our new home, he was even more helpful than before. He gave me suggestions and told me the different things I would need to do to make this work. I felt guilty for assuming the people would be as difficult as the paperwork. Consider the people at the building department as resources rather than roadblocks and you will be off to a better start than I was.
This brings me to the paperwork which was, in fact, DIFFICULT. The reason it was difficult was because I didn’t know anything. I didn’t understand what it was telling me to do, and it was incredibly overwhelming. I asked them to email me the paperwork, as well as mail it to me. I was really happy I did that because the email felt really overwhelming. The paperwork I could at least take one page as a time and organize them into the things I understand and the things I didn’t. I could have just printed them off, yes, but the receptionist also wrote notes and circled things on the printed version that she mailed me. I would recommend requesting it to be emailed and mailed to you.
The reason building permits take such a long time to complete is because there are several different departments you have to work with. You have to complete things in order, and each thing has to be completed before you can move on.
So let’s take a sloooooow walk through the paperwork required in my county shall we? Hopefully yours is similar enough to mine that my walk through helps you out.
^^^What permits you need to build a house^^^
The receptionist sent me an overview email with some instructions and phone numbers. There were 11 attachments of things I needed to complete, but that was not all the paperwork I had to fill out. I ended up getting more paperwork from a few of the departments I had to call. It’s important to note that I know for a fact if you are building within city limits the requirements are different than for a home in the country. Our new home is located in the country about five miles from city limits so keep that in mind when comparing your building permits to ours.
We found out quickly that everyone we called wanted an address. We needed an address to put on the paperwork and for people to actually find us. Most everyone needed a parcel number too, but they wouldn’t issue anything without an official address first.
The parcel number is the number assigned to the lot you are building on. If you don’t know this number, you can call the building department and they can tell you who to call to find out and where you can look it up online. Depending on where you are building, that number may be a “lot”, “block”, “unit”, or something else. Just call up your building department and ask them how to find that out.
In order to get an address you have to submit an approach permit so they can tell you if you can legally and safely access your property. What good is a house if you can’t get to it right?
So permit #1- Approach permit
Permit #2- Application for site address
I will be writing a post with specific instructions for these two permits, but for now I will tell you the approach permit didn’t cost anything, and the site permit cost $15. Between the two of them it took a little over a month from filling out the paperwork to getting our shiny new address marker in the mail.
Once you have an address you can start working on everything else. The first thing to do is to call everyone on the list the building department sends you. There will be a lot of departments you have to clear things through and each one is different. All you need to do is go down the list calling each department and letting them know what you are doing. Some of them will say okay your good, and others will give you a list of things to do. It’s really a bummer to think you are almost done with permits, only to call the last number and find out you should have called them first. You can CLICK HERE to see what our list looked like from the building department.
The other thing I will say is that we needing to call people that weren’t on that list. Think through all of the things you will need on your new property and write them down so you don’t miss anyone. We needed a septic system, power brought to our house site, and a well. Just because it’s not on the list, doesn’t mean you don’t need to call someone about it.
First, we got started on our septic system permit because we knew it would take awhile to get it.
Permit #3- Septic System
This one was a little bit of a process because we had to find a designer to draw up the plans. Then we had to turn in for permits. And finally, we had to find an approved installer. It took a couple of months to complete everything necessary. I will be writing a post in detail about this permit also. If you are going to need a septic permit just know you need to start on this one early. It has to be completed in order to get any building permits. Septic system permits are good for 1 year so plan accordingly.
Permit #4- Well
The well permit DOES NOT need to be completed before you can turn in your building permits. It is NOT part of the package you have to turn in, at least not in Grant County. However, I do recommend doing it fairly early so you can get a well put in before you start building. The reason for this is because you will want water (and power) available for the building process. Farmer and I did not do this because we were focusing on getting the house dried in before winter weather set in. We chose to wait until later to put the well in because we didn’t realize we would want water for the beginning stages of building.
We ended up stringing every hose we could scrounge up several hundred feet to a pond, just so we could get a sprinkler going. We had to soak down the dirt really well before we could excavate because the area is so sandy and dry. It would have been a lot more convenient to have our well put in already.
It’s really a personal choice. You can start building your house without a well, or you can put one in first, it’s up to you. We waited, but we wished we hadn’t.
Permit #5- Power
Just like the well, you DO NOT need to have power for building permits in Grant County. But, do you really want to risk building a house when you don’t know how much it will cost to get power to it? What if the quote comes back at $50,000 do you still want to build your house there? Just something to think about. This was the permit we waited until the last minute to take care of and it ended up taking way longer than we had hoped. We wanted to set up temporary power for our framer when the building began, but when we called 3 weeks early, we learned it would take 6-8 weeks to get everything taken care of. We should have called much earlier. Now we have to use a generator instead. Not a big deal, but also not what we had planned on doing.
Blueprints “Technically complete plans” and “Residential Plan Requirements Checklist”
Included in the packet the building department sends you will be a checklist for all of the requirements on your blueprints. There is a lot of terminology in there that I didn’t understand. Even if you are like me, and it feels like you are trying to read a different language, it’s a good idea to read through it all. Try to pick out things you understand, and remember words that come up a lot. This way, when people use those words you can ask what they mean and start to get a better understanding of things. It’s okay if you don’t understand everything, but a big part of being the general contractor of your own home is learning as much as you can.
What you need to do for this portion of the building permits is to take the packet to your house designer or architect and talk to them about it. They may want to go over it with you, they may want you to handle it, or they may just take care of it for you. It is really meant for them anyway because it’s a checklist of what they must include in your house plans, but depending on your designer they may have you take care of a big part of it. It’s a good idea to have an agreement with your designer that his job is not finished until the building department has approved your building permits. Then, if the building department wants anything changed, you won’t be paying your designer more money to “finish” the plans.
There are a lot of requirements on the Residential Plan Requirements Checklist, so I will be writing a separate post on this section, and it will include more information on blueprints too. Here is a list of the other things you will need to be getting as a requirement for your technically complete plans :
- Truss design from a truss company
- Floor package from a lumber company
- Type of heating system
- Will you be using propane or natural gas?
- Energy code requirements for your county
- Beam specifications from a lumber company
The county will probably want 2 copies of the big blueprints (36″ x 24″) so they can give one back to you will all of their notes on it, and also keep one on file. I would suggest not making the extra set of copies until you have taken the blueprints in to be looked over. I made copies when I thought everything was ready and then had to change something on the plans and make copies again. That was $35 bucks I just had to throw in the garbage because they were incorrect copies.
Site Plan
The site plan is simply showing your piece of property with everything drawn on it. The tough thing is that they want it drawn to scale and you have to label all the measurements. Our first designer offered to do a site plan for us on his CAD computer program. I had no idea how helpful that one thing would be. We have used that site plan for probably ten different things including septic system permits, wetland assessment, propane tank permit, approach permit, power line plans, and landscape plans. It was SOOO nice to have it available to print off whenever I needed it. In several instances, someone has said “I need to come look at your site and maybe measure some things and figure this all out.” Then I say, “I have a site plan, would that be helpful?” And they say, “Yes! That would be so helpful! Then I won’t have to _____________ (fill in the blank).”
You can certainly draw your site plan and it will work just fine, but be sure to keep an original on file so you can make a copy of it whenever you need to. CLICK HERE to see what our site plan looks like.
We had to add a few measurements to it because they wanted to know how far it was away from EVERYTHING, but it was nice to start with a fresh site plan every time we needed one.
Agent Authorization Form
This one sounds way more confusing then it is. It is simply a paper to be signed that says that whoever owns the land is okay with this particular thing (house) being built on it. We had to do one for the house and another one for the propane tank. If you are the legal land owner it will take you about 1 minute to fill it out. If you are not, you just need a signature from the legal land owner allowing you to build on their land. If the land is co-owned, you need both signatures. CLICK HERE to see the form.
Application Form
Just a paper requesting building permits with all of your information on. You will need the parcel number, the general contractor (you), the size of the house, etc. CLICK HERE if you would like to see the form.
Deposit
Grant County requires a deposit to be turned in when you submit your packet. Building permits cost money. To be totally honest, they cost A LOT more then I thought they would. After we heard that our deposit would be $1000, and our final fee would be around $4000, I called my brother to complain. His answer was “that’s all they were?” Apparently $4000 is really cheap, who knew? I believe if you are building inside city limits the impact fees are more expensive.
I called the receptionist to ask how they determine the price of a permit and she emailed me a paper with all of the specifics on it. CLICK HERE if you would like to see that paper. Where we are building, they charge by how many square feet your new house will be. I don’t know if they do it that way everywhere, but ours came out to a little over $1 a square foot. We also had to pay extra for our propane tank and our fireplace.
^^^Everything you need for building permits^^^
So, the first time I went in to turn in my packet I didn’t call before heading in, I just assumed I had everything. I found out I didn’t have the proper beam specifications, the blueprints were printed in the wrong ink, and there was something that needed to be corrected on them. I spent the weekend, fixing my mistakes and making new copies and then took them back in.
Once we had everything completed, I gathered it together again to turn in. Here is what I had:
- The application form completely filled out
- The site plan for our house, including directions to our property
- The site plan for our propane tank
- An agent authorization form for our house
- An agent authorization form for our propane tank
- 2 sets of blueprints 36″ x 24″ printed in indelible ink (that doesn’t smear)
- Truss designs
- Floor package design
- Beam Specifications
- Energy Code worksheet
- Application Submittal Checklist (just a list of all of these things that I needed to initial that I had completed them)
- Deposit check for $1000 (call to find out what your deposit would be)
When you take in your finished packet, plan to spend about 30 minutes there. They call this time the counter review because they review your bundle on the front counter before they accept it. I asked ahead of time if I should find a sitter for my four young kids and the receptionist kindly told me that if I thought they would sit there and be quiet it would be fine to bring them. I took snacks and a tablet just in case… and bribed them with ice cream for afterwards. They were angels.
The reviewer spread everything out on the counter and went through it all. He looked very closely at the blueprints to make sure everything they needed was included. After he had inspected everything, he gathered everything back up and told me it was complete. So I asked how long the permits would take and he told me 3-4 weeks.
I also asked what the chances were that they would call me up and say there was something wrong and we would have to start all over. He said once the plans have been accepted, that almost never happens. If there is something that needs to be changed at that point, they just write it on the blueprints before they return them. That was reassuring to me because now I knew I had made it through the hard part and that it was almost impossible that I would have to do anything more for our building permits.
Well, that was ALMOST correct…. we did actually have to do something else.
Three days after turning the paperwork in, we got a letter in the mail. It informed us that we had “wetlands” on our property and we would need a wetland assessment and delineation in order to continue with our permits. Okay, deep breath, no big deal, it’s just one more permit we have to fill out right? Unfortunately not.
Permit #6- Wetland Assessment/ Delineation
I will be writing a post on this permit too because of how complicated it got. What you need to know now is whether or not the property you are building on has any water or wet areas on it. There is a drain running through the middle of our property. It is underground a few feet but the ground above it is saturated with water whenever the irrigation canals are full. You can see a pretty distinct line of green weeds following the drain all the way across our land. Because of this drain, we had to go through some steps to make sure we were building far enough away from the wetlands. If you have wetlands on your property, you will probably be dealing with this extra permit also.
After a couple days of dealing with that unexpected twist, we were back on track. I called about once a week for an update on our permits. Everything else went very smoothly and the only thing that ended up taking more than a day or two was waiting for the official review guy to finish the blueprints in line before us. I know we had at least 5 people’s house plans in front of ours. Once they made it to his desk, it took one day for him to look them over. Then I got a phone call from the receptionist informing me that our building permits had been issued. Yay! Happy dance! She told me I could mail my final check and they would mail my stuff back to me or I could come pick them up. Since I didn’t know exactly what they were giving me, I wanted to pick them up so they could explain everything to me. I was glad I did.
I wrote them a final check and they sent me home with:
- One copy of my blueprints with lots of notes and highlighted areas
- The Truss plans with lots of notes and highlighted area
- The floor package with no notes or highlighted areas (I guess we got something right!)
- My receipt
- Permit for our house
- Permit for our propane tank
- List of Inspections needed on the house
- List of Inspections needed for our propane tank
- Instructions for the inspections
- Inspection checklist for the house
- Inspection checklist for the propane tank
- The Energy Code Worksheet with lots of notes and highlighted areas
Then I exhaled because I knew the worst part was over.
Alright so here is the part you really want to know ….
Approach Permit- $0
Application for site address- $15
Septic System design and permit- $475
Well permit- $200
Power permit- $1,871
Blueprints- $1000
Copies of blueprints- $60
Truss design, floor package design, beam specifications- $0 (free service offered from some companies)
Site plan- $0
Agent Authorization form- $0
Wetland assessment- $450
Wetland delineation-$950
Propane tank permit- $105
Building permit and plan review fees- $4,522.70
Total- $9,648.70
^^^Building permit timeline-how long permits really take^^^
Approach permit- 1 week
Application for site address- 2 weeks
Septic system design- 2 months (we had some problems … but then again who doesn’t have problems at some point during building permits)
Septic system permit- 1 month
Well permit- 2 weeks
Power permit- 6 weeks
Wetland assessment/delineation (hopefully not a permit you have to deal with)- 1 week
Building department permits- 3 weeks
These times are how long it took to process them, not how long we worked on them. From the day we turned in our first permit application to the day we were issued our final building permits, it was over 8 months.
We certainly took our time with permits up until the very end when we started to feel rushed. Up until the last month it wasn’t stressful at all, just time consuming. It took a lot of time to call everyone, get them the information they need, make changes, follow up, and then wait for them to give you the okay. The final month was only stressful because we had a deadline for the first time. We needed everything completed by September 1st so we could get our house dried in before the weather got bad.
A word of advice: Start your permits EARLY. Way earlier then you think, trust me. We made our first call to the building department almost exactly 1 year before we were issued our permits. We turned in our first permit, the approach permit, 4 months later. The septic permit was turned in a few weeks after that, and we worked on them continuously after that. Yes we could have rushed them a little faster, but that would have made it much more stressful and wouldn’t have given us time to find ways to save money. There is no reason to wait until you want to build to start your permits. Get the ball rolling, and it will take so much stress off of this process. Building permits are good for 3 years in Grant County. That’s plenty of time to get your house up and not be rushed.
Any questions? Send me an email!
Good luck!
~Farmer’s Wife
If you need to go back to Step 4: Gathering Information CLICK HERE
or move on to Step 6: Permit requests and assignments
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Josie says
Wow! What an informative article! I’m so shocked to read this. Disheartening is the word I’m looking for. Can you not build your own home on your own property without blueprints and truss plans and floor designs? So UnAmerican is my thought. I had NO IDEA. Thank you for the insight.
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Well I know that in every city and county the rules are a little different, but I don’t think there are many places in America that you can build a house without going through the building permit process. I felt the same way, I wish we didn’t have to clear EVERYTHING with someone. I was the most annoyed when we almost had to move our house because there was water on our property. I fought that one pretty hard. But yes, to build a house, even on your own property, you will have to do something that looks pretty darn similar to what I had to do.
Wilson says
Josie, that is what you get with BIG government and regulations.
Sharlene says
this was great! thanks for the info, I took a lot of notes.
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Your welcome Sharlene!
Vanessa says
Hey! So thankful I stumbled on this website! We are in the research/ dreaming/ planning stage now for building our own house. One question I keep having is how can you figure out if the land you are wanting to build on is good for all these permit requirements BEFORE you buy the land? It seems like there are a lot of things during the permit phase that end up being ‘fingers crossed’ such and such is approved or doesn’t cost an unplanned fortune… any advice you’ve found?
Thanks!
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
That is a great question Vanessa! I am sure lots of others are wondering the same thing.
To figure that out you will need to call your local building department. Tell them your situation and they should be able to tell you whether there are wetlands on your property, weird property line setbacks, or other potential problems. Ask them about the septic/sewer as well.
If it’s rural property and has no power lines in place yet, you will want to check with the power company for an estimate also.
I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t give you this information before you purchase the land, if you just tell them you need to know before you buy it. If they give you a hard time, all you would need to do is call the land owner, tell them you want to buy the land but you need to check on some things first, and have them sign the paper from the building department that says it’s okay to tell you that information.
It’s a great idea to check on these things before you invest in the property! Thanks for asking that question.
Geanie says
Usually before you can purchase a home, the bank will require a site survey. The site survey may have that information on it. You can always ask the current owners if they have a survey, if they do, they will more than likely let you see it. Also, if they do have a survey and they have a good realtor, the survey will be included with the seller’s disclosure.
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Awesome, thanks Geanie!
Katie says
We’re looking at a property that has wetlands on it so I’d love to see more about your experience with this!
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
I will get an article on that as soon as I can. Thanks!
Shannon McCoy says
This was so informative and a bit scary. I will definitely use this for future references.Thanks so much for take the time to write this. My son just purchased land in Alma, Co. and we want to get started this spring so we will definitely be starting with the well, septic and power. Once again thanks.
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
You are welcome Shannon. Have fun with the new project!
Gloria Lynn says
Me and my boyfriend are researching up everything we can learn about building a house or starting it and it seems very hard especially like you said the permits is the hard part. After looking at all this it does seem pretty scary becuase we both don’t know anything about it that’s why we are learning anything we can and hopefully it turns out great. We want to build our dream home out in the country and hopefully to do it before we can get married which we are talking about so it’s very hard of what it sounds like. How long do you think after permits are finished that the house could take to be built?? Very curious because we are hoping 3 years for ours…
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Hey Gloria, that answer depends on so many factors unfortunately. Once permits are finished, you can start immediately. If you are hiring sub contractors for everything then you can have a house built in around 6 months, sometimes faster. Normally it takes more like 9-12 months. If you are doing some or all of the work yourself, it usually takes at least 1 year to finish and can take many years if you aren’t trying to hurry. 3 years is a very reasonable amount of time, however you will be surprised at how quickly that time flies so keep active!
Tiwana Merritt says
Thanks heaps, so very helpful!