Acquiring Building Permits

First, call your local building officials. If the project is in a city check with the city building inspection department. They may be under planning and zoning. They may be under the engineering department. In any case you need to find out which offices need to sign off on your building. These may include fire departments, school districts, traffic departments, etc. In general it is all in one place except in California where at least a dozen bureaus may be involved.

If you live in the county outside of a city there may be another set of rules. Again in general there will be a building department to deal with. First get from the "Building Department" the "rules." Usually this will be a two or three page set of requirements you must follow to get the building permit itself. This often may be obtained with a phone call.

Let them know you are getting ready to build and ask them to send a set of regulations and a fee chart. (Note: In most places the fees are based on the value of the project. This is not a place to brag about how much you are spending . Certainly you don't need to include the land and off-site costs. Stick with the costs of the project only.)

After you get a copy of the requirements, continue asking questions. Often "the sheet" will not have all the information on it. Always ask if there is another department you must work with. Double check on the cost of the fees.

I would ask the following questions: "OK, you have given me the requirements, is everything here? "After I bring you a full set of blueprints, how long will it take to get the building permit? "What will be the fees? "Are all the fees collected in this office? "Do you require an architect or an engineer to "stamp" the plans? ( By stamped engineering, we mean having a registered engineer in that state affix his seal to the blueprints. This will cost extra.) "Are there other signatures I will need? It is about 50/50 as to whether you will need to have additional signatures.

The acquiring of a building permit varies from sublime to ridiculous. For instance if you are not within a city limits in the State of Texas, a building permit becomes mostly a registration. It usually costs $25 to $100 there will also be a septic system permit and fee) and has nothing to do with the blueprints or actual construction. On the other hand in California, you will need to pay not only a standard building permit fee, but you will have impact fees, school fees, traffic light fees, and on and on.

The building permit for a simple three bedroom home in California may run $40,000 and more. It is extremely important that you know what you are buying. Ask about the inspections. The inspections may have a sheet of its own or be included with the permit requirements. Specifically you are wanting to know about on-site inspections.

If you are building in an unincorporated part of Texas, you will have no inspections, by anybody on anything, except the septic system. In California, you will need to have an inspector that you are paying for on site at all times when you are placing concrete that is over 2000 psi in strength. This means the shell and the footing. In addition to this you will have the local building inspectors checking at various stages through the project.

The requirements for building permits, fees, and inspections will vary between these extremes. In some states there is very little regulation in county and yet they may be extremely stringent in the cities. Regulations may vary from city to city. It is not at all unusual in the stringent jurisdictions for the owner to have landscaping and decorating plans approved and money in escrow before a permit will be issued.

There is nothing that fouls up a building project as fast as having an inspector come on the job and shut it down because some bureaucratic problem that was not found out about in the first place. In the more bureaucratic areas ask questions of current builders, planning and zoning, as well as the building departments.

Be sure to get answers on how long it will take to get the approvals. Who will pay for the design reviews? It is also a good idea to ask what happens if the plans are changed at the last minute. In some places you must acquire a conditional use permit first and then the building permit later. Be sure you check on the fees for each of these items.

In addition to building permits, you want to know the fees for water and sewer hook-up. Check to see if there is other utility fees. Water and sewer hook-up fees can vary from hundreds to thousands of dollars. You will also want to check very thoroughly what it takes to get electricity to your site. Often the bureaucracies for getting the electricity can take days, weeks, or months to put in place.

A final caution. Most building departments will not be very familiar with Monolithic Dome technology. The inspectors will be very interested. So start by asking for information first. If you start by telling them you are going to build a "wonderful" Monolithic Dome you may wind up spending most of your time explaining what you are doing. They can get tangled up in the uniqueness of the Monolithic Dome.

Get the requirements first; then decide the best way to present your plans. The Monolithic Dome will pass any and all building codes.

In most places acquiring a permit is simple and straight forward. In a few places it may be complicated, either way, if you need help, just contact us at the Monolithic Dome Institute and we'll do what we can to help you.

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