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It's been a long time since I updated this thread. I'm close to just moving the whole thing to the FML thread...
First page with the running total of costs has been updated.
We submitted for permits back in January, or maybe February. It's been so long I cant actually remember. The city took about 4 months to get back to us and interestingly had zero issues with the house plans themselves. Not a single point of feedback on the structure! BUT, they had 3 pages of feedback on the arborist and civil engineering. They are hell bent on destroying our will to live when it comes to stormwater management. Apparently the storm water management guide for our county is 1500 pages long and its so convoluted that the county created a 100 page auxiliary manual to help you understand how to use the main manual. Government at its finest.
In order to properly design the storm water run-off systems on the property we first need to do infiltration testing. This is where we pay a company $8k to dig 3 test pits on the site and fill them with water from a tanker truck. Then we pay an engineer $5.4k to watch how fast the water is absorbed into the ground and write a report about it. Once we have that data, then we can pay our civil engineer God knows how much more money to design a bunch of gravel filled pits that manage the water that runs off the roof and the driveway. I'd understand it if we were putting a McMansion on a small 5000 sqft urban lot and using every bit of space but we are talking a 2000 sqft house on 1/2 an acre!
Anyway, at this point, given interest rates and building costs it's looking highly likely that we get our permits and just press pause for a year or two. The project has become wholly unaffordable in the time it's taken to try to get permits. FML.
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