As mentioned in the last post, our application for building permits was submitted to the City of Houston on October 18. Builder had told us that it would likely take about 4 week (at best) for approval. By the 21st of October we’d heard back that there were some issue that needed to be sorted.
The major one for us was that based on the survey that was submitted with the plans, the east side of the house was slightly less than 5 feet from the property line. You may remember we didn’t get a new survey when we bought but instead used one from a previous closing. Because the old survey showed less than a 5 foot clearance, the new parts of the wall that we were extending along that side would have to be built with fire rated materials (special windows, special sheathing, etc.). We weren’t excited about this due to the cost of those materials (especially the windows) and the fact that at a minimum the windows wouldn’t match on that side.
Travis looked at the old survey and realized that it was quite inconclusive whether the distance shown was to the fence or the property line. We decided to pay for a new survey and asked them to explicitly measure to the property line. On November 18, we received an updated survey showing that in fact the house was 5.1 feet from property line so we would be fine with our original windows, etc.
At this point, things get a bit murky about what’s happening. Through most of December, there is no obvious progress in Permit Office (they have tracking tool that you can view online, although we didn’t know about that until late January). We knew there were two minor issues that the builder thought had been resolved. We also had to pay a “Wastewater Capacity” payment to the city because we are reducing the amount of "pervious” space on the lot. This took several weeks to sort out with Glen finally just hanging out at the Houston Public Works office until they processed things.
Regardless, things progressed slowly and it wasn’t until Glen was again pressing things with individuals in the Permit Office that things got resolved in February. We were finally approved on February 20 and had a receipted permit in hand on February 28!
Yippee! Things may actually start happening.