Catching up
So it has been over a week and I haven't managed to put anything new up. I won't apologize to you, gentle reader, since you don't want to hear my excuses (in fact, I suspect that you might even be a figment of my imagination, anyhow). Instead, I will hang my head in shame and promise to do better next time. We still have months of time to cover to get us up to date with where things stand today, so I had better get cracking.
One note before I start - This blog is intentionally vague in location of the property and names of individuals involved for a few reasons. First of all, I haven't asked anyone for their permission to use their name, and while the old saying goes that any press is good press, not everyone believes that. The second reason is that cordwood masonry (as you know or are about to find out), is outside of the mainstream of building practices, and I wouldn't want to ruin our chances of getting an approved building permit, so until we are legit I am going to be nonspecific as to where our property is.
As we rejoin our program already in progress, we made an offer to the seller when he had just 2 days left to accept or reject the other offer on the table. We held our breaths and waited. By August 1st, we received a message that he had decided to accept our offer. Now we needed to get a lawyer to check over everything in the contract during the grace period. Through the recommendation of some family friends, we found a very good lawyer, who has helped us to through the whole process.
Our preliminary contract required that we approve of a survey of the property. The lawyer recommended that we require that we get an approved septic plan and an approved well before we purchase the property. We followed her suggestion and the contract called for these to be completed by September 15th, 2005.
We had the survey done at our own expense, which took until the last week in August for the paper survey, and the corners and line flagging was not done until the week of 9/15/05. I really would have rather had the seller pay half of the cost of the survey, but we had dropped that from our original contract since we had to be competitive with the other offer. In all reality though, I don't see how someone can attempt to sell a piece of property when they can't tell you exactly where the corners and lines of the property are. There ought to be some sort of law... Anyway, the property turned out to be 9.3 acres, which was slightly more than it was listed as (an even 9), and it encompassed the main area we were thinking of building on, so we approved of it.
Now came the time to find an engineer for the septic design. We pursued an engineering firm in Williamstown, MA, based on the recommendation of a gentleman that our agent had told us about for excavation and land clearing. After talking to them, and getting their considerable estimate, we decided we needed to find someone cheaper. We found a local engineer through the surveyor. He seems to be the kind of guy who does his work for what he thinks it is worth, not the going market rate. He gave us a very reasonable estimate, apologizing that the other engineers in the area had recently put pressure on him to raise his rates to be in line with theirs. Let it suffice to say that he came in at close to HALF of what the first estimate was. He agreed to contact the county health department rep and arrange for the date of the soil tests.
In the meantime, Wendy gave birth to our son, Emmet Sean Kelly, on September 6th, 2005. I don't mean to trivialize his birth, as it absorbed us completely and is an incredible part of our life. That said, as it is not the point of this post, I will move on to more land related stuff.
On September 15th, I met everyone (the engineer, the excavator, and the health department rep for the area) out at the property for the soil tests. After digging a big hole with the excavator, and some smaller holes for perc testing, it was determined we would need to put in a raised system (the most expensive type of septic). This was no surprise and really the best I could have hoped for in the area we are in. So we parted ways, and the engineer told me he should have a plan to be submitted for approval in 3-4 weeks.
I stayed to examine the corner pins and line flagging that the surveyor had completed a few days before. I took 16 galvanized steel spikes with me, which I pounded into the ground 5 feet on either side of each pin, in a cross (or x) pattern. The reason for this (and I have to give my dad credit for this idea) is so that in the event that a pin goes missing, we could take a metal detector out to the area the pin was in, locate the 4 spikes and reset the pin fairly accurately. This came from the surveyor warning us that sometimes people get upset with where the survey says the property lines are and pull the pins out.
I also took some aluminum roofing nails and nailed them into both sides of flagged trees, through the flagging tape. I figure that this would help the tape stay up a bit longer, and also provide a marker of the flagged line when the tape comes down. To assist in this I got some orange paint and painted the heads of the nails to help. This will be OK until the tree grows over the nail heads, but by then I hope that I know the property lines better and that everyone agrees on what they are.
The Real Estate agent called a week later or so to find out how things are going. I guess the seller was asking his agent what was taking so long, so he asked her to check with us. I explained (as she was well aware) that we were moving as quickly as possible, but that these things take time. After discussing it with Wendy, we decided not to wait for the approved septic plan, since the engineer was confident that we would have no problem getting an approved design. We also decided that from talking to folks in the area and some well drillers that we would risk drilling the well next year, when we will have had time to put money away for it, instead of borrowing to do it. We have already borrowed some money from Wendy's mom and from my parent's to make this work since this property was a bit more than we had saved, and we didn't feel a pressing need to add to that in order to get a well drilled that we wouldn't need to use for at least another 6-8 months in any case.
So we are ready to close. Next time, why we haven't closed on the property yet, since we have been ready since the end of September.
One note before I start - This blog is intentionally vague in location of the property and names of individuals involved for a few reasons. First of all, I haven't asked anyone for their permission to use their name, and while the old saying goes that any press is good press, not everyone believes that. The second reason is that cordwood masonry (as you know or are about to find out), is outside of the mainstream of building practices, and I wouldn't want to ruin our chances of getting an approved building permit, so until we are legit I am going to be nonspecific as to where our property is.
As we rejoin our program already in progress, we made an offer to the seller when he had just 2 days left to accept or reject the other offer on the table. We held our breaths and waited. By August 1st, we received a message that he had decided to accept our offer. Now we needed to get a lawyer to check over everything in the contract during the grace period. Through the recommendation of some family friends, we found a very good lawyer, who has helped us to through the whole process.
Our preliminary contract required that we approve of a survey of the property. The lawyer recommended that we require that we get an approved septic plan and an approved well before we purchase the property. We followed her suggestion and the contract called for these to be completed by September 15th, 2005.
We had the survey done at our own expense, which took until the last week in August for the paper survey, and the corners and line flagging was not done until the week of 9/15/05. I really would have rather had the seller pay half of the cost of the survey, but we had dropped that from our original contract since we had to be competitive with the other offer. In all reality though, I don't see how someone can attempt to sell a piece of property when they can't tell you exactly where the corners and lines of the property are. There ought to be some sort of law... Anyway, the property turned out to be 9.3 acres, which was slightly more than it was listed as (an even 9), and it encompassed the main area we were thinking of building on, so we approved of it.
Now came the time to find an engineer for the septic design. We pursued an engineering firm in Williamstown, MA, based on the recommendation of a gentleman that our agent had told us about for excavation and land clearing. After talking to them, and getting their considerable estimate, we decided we needed to find someone cheaper. We found a local engineer through the surveyor. He seems to be the kind of guy who does his work for what he thinks it is worth, not the going market rate. He gave us a very reasonable estimate, apologizing that the other engineers in the area had recently put pressure on him to raise his rates to be in line with theirs. Let it suffice to say that he came in at close to HALF of what the first estimate was. He agreed to contact the county health department rep and arrange for the date of the soil tests.
In the meantime, Wendy gave birth to our son, Emmet Sean Kelly, on September 6th, 2005. I don't mean to trivialize his birth, as it absorbed us completely and is an incredible part of our life. That said, as it is not the point of this post, I will move on to more land related stuff.
On September 15th, I met everyone (the engineer, the excavator, and the health department rep for the area) out at the property for the soil tests. After digging a big hole with the excavator, and some smaller holes for perc testing, it was determined we would need to put in a raised system (the most expensive type of septic). This was no surprise and really the best I could have hoped for in the area we are in. So we parted ways, and the engineer told me he should have a plan to be submitted for approval in 3-4 weeks.
I stayed to examine the corner pins and line flagging that the surveyor had completed a few days before. I took 16 galvanized steel spikes with me, which I pounded into the ground 5 feet on either side of each pin, in a cross (or x) pattern. The reason for this (and I have to give my dad credit for this idea) is so that in the event that a pin goes missing, we could take a metal detector out to the area the pin was in, locate the 4 spikes and reset the pin fairly accurately. This came from the surveyor warning us that sometimes people get upset with where the survey says the property lines are and pull the pins out.
I also took some aluminum roofing nails and nailed them into both sides of flagged trees, through the flagging tape. I figure that this would help the tape stay up a bit longer, and also provide a marker of the flagged line when the tape comes down. To assist in this I got some orange paint and painted the heads of the nails to help. This will be OK until the tree grows over the nail heads, but by then I hope that I know the property lines better and that everyone agrees on what they are.
The Real Estate agent called a week later or so to find out how things are going. I guess the seller was asking his agent what was taking so long, so he asked her to check with us. I explained (as she was well aware) that we were moving as quickly as possible, but that these things take time. After discussing it with Wendy, we decided not to wait for the approved septic plan, since the engineer was confident that we would have no problem getting an approved design. We also decided that from talking to folks in the area and some well drillers that we would risk drilling the well next year, when we will have had time to put money away for it, instead of borrowing to do it. We have already borrowed some money from Wendy's mom and from my parent's to make this work since this property was a bit more than we had saved, and we didn't feel a pressing need to add to that in order to get a well drilled that we wouldn't need to use for at least another 6-8 months in any case.
So we are ready to close. Next time, why we haven't closed on the property yet, since we have been ready since the end of September.
posted by SKelly | 5:25 PM
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