Get Your Permits! Lowes Coupon Example
I was thinking recently on how so many people are catching up on old projects now that the housing market is stabilizing a little. It seems that all of the old projects are finally shaking themselves out. As many of you know we at Lowes Coupon do a lot of entitlement work in southern California. Usually larger projects but lately we have found ourselves doing a lot of single family infill completions. In the next series of posts I will cover some case studies. For example a customer recently brought me a garage he had built by who he says was a 
licensed contractor and who clearly built the garage without a permit.
For the sake of the readers lets cover several issues that were resolved – this will help you with your general knowledge of what to do and not to do.
First mistake was the owner did not check out the so called contractor – he failed to look anything up and is paying dearly for it. This happens time and time again. Somehow owners just trust the person in front of them and start handing over significant amounts of money. This particular homeowner I believe was won over by greed. The garage he was building was very large and tall. 40X40 with 12 foot walls with a gable that reached almost 20 feet all attached to a manufactured home of all things. For those that are “in the know” you cannot “attach” to a manufactured home but must leave a 1” breezeway between the garage and the home – but I digress. Anyhow he was getting the entire structure completed for $15,000. Now $20,000 would be reasonable for this particular garage but this was built during the housing boom. So really it should have cost around $30,000. $20,000 would be the price today. Even the best Lowes do it yourself training could not help you do this one. This one required a professional. Anyhow it was greed and a lack of thoroughness that caused this project to go downhill fast.
Second mistake was not pulling permits. Now properly addressing the first mistake would have cured this second one. Now we at Lowes Coupon are all for the do it yourself – but 20 foot gables on a 40×40 garage – well just pouring the foundation is a little much for anyone but true professionals. Permits are very important. I understand not wanting to pull a permit when you change out a toilet but trying to build a garage with a contractor you have not “checked out” is not wise. There is a reason that cities require permits. It is primarily for public safety. It is so that a trained person can not only verify that the structure was designed properly but also so you have a 3rd party coming by at various stages to ensure it is being built to the plans. These 3rd party verifications are critical to ensure public safety. Design flaws can take down anything. We have all seen the video of the bridge that began to sway and then eventually fell down before it was ever put into regular use? That was built with professionals but for some reason they did not “catch” the flaws. Getting a permit puts your design through “plan check”. “plan check” is more than just a 
hassle – plan check is there to check your plans. It allows someone to review your archetects work to ensure compliance with every single design rule. It’s like a spell checker – if you read your own work you can miss the same error 20 times over – but when another reads your work they can oftentimes correct what your overlook.
So that’s the lesson. Do not be taken in by a cheap price – you can pay a cheap price for someone to weed your garden but do not try to skimp on a 1600 square foot, 20 foot tall, garage. For that you are asking for trouble.
By the way we are still in plan check with this garage. It is going to cost $15,000 to fix at the minimum. First they allowed the structure to lean on the roof of the manufactured home. This is not allowed as a manufactured home is to be completely structurally independent of the accessory building, in this case the garage. Then comes the sheer wall. Sheer wall is very important to keep your building from falling – it allows extra support for the misc pressures on a building. Then there is the foundation. Yikes! Can I say that? They did not put any footings on th foundation. So basically there is a slab of concrete with a 40×40 garage on top that is 20 feet high and leaning on a mobile basically sitting on a slab of concrete that can slip at any time because there are no footings holding it in place – and this is California – one good Earthquake and this thing could easily come down and kill someone. So now they are talking about digging below the 4 corners of the slab to build 4×4 (that’s 4 feet by 4 feet ) footings 3 feet deep with rebar epoxied into core holes in the top foundation. I think the engineer is crazy and they should start from scratch. They are going to be spending a lot of money at Lowes Home Improvement and hopefully lowes has mercy on them and gives them a discount equivalent to a Lowes Coupon or even lowes coupons.
Lesson learned and hopefully you enjoyed the little case study – please, do things right the first time. It will save you a lot of hassle later.
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