[00:00:00] Intro: It's around the house.

[00:00:09] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah. And I'm asking Eric, I have never seen someone busted for not doing a permit. So I'm wondering, like what happens when they do bust you? I mean, do they show up and just see a bunch of contracting trucks and say, Hey, I'm not aware that anybody's doing anything. And the township just walks in and says, Hey guys, where's your permit?

[00:00:26] Caroline Blazovsky: How embarrassing does it happen?

[00:00:29] Eric Goranson: I will give you real life experiences right now that I've seen happen. I was doing this really high end design in a downtown Seattle condominium project. This guy was gutting his condo. He was a world he's now since passed. So I tell the story. Now,

[00:00:46] Intro: when it comes to

[00:00:47] Intro: remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to

[00:00:50] Intro: know, though.

[00:00:51] Intro: We got you. Come in. This is around the

[00:00:55] Intro: house.

[00:00:56] Intro: Welcome to around the house with Eric G and [00:01:00] Caroline B. This is where we talk. Boom improvement every single week. Thanks for joining us. Hello,

[00:01:05] Intro: Caroline, how are you today? Hi,

[00:01:08] Eric Goranson: everybody having a good time here. We've got a fun one today. Looking forward to this because I put up on around the house nation.

[00:01:17] Eric Goranson: If you haven't become a member of around the house nation, it is our. Facebook closed group here about a week or two ago, I put up a message on there and said, Hey, any requests for topics? And our friend William brought one up, which I thought was a solid one to permit or not permit. That is the question.

[00:01:41] Caroline Blazovsky: It is such a sketchy topic too. It is. Cause I feel like if you don't do it, you're kind of like being a little shady, but then if you do do it. It might end up costing you a lot of money and you may feel like, I don't know if I need to it's this gray area I'm building it is I don't even know what to do

[00:01:59] Eric Goranson: well.

[00:01:59] Eric Goranson: And the [00:02:00] problem is, is it's different everywhere. So like, let's, we'll take this back to the basics here, for instance, in the state of Oregon, where I live, you get your permit from your local building department, but building codes are the same across the entire state because it's state. Now you can have a little tweaks here and there and a local residence kind of thing.

[00:02:23] Eric Goranson: But building permits are a state thing where you get off into the Northeast a lot and building permits can be different between cities. It's not a state thing, so it can be very hard to navigate for some people, depending on where you live in my area, Washington, Oregon. It's really a, it's a, it's a state thing here in the Northwest.

[00:02:48] Eric Goranson: And it's completely different in other parts of the country. So you have to take that into mind when you start thinking about, do I need to pull a permit or don't need a permit? [00:03:00] And that's the interesting part.

[00:03:02] Caroline Blazovsky: I have a, I have a little rule. So if you're gonna change a structure or you're gonna do something to the home, that's going to be a real estate improvement.

[00:03:12] Caroline Blazovsky: Chances are you need a permit, but that's just me. That's how I kind of gauge it. Cause I'm not pulling permits every.

[00:03:19] Eric Goranson: Yeah, but in Washington, in many areas, and I think all of it's this way. Now, if you change out a water heater, technically you should pull a building permit cuz you're modifying the plumbing system.

[00:03:29] Eric Goranson: Even when you're just rep replacing.

[00:03:33] Caroline Blazovsky: But that falls into my little code, cuz that would be like a real estate improvement. So it's just in my head. That's how I keep it track of it.

[00:03:39] Eric Goranson: Okay. Okay. Well, I mean water heater is easy. Yeah. If you're improving it, but here's the thing that's interesting within that many times, just a repair.

[00:03:50] Eric Goranson: You don't need a building permit for it where if it's a replacement, you do. So let's say you've got a, a loose railing on that deck. [00:04:00] And you go, oh, I'm gonna go in. And I'm gonna beef that up a little bit. Most places you don't need to pull a permit for that, but if you tear it down and put it back up again and you removed it and replaced it, you should get a building permit.

[00:04:12] Eric Goranson: So it gets interesting on how those rules work,

[00:04:17] Caroline Blazovsky: but then there's this whole gray area where people are, I'm not gonna move. Nobody's gonna see it. I can make a change. It's the existing structure. Something is grandfathered in cuz there's this weird law. I think it's in New Jersey where if something is grandfathered in and you're replacing something that was there, you can get away with not having a permit,

[00:04:39] Eric Goranson: it gets sketchy.

[00:04:40] Eric Goranson: Not in maybe in your area. Usually grandfathered in means that, okay, this past code or this was allowed in 1947. But it's not anywhere near code in 2022. So you're not forced when they change building code [00:05:00] to go back and make changes to your existing structure. It's grandfathered in traditionally. That's what the grandfathered in is.

[00:05:07] Eric Goranson: Now. As soon as you go in and do some work on it, that grandfathered in status is D. So for instance, here was a great example, and this is where you have to be really careful with building permits. And this is a story that I saw play out personally, cuz I was a designer on the project. So homeowner bought a house.

[00:05:28] Eric Goranson: It was in, uh, in Portland, Oregon here in the city and cool little tutor style, brick face, awesome little storybook house. The second floor had two bedrooms, two baths. One was the master and the homeowner wanted to do a master bathroom. Remodel hired a contractor contractor pulled the permits correctly.

[00:05:53] Eric Goranson: Contractor went in, had the permit in hand, posted, falling. Every rule, [00:06:00] everything tore the bathroom out. Did some changes to the plumbing called in for the first permit inspection. Contractor walks in and goes, huh? Original building permit for 1920 on this thing shows the upper floor is being storage.

[00:06:18] Eric Goranson: There was never a permit pulled to convert that to, to bathroom, bathroom, living space. Anything, anything else? Living space mm-hmm . Now this was back in like 20 16, 20 17. When this happened. They red tagged the project and had to bring the entire second floor up to code for 2016, thus adding $120,000 to that project because they had to treat that as a new livable space.[00:07:00]

[00:07:00] Eric Goranson: And that was pretty crazy. That was expensive. So what happened was, is they had to go in there, the floor was designed for storage, so they had to beef up the floor system. They literally had to go in and open up walls on the finished basement, tear up the floor down there because they needed to put new footings in for the columns in the middle of the house.

[00:07:20] Eric Goranson: Yep. They literally had to go in and check sheer. Oh yeah. Plaster walls came down on the inside of the main floor of the living room and stuff that were beautiful. Spanish plaster walls. They had to open those up to, uh, test for sheer. And they had all these different things they had to do. just to do this bathroom on done.

[00:07:42] Eric Goranson: Well, here's the worst case of this, and this is where you have to keep those records for a house. The city of Portland also made a huge mistake when they converted over from hard documents to electronic, they lost a decade worth of permits. They can't [00:08:00] locate them. Homeowner had a stamp set of plans that said submitted, but they were not from back when the house was remodeled during that time, but they do not say approved.

[00:08:13] Eric Goranson: So the homeowner ended up doing that, which means now here's one thing that I wanna talk about in the next segment, because this is where this can cost you money. Technically when those guys bought this house, Caroline. They bought a house that had much, many more square feet than was actually permitted.

[00:08:34] Eric Goranson: And that is one of the biggest loopholes in real estate transactions. Today, if you have this old farmhouse, that was a single story farmhouse with a basement and a huge storage area upstairs. And let's say it's a thousand square feet in the basement thousand square feet in the main floor thousand square feet up in the, at.

[00:08:54] Eric Goranson: You paid 3000 paid for a 3000 square foot house and you might have only [00:09:00] gotten a thousand square foot house. You could have paid two thirds extra. For a house for square footage that you never got. So think about it this way. If you've got 2,500 square feet of house, but you only have a thousand square feet of livable space that the building department says is livable.

[00:09:18] Eric Goranson: Do you wanna pay that $250 a square foot for 2,500 square feet? Or would you rather pay it for the a thousand you're actually getting. Let's talk about that. When we come back to Caroline, let's talk about this, cuz this is gonna be a big deal for people out there, especially if you're thinking about taking on a project like that, let's do that just as soon as around the house returns.

[00:09:36] Eric Goranson: Should

[00:09:47] Intro: I be loud? Be so hot.

[00:09:55] Intro: Many people win.

[00:09:59] Eric Goranson: Hey, I'm Rudy Wade. [00:10:00] And you're listening to around the house with Eric G and Caroline B, listen to my music to improve your home.

[00:10:06] Intro: I hit your line. You got me dinging about the day

[00:10:10] Eric Goranson: we move. Welcome back to the, around the house show. Caroline and I have been sitting here talking, do you pull a permit? Do you not pull a permit?

[00:10:18] Eric Goranson: And we have. Stove, write down this rabbit hole to open up this discussion because it is a complex one from time to time. It's confusing.

[00:10:26] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah. And it's, and it's also, I, I think from a financial standpoint, you know, people wanna save money. These things aren't cheap. So the average cost of a permit is gonna run somewhere around $1,281.

[00:10:40] Caroline Blazovsky: That was a 20, 21 statistic. So yeah, that's an average you're gonna pay that. That's a big expense. When you're thinking about, you know, doing a project, you have to figure that in.

[00:10:50] Eric Goranson: It can be a lot more too, depending on what you're doing. Mm-hmm , um, sometimes here there's development fees. Sometimes there's all these different fees that come [00:11:00] onto that.

[00:11:00] Eric Goranson: And here's how that can happen for instance, in the city of Portland. If I go down here and I'm just gonna use it as an example, cuz it's the local big city here to my house. If I go into that city and pull a building permit for a kitchen, a bathroom model. And that exceeds what, 20 or $30,000. I'm not sure exactly what the current rule is.

[00:11:21] Eric Goranson: Back when I was designing kitchens every day, it was about $25,000. If that project exceeded that you now had to fit in with the tree code out front. So they came over and at final inspection, you might have to add three approved trees off their list to your front yard to get. Kitchen remodel signed off and I'm not kidding.

[00:11:45] Eric Goranson: You know, we it's crazy.

[00:11:47] Caroline Blazovsky: It there's so much to this topic because I just had a contractor come out to my house and I'm looking to do a paper patio. And his first response was, oh, don't worry about it. Like, you know, this is an existing [00:12:00] structure. You had something there that was similar. Your grandfather didn't, don't worry about it.

[00:12:04] Caroline Blazovsky: We don't, we don't have to pull a permit. And I don't think it was that he couldn't. He just was trying to probably save me money and not thinking that I would care and or know so interesting. Like there's so much variance and that's a

[00:12:17] Eric Goranson: tough one. Let's dive into that in a second. Let me, let me put a bow around my last story in the last segment real quick.

[00:12:23] Eric Goranson: Cause I really didn't finish that about the, we were talking about, you know, doing pulling permits for something where you're closing a porch or finishing that basement. Keep in mind if you pulled that permit or didn't pull that permit, you're not gonna be able to count that in most cases, as a legal living space.

[00:12:45] Eric Goranson: Correct. So whenever you're gonna go out and buy a house, make sure you pull the square footage from the tax assessor. And trust me, that number means nothing. Because the tax assessor, if you told that tax assessor that your 3000 square foot house was [00:13:00] 22,000 square feet, they would love to tax you for that.

[00:13:03] Eric Goranson: So that number means anything, but that's what most real estate transactions are pulled from. I want you to go to your building, to permit department and find out what they tell you. The real square footage of that house is interesting. Then you will know what that is. Because, uh, that's what you should be paying that, you know, price per square foot on.

[00:13:22] Eric Goranson: Is that not on what the tax assessor is? So if

[00:13:25] Caroline Blazovsky: you, if you're buying a house and you see that there's been a lot of renovation to it, you're saying that you should actually maybe go down to the permit department and find out legitimately what that you, what that real square footage is because they may not have done it legally.

[00:13:44] Eric Goranson: Yeah. If it's not a new house and it was, if it's over 20 or 30 years old, I would make sure that you go down and pull that. And if it's 50 plus years old, I would do it every single time just to know what you're paying for, because they figure that house on how [00:14:00] many square feet. Right? How many bathrooms into that you're paying for a lot of stuff that you would have to tear out to get bought up to code to make that a legitimate square footage.

[00:14:08] Eric Goranson: So that's the, that's the first key right there. But as you were saying to get back to your, your comment, Caroline, you know, it's interesting with grandfathered and kind of really with what you were going with on a paver patio, you probably don't need to get a, a permit on a paver patio. But what happens is, is that if you do a retaining wall next to it, over 2, 3, 4 feet high, which is gonna happen, you might need engineering in a permit for that that's right.

[00:14:38] Eric Goranson: Yeah. So that's where that gets a little more interesting is what you have to do to get that going now many times electrical. Yes. You know, but one of the biggest warnings that I get and you and I talked about this before the show, one of the biggest concerns I get is when you're doing a remodel, it is up to that homeowner to make sure those [00:15:00] permits get pulled, not the contractor.

[00:15:03] Eric Goranson: Mm. And if that contractor goes down in many places to get the permits, they're gonna look to see if that contractor has a valid contractor's license. So I get a big warning light when the contractor goes, oh no, no, no, I'm not gonna go down and pull permits. You have to go do that. Mm. Have they been booted out of there?

[00:15:24] Eric Goranson: Have they had issues? Do they have a license that you're missing? What's going on there? Not all contractors are wrong that do that, but they are warning signs for me that I go, my, my ears kind of pop up a little bit and go, huh. Wonder why that is. That makes me nervous.

[00:15:45] Caroline Blazovsky: So what are some of the consequences of, if you don't.

[00:15:50] Caroline Blazovsky: Pull a permit. And so you, you know, you gave a couple of examples that, you know, you may not really have proper usage of your home, your square footage. You may have to go [00:16:00] back, backtrack and end up costing you more money. But then also homeowner's insurance is something to think about too, because if your homeowner's insurance, if for any reason you do a project and you end up, let's say you get a flood or maybe a fire.

[00:16:13] Caroline Blazovsky: If they find out you didn't pull a permit, guess what? Homeowners could not cover your. I've seen it

[00:16:20] Eric Goranson: happen. Yeah. Let's talk about that for a minute. Great example. So I went in to go do a kitchen remodel probably five years ago on a house that had a addition done to it. They pulled the permits, right?

[00:16:32] Eric Goranson: Mm-hmm where this name brand remodeler messed up as they didn't get a final permit on it. Mm. So they never got that final sign off. And this is a big one too, if you've pulled a permit to get that, because this addition and this kitchen that was done 25 years ago, that addition was now gonna have to get brought up to current code because no one signed off on it.

[00:16:57] Eric Goranson: Mm-hmm . So you now reset [00:17:00] that. So we were gonna have to pull down the insulation. Put new insulation in of course all the drywalls gonna have to come down. It was gonna be another $40,000 to fix that space because they didn't get the final on it. Now, there is one thing too, Caroline, that gets very interesting.

[00:17:21] Eric Goranson: And I wanna talk about this when come back about how they're catching people, but some of the consequences as well as you can get fined, they can come out and force you. To to fix it. Mm-hmm to get it up to code, they can red tag it and say that it's not suitable to live in until these things are done.

[00:17:42] Eric Goranson: If you really make that building department and that building inspector mad you're done, that can be a huge issue. Um, in the Tri-Cities where I grew up in Eastern Washington state. They ended up having a city council person [00:18:00] 20 years ago, get into a fight over a water heater permit. And there was a police standoff cuz he would not allow the building department inside the home, the sheriff or the police department tried to escort him in.

[00:18:13] Eric Goranson: And it was huge news because they literally had a police standoff. Over a building permit outside of the house because the inspector wanted to go in and inspect it. And he hadn't pulled a permit and it was a licensed plumber that had installed it. So there's a lot of consequences. We come back. I want to talk about how these guys are catching people.

[00:18:32] Eric Goranson: Not pulling permits. We'll do that just as soon as around the house

[00:18:35] Intro: returns.

[00:18:55] Intro: Hey guys, you're listening to around the house

[00:18:57] Eric Goranson: with Eric G and Caroline B Zeke [00:19:00] sky. And I'm gonna show you how to shred it out while you're

[00:19:01] Intro: building it up. Welcome back to the, around the

[00:19:06] Eric Goranson: house show. We really appreciate you tuning in today. If you wanna track us down, you can hit us up at around the house, online.com.

[00:19:14] Eric Goranson: And of course, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, just start looking at around the house show and make sure you join our Facebook close group, which is around the house nation. And if you're listening to us on the podcast right now and make sure you go over to your favorite podcast player and click that subscribe button.

[00:19:32] Eric Goranson: So you can get the show on the weekends, including the one, which is our midweek special that you get, uh, Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday, depending on which player you're listening to. We've been diving into permits today, right? Caroline?

[00:19:45] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah. And I'm asking Eric, I have never seen someone busted. For not doing a permit.

[00:19:50] Caroline Blazovsky: So I'm wondering like what happens when they do bust you? I mean, do they show up and just see a bunch of contracting trucks and say, Hey, I'm not aware that anybody's doing anything. [00:20:00] And the township just walks in and says, Hey guys, where's your permit? How embarrassing does it happen?

[00:20:05] Eric Goranson: I will give you real life experiences right now that I've seen happen.

[00:20:11] Eric Goranson: I was doing this really high end design in a downtown Seattle condominium project. This guy was gutting his condo. He was a world he's now since passed. So I tell this story now, world renowned architect that was teaching school at a major university. Okay. One of the largest architecture firms out there, he did not pull permits on this.

[00:20:37] Eric Goranson: And the plumbing fixtures that we ordered from him were high end imported from Germany and did not have. The little plumbing stamp that they needed to have on them to pass building code in the United States, they had not been tested and approved. Yeah. How did he get caught? Not his neighbors [00:21:00] building department head was walking down the street, walking to a lunch meeting and saw the plumbing fixtures being delivered up into the high rise.

[00:21:11] Eric Goranson: Because it was parked out front with the flashers on and he went, wow, there's no permit in that building. Fall them up into the house. Oh no. And this place had been gutted to the studs.

[00:21:24] Intro: bad.

[00:21:26] Eric Goranson: Being a world renowned architect. He was made an example of, because God knows he knew better. So that's one of them.

[00:21:35] Eric Goranson: The second one is that pesky neighbor you don't get along with. Hmm. And where I saw this happen, it happened on a Saturday, which was even weirder. He was swapping out windows on his weekend projects. So he was ordered some new windows, changing the opening on one of them in his kitchen. And man building permit guys showed up, building inspector showed up [00:22:00] on a Saturday, which is super rare.

[00:22:02] Eric Goranson: And again, he had the window out tagged. No permit that cost him some money had to pull permits, had to get the, and then of course they get you on the fines. Now the latest technology one is I'm seeing building departments using satellite, like Google pictures. Like how big was your deck in 1975? No, 1995, maybe 2005.

[00:22:30] Eric Goranson: Or how big was the footprint or. Was that building there, that shed, that shed that you built too big and they can go on there and take a look. How big was that deck there? Oh, wow. That deck doubled in size. And it's a second story deck. You should have pulled a permit for that. You see where I'm going?

[00:22:51] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah.

[00:22:51] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm wondering, like, you know, I just imagine them driving around in vehicles, like looking for mm-hmm activity. I mean, how many people do they [00:23:00] have on staff? Like, is this a realistic expectation that you could get busted? Or is it more of a fee like a, you know, do they have us in fear? I'm just curious cuz I don't really know.

[00:23:09] Caroline Blazovsky: Oh,

[00:23:09] Eric Goranson: how works the answer is? Here's the thing. Here's where most of 'em happen. I'll say 70% of the time, maybe 60 to 70% of the time. I'll give a little more room here. 60 to 70% of the time that building inspector is driving to another inspection. Maybe your neighbor. Hold a permit for their deck. They're pulling to the driveway and they're walking down the side of the house and they look over and go, wow, they're doing a deck too.

[00:23:36] Eric Goranson: they're like the police. Exactly. You know, or wow. That Chevy's building that's way too big. There's no building permit for that. That's almost an accessory dwelling unit cuz you built it bigger than the minimum size, the maximum size square footage of a. So that's one of the most common ones. The other one is that pesky neighbor that you don't get along with.

[00:23:57] Caroline Blazovsky: Mm. I could see that being like the bigger thing, like [00:24:00] you're doing something and they're just like, you know what, I'm gonna call it in. They're not supposed to be doing this, or maybe they're close to your property line that could tick you

[00:24:10] Eric Goranson: off. I have seen, and I would great examples watching my buddy dirt monkey's, uh, video on doing a retaining wall.

[00:24:17] Eric Goranson: He had one homeowner next door. Was making daily, every six hours calls into the permit office with complaints that they were breaking the law and they had permits. It was the pesky neighbor next door going, they're not doing this right. They're not, of course they showed up. They had it all filmed. They had everything there.

[00:24:37] Eric Goranson: They had all the permits, but they were calling about every six hours. So that's the thing you gotta be careful with. If you're gonna go, trying to do, you know, sneak one past the inspector. Those neighbors. They're gonna see that patio door sliding in, you know, going to the front door. I'm gonna wait till they start on that.

[00:24:59] Eric Goranson: I'm gonna [00:25:00] call it in or I'm gonna, oh, I see a truck out front bet. They didn't pull a permit for that. That's all it takes. And a lot of the trades, they got names on the front of it.

[00:25:11] Caroline Blazovsky: So I'm thinking of something because of COVID and how difficult it was in the past to get contractors. How long does your building permit actually last?

[00:25:20] Caroline Blazovsky: So typically you think, okay, I'm gonna go pull the permit. I'll do the job this month and then we'll come close it out. But if you have to wait for a contractor, is there a limit? Is it six months, 18 months,

[00:25:31] Eric Goranson: depending on what the local codes are. A lot of times they're a year. A lot of times they're six months.

[00:25:36] Eric Goranson: I've seen 18 months, depending on what. Municipality says it can be, but most of the time you can get an extension really easy. Just call 'em up and go, Hey, I need an extension or fill out the paperwork online and get an extension. So it's usually not that big a deal. It can be a big deal sometimes though, if the code changes in the middle of that and hard to say how that's gonna go, you know, if you're doing that over the [00:26:00] holidays and sometimes there's that, Hey, there's that new 20, 23 code.

[00:26:04] Eric Goranson: If you're extending over. That can be, um, you can be grandfathered sometimes, but you I've seen, 'em not get grandfathered. So it's depending on how each one of those codes is written and what that local area's rules are.

[00:26:19] Caroline Blazovsky: So I'm gonna stick to my little rule. If it's going to change the value of my home for real estate transaction, I'm gonna get a permit.

[00:26:31] Caroline Blazovsky: And if it's gonna change the structure of my home, I'm gonna get a permit. I just make it dummy. It's like home improvement for dumies , that's what I use. And it helps me otherwise it's too complicated.

[00:26:43] Eric Goranson: Great example. I was on social media the other night here. I think it was actually last night and there was a nice lady on one of the groups that I'm in as an admin or an expert.

[00:26:53] Eric Goranson: And she had this closet that she was tearing out. Oh, okay. I'm gonna tear this structure out. Is that [00:27:00] okay? Well, if I, you know, I looked at the structure, she'd taken the, the drywall or plaster off of it and it was framed. Like it had some structure to it that header was, see permit larger than it should have been.

[00:27:12] Eric Goranson: I was a permit. It was big. Yeah. And she's like, I'm gonna rip it out. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. Sister, first of all. Yeah. Sister slow down that might not be able to come outta there without doing some work. And she goes, oh, what if I just throw a four by four? No, no, no. You've got like a two by like a three foot wide opening.

[00:27:32] Eric Goranson: And there's like a two by 10 up there. And I'm like, you gotta, there's a lot of structure here for some reason and you need to get a, uh, you know, you need to get somebody out there. That's a, a structural engineer to give it to. What do you have to do there? Now, when we come back, I want to talk about this real quick.

[00:27:53] Eric Goranson: If you're doing your own project, that is something that I think is a, is a good, solid [00:28:00] discussion on structure of having that structural engineer pay a few hundred bucks, maybe a thousand bucks to help walk you through some of these things. Because having that engineer and some drawings to tell you how to do.

[00:28:16] Eric Goranson: Can be a huge savings for you on how to tackle some of these projects. And quite frankly, if you're pulling permits, For beams and things like that, you're gonna need to have those things stamped anyway. So you might as well take care of it. Let's talk about that and dive into that just as soon as around the

[00:28:34] Intro: house returns.[00:29:00]

[00:29:07] Intro: Hi, everybody.

[00:29:08] Eric Goranson: I'm AAMI from Stephens, bam. And you are listening to around the house with.

[00:29:15] Intro: She and the beautiful Caroline,

[00:29:23] Eric Goranson: welcome back to the, around the house show. This is where you get your home improvement advice every single week. Thanks for joining us. Well, Caroline and I have been diving into, if you're just joining us, we've been diving into, do I need a permit? Do I not need a permit? And of course that rule goes always back to your local permit office, but.

[00:29:43] Eric Goranson: I was talking before, went out to break about structural engineers and how important they are. Even if you think that you're not gonna pull a permit on something, I would still refer to a structural engineer to help walk you through the project. So you know that you're doing it correctly. [00:30:00] And if you get nailed on it, at least you'll have the drawings already.

[00:30:05] Eric Goranson: Mm. And then you just have fines and, and maybe some redoing of the project.

[00:30:10] Caroline Blazovsky: I also like mechanical engineers, like when I'm working on HVAC all the time, because it always, I always feel like they give me an extra sense of, you know, back up to what I wanna do. I think engineers in general people, I mean, homeowners traditionally don't like, look at something and say, oh, I'm gonna hire an engineer, cuz it's just, but it is something sometimes you really do need, especially as the projects get more intricate and with definitely with mechanical engineering, we have so many things that happen in a home now.

[00:30:37] Caroline Blazovsky: You kind of need

[00:30:37] Eric Goranson: them? Well, pretty much if you're gonna pull a permit and you're messing with structure, so if I'm gonna make that three foot window, a five foot window, I'm gonna have to have a drawing and I'm gonna have to have a structural engineer stamp on that drawing saying the size of the header, how it's fastened all of those things, because.

[00:30:59] Eric Goranson: All of a [00:31:00] sudden, they have to bring that area up to current building code. So there could be a lot that has to be done on that to meet that, you know, as much a current building code that it can. So that's where that gets a little more

[00:31:13] Caroline Blazovsky: interesting if you're a homeowner though, and you're putting in. If you're a homeowner and you're putting in, let's just say, you're gonna, I don't know.

[00:31:19] Caroline Blazovsky: You're gonna put in some new windows, you're gonna add windows to the house that weren't traditionally there. Whose responsibility is it? Is it the homeowner to do that? Or is it the window company who advises you about that?

[00:31:29] Eric Goranson: First off, the homeowner is always gonna responsible for getting and pulling permits.

[00:31:35] Eric Goranson: So when you go to pull the permit for adding new windows, they're generally gonna wanna see a drawing of where the windows are. Structural engineer, stamped drawings for that, because it's not only just going in there. Okay. I'm cutting a hole in the side of the house and I'm putting a new header in and I'm figuring out that span.

[00:31:54] Eric Goranson: They wanna see, are you affecting the sheer of that building? Well, that have you [00:32:00] changed how that building is gonna stand up? Because every piece of material you put on the wall, like plywood or drywall has sheer that keeps that building from racking. And as soon as you change that sheer calculation, they didn't even do that back in the, you know, forties and fifties, they just went, oh, that'll be strong enough.

[00:32:21] Eric Goranson: Now they have to do those calculations. So many times it's like a garage. You know, if you do, if you build your own garage, when you get around that, outside of that garage door, there is nailing schedules where they say, okay, you need to use three quarter inch plywood or half inch plywood or steel moment frames or whatever to keep that structure.

[00:32:44] Eric Goranson: So it's solid. So a windstorm doesn't come by and blow the building over sideways. So you have to consider sheer and all of that. So that's why half of that is there. And then of course, you're trying to figure out if you're a, if you're a [00:33:00] town home where you got two stories above it, maybe there's a post that carries all the way up that carries some big window or a deck above.

[00:33:08] Eric Goranson: And if you break that coming down, there could be significant load on some, two by fours there that you didn't calculate. And now you've got a header that could be. Boeing, it could take out a window. It could cause some other structural issues. So anytime you're changing structure like that, unless it's just a single one story house and you're doing a quick little window thing.

[00:33:31] Eric Goranson: I I'll be honest. I think you should get that structural engineer in there just to make sure you've done it correctly.

[00:33:36] Intro: Interesting.

[00:33:37] Caroline Blazovsky: So I'm putting in a slider in my kitchen. I'm taking out a, a large bay window putting in a slider. You think I need a structural engineer? Uh, but

[00:33:45] Eric Goranson: you've got, here's the thing.

[00:33:47] Eric Goranson: Probably not in that. You're not changing the width of that window. Are you? You're just, you're just taking a window out and maybe

[00:33:55] Caroline Blazovsky: slightly it's gonna be, it's gonna be slightly bigger, a little [00:34:00] bigger and obviously taller because it's a slider versus a

[00:34:03] Eric Goranson: bay window. Okay. So you, you're not reusing that header, but a larger if you're a technically yeah.

[00:34:07] Eric Goranson: You would need to have engineered drawings for that in almost every municipality. That's gonna require a building permit for that. They're gonna want. A quick drawing to show what that load calculation is and how that's gonna transfer down because you are reframing that structure. So technically that's that's where they'd wanna see that mm-hmm few hundred bucks they'll come out there and could be a, you know, could be a few thousand bucks depending on what they have to do, of course.

[00:34:30] Eric Goranson: But you know what I mean? It's, it's what it is and that's what it's gonna require. So those are things to take a look at the same. Thing's gonna be if, um, I'll be honest, if you've got a basement and you've got a big. Horizontal crack in the basement. You know where that basement wall starting to bow in.

[00:34:50] Eric Goranson: You want a structural engineer to come out and give you a report on the correct way to fix that. Maybe it's steel posts, maybe it's carbon [00:35:00] fiber strips. Maybe it's a new foundation wall. All of that should be looked at by a structural engineer as well. Just like you would, uh, a retaining wall outside.

[00:35:09] Eric Goranson: You'd wanna have, if you're over. Three feet. I think you should have a structural engineer draw out how that retaining wall has to go. In many areas. You have to have that for the permit.

[00:35:19] Caroline Blazovsky: Lots to do lots to think

[00:35:20] Eric Goranson: about. So those are all things that, uh, and, and

[00:35:22] Caroline Blazovsky: most homeowners, most homeowners don't know where to get a structural engineer is our website.

[00:35:29] Caroline Blazovsky: I mean, where do they

[00:35:29] Eric Goranson: go? You know, here's the thing. I have always gotten my structural engineers from my building designers that I've worked with in the past, just because I have those relationships. You can jump on to Google and find one in your area and have them, you know, call around to a few of 'em mm-hmm , you know, I like the smaller, independent ones versus some of the big, huge firms for doing stuff.

[00:35:52] Eric Goranson: That's my personal preference, cuz I like that personal relationship to be able to call up and go. Yeah. Hey [00:36:00] Jim, I need you to look at this one, but that's. But find somebody that's close. Somebody that wants to take on a small project. You know, those are the, the big, the big ones tend to go for larger commercial projects where, you know, they're taking on the high rise or they're taking on the, the, the city county township road projects and everything else.

[00:36:21] Eric Goranson: See you

[00:36:22] Caroline Blazovsky: motivated me. I Mo you motivated me and now we're motivating others, cuz I'm definitely, I'm a type of person where I like to take out a small window and put in a much bigger window. So when I do that, I've compromised now the integrity of the exterior and the building science of my

[00:36:39] Eric Goranson: structure.

[00:36:39] Eric Goranson: You got it. And that's where that makes a difference. It's just, it's just like I've had with additions and new construction where you have to go in and do soil reports and all of those things, when they're starting to figure out, you know, helical peers and all those [00:37:00] kind of things. To make sure that those things are being held up correctly.

[00:37:04] Eric Goranson: What,

[00:37:05] Intro: what, what, what did

[00:37:06] Caroline Blazovsky: you just say? Yeah. A helical pier. I'm learning

[00:37:09] Eric Goranson: something. What is that? So if you're building a D one great way to make sure if you've got marshy ground or if you've got a lot of frost heve, is that what they do as a helical pier? Think of like a big screw that they screw into the ground, basically down into bedrock.

[00:37:26] Eric Goranson: And there's a meter on there that tells you what the force is of the power that they're screwing that down into. And maybe it'll say up to, you know, make up a number up to a thousand foot pounds, then that comes up with a steel bracket. And that is the support. So if you've got a house that's sinking, you can go out and put those every six, eight feet around the house and lift from that and actually lift that house up.

[00:37:53] Eric Goranson: So that foundation is attached to. And if that ground continues to sink, it keeps the house supported. [00:38:00]

[00:38:02] Intro: It's jacked up.

[00:38:04] Eric Goranson: So if you've got that nice, if you've got that, um, you know, old chimney pulling away from the house and pulling away and, you know, cuz the outside of it is sinking and pulling the top away from the house, you can go in and put two or four helical piers in there carefully Jack that back off, off.

[00:38:24] Eric Goranson: Helical pier as the Jack point. So you're gonna lift from that and then you can put a bracket onto it and hold it. And, uh, that won't move anymore. It is just solid as a rock. Yes. Word,

[00:38:39] Caroline Blazovsky: word of the day, helical

[00:38:40] Eric Goranson: PR. And there's a lot of people that do those. It used to be something that was, you know, they can be expensive.

[00:38:46] Eric Goranson: Um, they can be a thousand, 2000 bucks a pop. For each one that they do, cuz they have to bring in a little excavator and do that. But, uh, it, um, there's also some engineering drawings where you wanna put them. So there's [00:39:00] a little bit to them. Very important when you're on a hill as well, to keep things from moving.

[00:39:07] Eric Goranson: Hey Caroline, I'm here in the music in the back. You know what that means? It's time to go.

[00:39:12] Caroline Blazovsky: Means get those permits guys, get those

[00:39:14] Eric Goranson: permits, follow it. Be legal. See what you can do. It's not a bad thing. I'm Eric chief and I'm Caroline B and you've been listening to

[00:39:24] Intro: around the house.