The final step for the Civil Review to be complete is to get our drainage BMP’s approved.  BMP’s stand for “Best Management Practices”.  Basically, our drainage design on our property requires us to maintain the drainage treatment types that we install.  We have two different ways that we’re dealing with drainage on our property – drywells and sheet flow.  The driveway drains to a drywell, the roof drains to a drywell and the back patio sheet flows to the back yard.  The County requires us as the homeowners to know how to install and maintain these drainage features.  For example – the gravel material in the drywell becomes filled with fines and clogged, we’ll need to have them replaced.  The County wants this recorded and on file so that if we ever sell the property the new owners will also know how to take care of the property.

The County asked me to prepare “Exhibit A” with certain criteria – a 1” border on legal sized paper and only pertinent information shown.  I did this, the reviewer approved and signed off on it and then he sent me the rest of the information that need to be recorded in a covenant.

BMP Covenant Sheet 3 “Exhibit A”

To have the covenant accepted by the county it needed to be notarized.  Luckily my uncle is a notary and lives just a couple miles from us. We brought over yummy dessert from Whole Foods on Monday and signed the papers with him.

BMP Covenant Sheet 1

BMP Covenant Sheet 2

BMP Covenant Sheet 4

BMP Covenant Sheet 5

BMP Covenant Sheet 6

BMP Covenant Sheet 7

Joel submitted them to Seattle to the King County’s admin office and we had our recording number.  We gave the recording number to the County’s Civil reviewer and he signed off on our review as being approved.  Easy peasy!

After our resubmittal meeting, I had a few things to change – the site drainage features and the limits of grading on the property.  The grading limits were simple to take care of – just remove some proposed contour lines on the property.

The County reviewers wanted us to move the drainage dispersion trench out of the wetland buffer.  This really doesn’t make sense to me since all of the water naturally drains to the area I located it in, but apparently it had to go in order to get our permit approval.  If I was going to relocate the drainage feature, I was going to change the type too.  I really didn’t want to have a soggy backyard, so I changed it to being a drywell.  In order to use a drywell system, you have to calculate the amount of roof runoff would be directed towards the drywell, and using the soil type you can appropriately size the drywell.  Here’s my calcs:

Drywell Sizing Calculations

With the drywell sizes for both the driveway and for the roof runoff I was able to place them on the property in an area that’s outside of the wetland buffer and that was it!

Final Site Plan – Sheet 1

Final Site Plan – Sheet 2

Final Site Plan – Sheet 3

With the new site plan, I got a call from the reviewer and we passed – he was ready to approve our plans!  The last step to getting his final approval is to get our drainage BMP’s recorded with the county.  With that recording number he’ll sign off and we’ll be done with the Civil Review.

Immediately after getting our Critical Areas Approved, I called and scheduled my appointment for the resubmittal for our Civil Review.  Luckily I was able to get in a week later on the 30^th at 10am.  I felt like I was going to battle this morning though – the reviewer we had was known for being one of the most difficult at the County – lucky us.  I basically wanted to get in and out and just get our approval.

Far from it though – this reviewer didn’t agree with the Critical Areas Reviewer and called her in there and she rescinded her approval!!  What the heck!  She told us that we can’t do the small amount of regrading that we wanted to do on our property within the previously cleared buffer area.  Apparently she didn’t notice the regrading before and it was only when our civil reviewer pointed it out to her that she saw it.  So in order to get the Critical Areas Approved (again) I needed to revise our grading limits.  That’s fine with me though – it really not that big of a deal to adjust the grading.  So our #1 issues of Critical Areas seems to be easy to get approved again.

And our #2 issue was the small vs. large drainage review requirement.  The reviewer came in guns-a-blazin’ on this issue and it wasn’t until a drainage reviewer came in that he agreed with me and that we met the small drainage review requirement.  Phew!

So with a few more small plan changes, we’ll be able to resubmit our site plan for approval.

Today we heard from King County for on our permit submittal.  The Critical Area Reviewer emailed and let us know that our proposed site plan will require mitigation for work within the buffer area.  She said that our septic drainfield is within the buffer and will require wetland enhancements/buffer mitigation work to be able to put it there.  I explained the history of our property and how the property has a previously permitted clearing area.  Since that clearing, the buffer widths increased, and part of the area is now within the new buffer limits.  We kept our drainfield design to fit within that area though and it was our understanding that having in that area met King County’s requirements.  The Critical Areas Reviewer did some more research on our property and found the old clearing permit.  She agreed with us and our Critical Areas Review was APPROVED!  Score!

Now we can resubmit for our Civil Review…

I just received comments via email from the Civil Review for our property.  For the most part, the comments are really ticky-tacky and minor.  For example, show elevations here, shift that over there, etc.  There were two things that were a bit difficult though 1) get Critical Areas Approval; and 2) perform a large drainage review.  #1 is a waiting game – the Critical Area Review is still in progress so we’ll just need to wait it out and see what the outcome is.  #2 is a big arguing point for me though – our site doesn’t require a full drainage review.  Our site meets criteria for a small drainage review since we have more than 65% of our lot in existing native vegetation protected by our Open Space Continuation covenant (we actually have 77%!).  The trick here is that you really need to read the Stormwater Manual to look for those “loopholes”.  On first blush, you’d think that our property would require a full drainage review – but when you really look into the Stormwater Manual criteria, you’ll see that it doesn’t.  Now I just need to prove it to the County!

The reviewer’s comments said that I needed to wait until we had full resolution on all of our items to be able to meet for the resubmittal.  So, we’ll need to wait until we have our Critical Areas Approval until I will be able to begin to prove my point about #2 (drainage review).

County Comments – Sheet 1

County Comments – Sheet 2

County Comments – Sheet 3

The last few weeks have been pretty busy with our home life (travel + work) so it took a bit for me to be able to get back to the County to turn in our building permit. Finally though, we resubmitted on Thursday, October 16^th. I arrived right when they opened at 7:30 am. They called out the County’s surveyor to review the ingress & egress easements – we passed with flying colors (especially after I mentioned that a licensed surveyor found all of them for me). After that I turned in everything, paid our permit fee and I was on my way! Easy as pie this time!

The only catch – it’s a 4 MONTH review time. We likely won’t have an approved building permit until mid-February. So now it’s a waiting game.