Category Archives: King County Research

Septic & Private Well Permit = Approved

Posted in Permits, Septic System by

We are pretty fortunate when it comes to our septic design.  Since our lot previously had an approved building permit, there was also a previously approved septic design.  Before we bought our property, during the site feasibility study period in May 2013, we hired Huard Septic Design to confirm that the site passed a preliminary perc test.  As it turns out, Dave Huard actually did the septic design on our lot in the past.  Fantastic news because he was already ready familiar with our property and the soil conditions.

Back in early August 2014, we contacted Huard Septic Design again to create us a septic design.  Really my only concern would be the future landscaping that we’d want to do on the property – terracing the yard, and regrading the back of the property to increase the usability.  I spoke with Dave Huard and he said that a small amount of regrading is allowed in the septic drainfield area, but not a whole lot.  With that information, I revamped our backyard grading and gave him the grading plan below (yellow area being where I’d want them to locate the septic system).

Highlighted in yellow is the area that I graded for the septic drainfield.

Highlighted in yellow is the area that I graded for the septic drainfield.

After initial research to gather existing data in his office, Dave, from Huard Septic Design went to the property to stake the proposed well location and dig six soil test holes on August 27th, 2014.  Although we already knew the soil characteristics from our preliminary perc test last year, the holes needed to be dug (and well staked) for the County’s inspection.  For you geotechs out there, the soil logs all came in with approximately the same information:

0-5” sod/top soil

5-30” brown sandy loam with roots (type 4)

30”-54” gray gravely loamy sand with cobble (type 4)

54” compacted

Back at the office, Dave really did fantastic!  He utilized the (yellow) space that I graded for him and designed a pressure-distribution system.  This is one of the less expensive types of septic systems (phew) as shown in the design below.

Pressure distribution septic design

Pressure distribution septic design

After my approval of the design, and a check for the application to the King County Health Department, our septic design application and private well application were submitted to the health department.  Huard Septic made the submittal really easy for us – they gathered all of the information needed for the submittal, including doing all of the private well research and submitted everything on our behalf.  It truly couldn’t have been easier.

Our plans were submitted to the County on September 16th and since our property already had an approved septic design in the past, it was submitted as *expired*.  Theoretically, it could have taken between 10 to 12 weeks to hear back from the County, but since it we were submitting approval for a previously approved (yet expired) design, it flew by, and two weeks later on October 2nd we received the approval in the mail!

Ingress & Egress Easements – “You’re Golden!”

Posted in Permits by

After our pre-submittal meeting I went into work where I met with one of our firm’s surveyors. I told him how I needed to find all of the easements getting to my property. He showed me online where you can research your property’s easements, deeds, and maps. This is all readily available on King County’s website; however, he told us that some of the older documents may not be available online – and I’d have to do the research in downtown Seattle at King County’s archives. That would mean searching for files on microfish and copying pages by hand. Ugh.

The surveyor actually said that he would do a quick search for our easements on his lunch break and that he’d let me know if he found anything. A couple hours later and I got an email: “You’re Golden!” I was at Starbucks when I got the text, grabbed my drink and a gift card for him and headed back to the office. Totally unbelievable, but he not only found all of our easements, but also mapped and coded them on the County’s Quarter Section Maps. He totally went above and beyond for us! Absolutely amazing – we owe him big! This was huge since it meant that we didn’t need to purchase any easements, and that all of our paperwork was in order to submit our building permit! Whoo hoo!

 

Building Permit – Pre-Submittal Meeting

Posted in Permits by

Over the past few weeks I’ve been pulling together all of the information that we need for the building permit. To make things a bit easier, King County has pulled together all of the information that we need in a nice little Residential Building Permit Checklist.  This checklist plus a lot of other useful information can be found on their website.

That said, it’s pretty extensive, and multiple copies are needed of multiple things. With our septic design submitted to King County Health Department on September 16th, there was really only a couple things left to be completed for me to meet with the Building Department: energy form and drainage design. The energy form (insert link) was pretty straightforward, and after calculating all of the door & window openings, I passed it along to Ruttan Construction to figure out all of the U-factors and energy ratings for materials. Normally, architects fill out this form, but since ours didn’t spec out the type of windows & doors to be used (only the sizing), our contractor had to fill this out for us.

The site drainage design was pretty easy as well, but I think being a civil engineer really helped me out here. Realistically I read through the King County Stormwater Design Manual and just followed their procedures. They have flowcharts that walk you through key steps that let you know what type of drainage review you’ll need to do. From what I gather from our builder and others in the area, you really want to have a small drainage design (not a full drainage review). The full drainage review is a pretty lengthy and much more expensive process…and you’d need to get a civil engineer to stamp the design (obviously that part wouldn’t have been a problem for me). Nevertheless, I’d rather invest our money elsewhere than in installing drainage features (which likely would have ended up being a stormwater pond). To qualify for a small drainage review, I needed to tweak some of our total impervious surface area to be less than 10,000 square feet. That, coupled with our property having greater than 65% of the property size as native vegetation kicked us to the small drainage review criteria. Using the information in the small drainage review, you need to select which Best Measurement Practices “BMPs” that you want to use on your site. I used sheet flow for the driveway & back patio, drywells for the footing drains, and dispersion trenches for the downspouts.

Initial Site Plan - Sheet 1

Initial Site Plan – Sheet 1

Initial Site Plan - Sheet 2

Initial Site Plan – Sheet 2

Initial Site Plan - Sheet 3

Initial Site Plan – Sheet 3

With the drainage design now done, I gathered up all of my information, grabbed a Starbucks and headed in to King County this morning at 7am when they opened. I’m not sure why, but I was pretty nervous to go in for the pre-submittal meeting. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, and depending on who you get from the County to help you, I’ve heard that it can either go pretty smoothly or pretty awfully. Luckily, I had a woman named Mai helping me and she was pretty great. She walked through all of the information that I had, and even printed out some information that I should have brought in (I emailed it to her from my dropbox account from my phone (gotta love dropbox)!   She basically did the initial screening and then called on each department to come talk with me and make sure that I met their requirements – drainage, fire safety, critical areas, and structural.

Everything for our property seemed good, except for one thing – the ingress and egress. A new criteria that the county is making applicants prove is legal ingress and egress. This is especially important on properties like ours where cross over easements to reach our property. They told us that we needed to go back home, research and find all of the easements from on our neighbor’s properties that tell us we can legally get to our property. This is interesting since apparently easements may not transfer with the sale of a property – in fact, they could be deeded to a specific person. And if we couldn’t find all of the recorded easements, we would need to purchase easements from the neighbors before we could turn in our submittal for our building permit.

Besides the ingress & egress easements, we also found out that we’ll need to have a sprinkler system in our house. This is because our house is pretty wide and a fire hose can’t reach all the way around our house…one of the requirements in order to not have a sprinkler system.

Critical Areas Designation = Approved

Posted in King County Research, Permits, Wetlands by

Nine weeks ago on May 29th we submitted our permit for King County’s Critical Areas Designation (CAD).  The County is so busy right now, that it was expected to take a while for them to even look at our application.  It actually sat for 9 weeks before someone was able to pick it up and take a look at it.  Our reviewer, Robert King, reviewed our application for completeness two days ago on Wednesday.  Then Thursday he did a site visit and today he approved it!  Nine weeks of the application sitting + 3 days’ worth of review = one approved CAD!

It really couldn’t have been easier for us.  But that’s because we did our homework up front.  I researched the heck out of our property.  This included requesting archived documents that the County had stored in their storage facility to be pulled – in there I found a wetland report that David Evans & Associates did a while back on the wetland for a neighboring property owner.  In addition, I hired Altmann Oliver (a wetland biological firm) to review the wetland in its current state and provide a letter of reconnaissance for the application as well.  When the County reviewed all of the documents that I sent, they said that our application seemed pretty straight forward and that the property had reputable consulting firms.  I guess it pays to hire people who the County trusts; otherwise who knows where we would have ended up.

So, what does this approval mean to us?  Well, it formally records the wetland + buffer with the County and if their regulations change (ie: buffer widths increase) it won’t affect us (at least not until the CAD approval expires in 5 years).  I also had a few questions about the 125’ of buffer space that was cleared in 2005 under an approved clearing & grading permit and if we were able to keep it as a backyard for the boys to run around in.  And guess what…the answer was yes!  Score!!

The next thing on the list to do is turn in our permit application to King County Health Department for our septic + well.  That has to be designed first…here we go again!

CAD Approval Letter 1

CAD Approval Letter 1

CAD Approval Letter 2

CAD Approval Letter 2

CAD Approval Letter 3

CAD Approval Letter 3

CAD Approval Letter 4

CAD Approval Letter 4

First Permit Submitted – Critical Areas Designation (CAD)

Posted in King County Research, Permits by

Today was super exciting and marks a critical milestone for us…we submitted our first permit today (and on my birthday)!!  I arrived at King County at 7:30 am in Snoqualmie and after a 45 minute wait I finally was able to talk with a rep about our permit – Critical Areas Designation (CAD).

A few months back if you went to King County you’d have to put your name on a sign-in sheet on a clipboard and wait your turn.  Now you go to straight to the front desk and they have a computerized check-in system.   And you can track how far down the list you are on a large flat screen monitor.  The process is much more tech savvy and you can monitor your wait instead of having to pop up and read a clipboard if you were wondering how long your wait was.

So…a 45 minute wait.  There was one person in front of me when I arrived and there was only one KC staff member there to help with Critical Areas.  45 minutes later though another staff member arrived and was able to help me.  I had all of my documentation ready to be reviewed.  The CAD process requires a quick two page form to be filled out, and if you have any supporting information that should be attached as well.  We turned in the application as well as a copy of our existing conditions site plan (survey), a copy of our wetland delineation concurrency letter (that we paid Altmann Oliver to write last fall), the original wetland + buffer delineation from 2005, and an existing wetland report that we found in archived county records.  Oh, and I forgot – the $1,655 check!  Needless to say – we were much more prepared than some that turn in the same permit.

Detailed plan of our property including the wetland + buffers

Detailed plan of our property including the wetland + buffers

Letter confirming our wetland delineation & documented wetland boundary is still current

Letter confirming our wetland delineation & documented wetland boundary is still current

Wetland + Buffer plan from 2005

Wetland + Buffer plan from 2005

The staff member quickly flipped through all of our research/documentation and said that we were extremely prepared.  And all of that should actually pay off.  The County’s review timeframe can be as high as 4 months.  Luckily, at this time it’s only about 2-3 months.  But since our documentation included everything that they could ever want to know about our property, it should be a lot faster than that.  Apparently, the County staff triage the applications, and of course do the easy ones first.  Since we provided so much information, ours is expected to go pretty quickly.

So, what’s the purpose of a CAD and why do we need it?  Our property has a wetland (aka pond) on the back of the property.  This is classified as an environmentally sensitive area and it’s the County’s responsibility to make sure that they’re maintained in their native vegetation (to allow for wildlife to live and plant species to thrive).  Associated with a wetland is a buffer (or distance around a wetland) that can’t be disturbed.  The CAD tells the property owner (and document it with the County) what classification of the wetland that exists and what the associated wetland buffer is.

We already know that we have a class 1 wetland (the most severe type) because we have a pond with animal habitats (beavers) living in it.  And the associated buffer is 225-feet.  So, the point of the CAD is to document it with the County and to see what we’ll be able to do with our property.  Back in 2005, the property was cleared and at that time the buffer distance was only 100-feet.  Now, since the buffer has increased to 225-feet we want to be able to use that extra 125-foot space that’s already been cleared as a back yard.  Ideally we’d like to regrade it, and create a yard.

We’ll see how it goes!  Crossing our fingers though!

Before Design Can Begin

Posted in Architect & Design, King County Research, Wetlands by

Before the design of our home can begin, there’s a few things that we need to take care of over the next couple of weeks.

  1. The first thing is getting an approved Critical Area Designation with King County. In short, because we have a wetland on our property we’ll need to have the wetland and buffer boundaries determined by a biologist. We need to determine how much land King County will allow us to use inside the wetland buffer area as a backyard. This really affects both our home placement on the property as well as the shape of the home. The more space we have as a backyard, the wider the depth of our home can be.
  2. We also need to get the property surveyed. Because our site isn’t flat, it’s important for us to understand the slope of the property. This will enable us to have a home designed that will work well and take full advantage of the contours of our property.

Although we’re excited to have Mike Blondino design our home, we really feel that having all of the necessary site information first will make the process go a lot smoother. Knowing everything we can about the site is sure to make for less revisions to the design in the future. After we get both the Critical Area Designation and the property surveyed, I think we’ll be all set to have Mike design our dream home!

Coasting to Closing

Posted in King County Research, Wetlands by

Finally on Tuesday we received the Open Space Continuance from escrow. It took escrow 7 days to fill out the form and get it back to us! Joel and I signed 4 copies of it for King County on Tuesday night and first thing in on Wednesday morning, our realtor, Lance, drove it to King County for their approval. And by Wednesday afternoon, King County had approved the continuance! I’ve heard that it normally takes a few days for King County to review the continuance, do the necessary research, and finally approve it. We were very lucky that it only took a few hours and that’s because we were able to talk with King County about our continuance ahead of time. Ultimately, this means that we get to have lower taxes for the area of our property that contains wetland + wetland buffers. Score!

Wednesday was full of great news, not only did we get the open space continuance, but we heard from our lender that our loan paperwork was approved by their underwriters and ready to be sent to escrow! We have until June 10th to close on the lot, but I want to close early on May 31st, to ensure that no funny-business happens with the seller since it’s bank-owned. May 31st also marks the end of our feasibility study period, and since we don’t have a financing contingency if something completely unforeseen were to happen with our loan we could still get our money back using the feasibility study as an excuse.

I also heard back from King County Records Department yesterday that the files we requested were in. When we went a few weeks ago into King County they told us that the wetland information and the site grading permit that the previous owners had submitted back in 2005 had been archived. They needed to pull the archive box from downtown Seattle and bring it to their office for us to look through. Today, I went to King County’s office in Snoqualmie to check out what they found. It was great – not only did they have the site grading permit which discussed the clearing area and the buffer requirements, but they also had the FULL wetland report! It’s a fairly extensive document and I’ve yet to read through all of it, but it was definitely a bonus to find that there. While there, I was able to photocopy all of the documents that I wanted (40 some-odd pages) and it only cost me $2! Getting a full wetland report for only $2 seems like a good deal to me! Hopefully in the future when we submit permits the report will only need to be updated for any information that has changed. That will really save us a lot of time and money in the future.

So, for the next week, we should have a smooth sailing into closing!

Open Space Continuation

Posted in King County Research, Wetlands by

Two days ago we received our title report. There was a lot of information in the title report – easements, covenants, you name it! The major thing we found in the title report is that the property has a special valuation which dedicates a portion of the property as open space.

When this lot, along with 3 others around it, was subdivided from one larger lot (totaling 20.32 acres), the owners decided to keep a portion of each property as open space, 13.15 acres in total. This means that our lot (5.08 acres total) has approximately 1.79 buildable acres and the other 3.29 acres is to remain in its native vegetated state. Our property really only has about 1.3 acres that could be built on anyhow because of the sensitive areas (wetland + wetland buffers) that are located on the property. So ultimately we’re not even dedicating any space that we feasibly could build on anyhow.

Open Space

The reason that having the special valuation is so fantastic is that it lowers the taxes on the portion of the property that is dedicated to 30% of what they could have been. For our property, King County’s Tax records show that for the tax year 2013 the appraised land value is $245,000, but the Taxable Land Value is only $134,148. So basically we’re getting taxed less because we aren’t going to use the 3.29 acres that have been dedicated as open space. That’s fantastic!!

Ok, so why is this extremely important at this point in the process? The special valuation does not transfer between owners at the sale of the property, and furthermore, if we aren’t to continue with the open space dedication we would have to pay all the taxes on it that would have been owed for the past two years! Yikes. And in order for us to continue with the open space valuation, we need to have a “Notice of Compliance” on the Excise Tax Affidavit completed and submitted to King County’s Assessor’s Office before the record of conveyance (our closing date). And of course, this all takes extra time to do.

Of course, Joel and I have never done this so we ask our realtor, Lance Woodruff, what to do. And as usual, Lance knows exactly what all this means and what to do. In fact, he’s done four Open Space Continuances this year alone! He knew exactly what we needed and who to talk to at King County about getting it done. Thank God! It really is so fantastic having him working with us.

So, a new process begins in order for us to close (mind you that our preferred closing date is May 31st…two weeks from today). There are two documents that need to be signed and given to King County in order for them to approve the Open Space Continuation: 1) Letter of Continuance for Open Space Classification and 2) Excise Tax Affidavit. The first is pretty easy – just a document for us to sign (King County needs the original), and the second is a little trickier because escrow needs to prepare this (who knows how long that will take) and then we need to sign four copies of it for King County. Then it’s pretty simple, Lance will take it to King County and give it directly to the approver, King County will call us to discuss the continuation and make sure that we understand what exactly the designation means and that we plan on living up to the regulations. And within a week we should have an approved continuation.

What does this mean when we’re in construction? Well, there’s a compliance component to the program during construction. It’s likely that we’ll need to prove to King County that we will still be in compliance with our proposed home site and the construction work before construction commences. In addition, a representative from King County will pay us a site visit to ensure that we’re meeting all of our commitments. Seems good to me!

The really good thing is that I actually read the title report and all of the underlying documents. Without reading it we would have had no idea about the special valuation. The listing, listing office, nor the seller told us about the classification – which is a huge problem. So, lesson learned – make sure you read all the documents pertaining to what you’re buying. You never know what you could be liable for!

Wetland Delineation

Posted in King County Research, Wetlands by

The next step in our feasibility study was to determine if the wetland has changed since the original wetland delineation in 2007. What that consists of is mapping out the wetland using coordinates to really know the limits of where the wetland lies. In my job, we routinely have bioligists at delineate wetlands. On some projects we’ve worked on wetlands that once were recorded are now obsolete and on other project we’ve had wetlands increase in size from what they were in the past. In particular, at this site, if the wetland encroached any more to the west on the property then we really wouldn’t have a large amount of room to build on. This would limit both the size of house and the size of yard that we would be able to have.

Well, Lance is absolutely amazing! He emailed one of his well known acquantainces, John Altmann from Altmann Oliver Associates inquiring about the lead time to do a wetland delineation for us. John Altmann replied to Lance and said did the study back in 2007 and just a few weeks ago was paid by a different interested buyer to check out the wetland. Score one for us, since we won’t have to pay for him to go back out there…and even better is the news that the wetland delineation done in 2007 still is valid. The wetland hasn’t increased in size! He also confirmed that the wetland buffer is 225′. All of this is very fantastic news for us as our assumptions haven’t changed on the property, and it was free! I guess it pays off to really know the right people!

Initial Research Results From King County

Posted in King County Research by

Monday began our official kick-off for our feasibility study. Our first step in doing this was to contact King County and pull as much information from their system on the property as we could. Lance went to King County twice on Monday, but the first time was too close to their lunch, and the second time was too close to their closing. Just an FYI, but be sure to check their office hours. King County Department of Permits in Snoqualmie is only open from 7:30 – 11:30 and from 1:00 to 3:00 most days of the week. http://www.kingcounty.gov/property/permits/about/HoursLocations.aspx. Who knew!

He was able to submit a request for information for us and they emailed all of the documents to him. And boy what results we got back…200+ pages about the property! They have everything scanned for the property which made is so easy to get the files from them. We got information including surveys, title, sensitive areas, clearing permits, building permits, covenants, easements, etc. Some of the information I had pulled previously from King County’s website, but there was so much more that wasn’t online.

So, what did I do with all of this information? Well, I printed it all out (because I’m old school and like to read documents that are printed) organized them by subject matter and highlighted and flagged the questionable things I saw. The reason I did this is because Lance set up a meeting with King County for us for Friday, May 10th at 9am. So I want to make sure that we come prepared with all of our questions ready to go. It will really be helpful to have site specific issues to ask questions about as generic questions would only be given a generic answer. And with such a large investment, it’s extremely important to get clear answers about the property.

I’ve already have a real good feeling about the property. I’ve browsed through all of the documents that King County’s given us and the previous seller had building permits approved for the property. That at least provides a solid level of confidence to move forward in our feasibility study. I didn’t see any red flags – only a few questions for clarification need to be resolved. After our meeting on Friday I’ll know more, and hopefully be even more confident in our purchase.