Meeting with the Building Inspector

Friday, I met with the building inspector (Dale) to discuss his notes, especially about the footings and “special 3^rd party inspections”.  I also wanted to discuss the alternative to the step footings that my concrete footings guy wanted.

Dale started the meeting by saying that he had read my email (which included a detailed description of “frost protected shallow footings” and all the codes related to them) and that frost protected shallow footings were fine.  I guess the plans simply had not been detailed enough to show that they were “frost protected”.  Great.  We got thru his other notes just about as quickly.  I told him I would happily do the concrete encased electrodes, but since my footings should stay dry, I would also be putting in conventional grounding rods.  He said, “of course.”

Then we discussed the “special 3^rd party inspections”.  He simply didn’t feel qualified or comfortable signing off on those parts of the construction.  These included things like my precast concrete ribs, the rebar in the vaults and the shotcrete.  He wants me to hire a 3^rd party engineering company to certify that these are built correctly.  Of course, this will be additional expense for me.

I tried to explain that I had already paid the engineer a lot of money to certify the design of the rebar and that it was normal to trust the strength of the concrete from the mixing truck.  All the building inspector had to do was compare the engineers instructions with what we did.  The inspector was not quite convinced, but said I could hire my previous engineer to help him with the inspection.   Unfortunately, my original engineer (Ken) has closed his practice.  I did try contacting Ken anyway and he told me he couldn’t do it.   My inspector gave me two other large engineering companies to contact.  The first, PSI USA, told me they wouldn’t work on a residential project and the other (SME USA) has simply not got back to me (it has been more than a week as of this writing).  I asked my architect for suggestions and he gave me a name, but I have not managed to call that engineer yet (I have been traveling for work myself).   I spoke with my shotcrete guy (Nate) to find out who he had worked with.  He said that building inspectors never have trouble inspecting his pools.  My inspector had already said this is different because the pool is up against earth, the water has no where to push the concrete.  In my house, the earth is trying to push the concrete down onto peoples heads.  Nate said that special inspections are sometimes done for large commercial jobs, but it would really cost me, both for the inspection and for his crew to make the test panels (tested destructively).

The notes Dale made on my plans also included a list of “additional” inspections.  These were additional inspections that he wanted to do because my construction was so unusual.  They included inspections when I set the concrete ribs, added the waterproofing umbrella, etc.  I got the impression that I would not be charged for these, but maybe I am naive.  I will ask directly the next time I get a chance.

Last, but not least, I asked about Doug’s plan to change the step footings into doweled footings over fill.   Dale said he didn’t like footings specified by the engineer because they had a sloped bottom.  He said footings should always be flat on the bottom (which does make reasonable sense even if sloped footings are actually approved by civil engineers.)  He said Doug’s plan was fine, but I needed to extend the lower footing out by a foot and put a pilaster on it to better support the doweled footing.   I asked about the fill and he said the footings could span a 2ft section of fill, but any more than that and I would need the fill to be “engineered”.  I guess I will need to get that done, hopefully it is not to expensive.  At least my sand should be easy to compact.

In the end, I updated my model to facilitate communication with my footings guy (Doug, sounds more like the name of an excavator doesn’t it?).  I hope to meet with Doug tomorrow to come up with a plan of attack.  I have agreed to start with just the basement footings and get the basement walls up and backfilled before working on the other footings.  It changes my schedule a bit, adds an additional concrete pump rental and an additional footing inspection, but it does seem easier than trying to work around that sloped sandy excavation.  Including that basement in the design really has complicated things.  I will ask Doug about doing the garage footing at the same time so I can start on that Quonset hut sooner.