The Lot Inspection Meeting

After much anticipation the time finally arrived for the lot inspection meeting. Our preparation for this required some teamwork. My work travel schedule has required me to be gone a good bit lately and unable to make calls to contractors; up until now I had been handling most of these chores. Sharon was able to get a written estimate from the guy handling our gas line installation from the gas well.

I also turned her loose on the guy from the power company (West Penn Power) who had turned out to be elusive at best. After a series of calls and messages she finally wore him down and was able to get a name and number of another guy who appears able to actually do something. Power Company Guy #2 starts in with their standard line that they can't do anything until we have started digging our foundation, which would be too late for us. The temporary power has to be available for the construction site before then. Considering that we need about 1200 feet of power line and the glacial pace at which West Penn moves, it seemed like it would be forever before anything got done. After talking to my wife for about 20 minutes he says he needs the number of the power pole where we'll potentially tap in - this is information that I had previously supplied by phone to their guy who had informed me I was on the "slow track". Apparently this number hadn't made it into our work order. I trudged out to the pole and finally deciphered the ancient script on the medallion nailed on the pole; I kinda felt like Indiana Jones on one of his adventures. I also emailed a couple of drawings done by our surveyor of the property, which showed our new property within the context of the larger tract from which it was being subdivided. He responds back with a long treatise saying that he needed different info. More on that in a bit....

Anyway, we met with Jeff from Wayne Homes for our Lot Inspection meeting. He is the Field Manager for our project and has overall responsibility for the supervision of our home construction. He showed up a little after 8 am, and we headed over to the home site. I had just spent the previous day clearing away weeds and burning brush so that he would have adequate site lines to "shoot the elevations", even though I had no real idea what that meant. Because of the bank's insistence on not doing anything to the lot I was unable to cut down any additional trees to make things easier.




We discussed the orientation of the house on the lot as well as where all the utilities would enter the house. Jeff made notations on the preliminary blueprints as we discussed septic, water, gas, electricity. He took measurements and set some stakes in the ground to establish the borders of our house area. He then got out a tripod-mounted laser gadget and was able to calculate how much difference in elevation there was from the highest corner of our lot to the other corners and in between. With this info we can tell our excavator how much he needs to grade the land to make things level before the foundation is dug. Being a geek, I appreciated this cool piece of technology.


Jeff was also able to give us some options for having a walk-out basement door. Sharon and I didn't like the idea of a stairwell; we'd seen it in a home we visited and didn't like the look or the idea of water being down there, even though drainage is built in. We wanted an entrance with a gradual slope to walk up; the problem with this idea was that the walkway would have to slope away (downhill) from the house slightly to avoid water in the basement. The idea was still doable, but would require additional grading on that side of the house at an extra cost. We both agreed that the extra cost would be worth it so that things could more easily be carried in and out of the basement; more importantly, I would avoid Sharon's wrath by not walking through the house after doing yard work. I'll be able to enter the basement directly, take off my dirty stuff and jump right into the basement shower.

We then went back to our place and reviewed and signed a few documents related to what Jeff had just done over some coffee and cereal bars. This whole process took close to four hours. We then jumped into the car and headed down to the Wayne Homes office for our Pre-Construction Meeting. We stopped off to pick up a quick snack to tide us over on the way.

We then met with Ann, who looked over all the notes Jeff had made and incorporated them into our plans. She also gave us one final opportunity to make changes to our options, color selections, etc. Based on the updated info and our updated contractor estimates she was able to provide a final price to be submitted to the bank so that we can make a formal application and lock in a rate next week.

Tracy then came over and reviewed where things will go from here - the bank loan process, getting building permits, surveying information, etc. Depending on how long the loan takes to close we are looking at a Dig Date in mid December; the date can move forward or backward as conditions dictate.

While we were squaring things away with Ann & Tracy, Jeff stopped by and said he had spoken with Power Company Guy #2, and apparently convinced him that we were really building a house and really needed temporary power for construction. Jeff also said the guy didn't really understand what I sent him, despite the fact that all the roads and the property boundaries were marked. I'll try to send him a more simplified drawing, perhaps with stick figures and crayons.....

We finished the day at about 4 pm - a full day as advertised. Even though we don't have small kids, I would highly recommend taking their advice about having a babysitter for the day; the day is long and tiring enough without throwing cranky kids into the mix....

As always, we'll keep you posted on our progress.


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