Waiting For The Green Light

Well, as mentioned last time, we had already applied for our construction loan, and we're waiting for the word on the closing. Along the way we've had to collect little bits of information to further the process along. One example of this was our plumbing fixtures. We had decided that we could buy our faucets, shower heads, etc, more cheaply ourselves rather than paying for the upgrade price offered through the builder. The bank insisted on an estimate of these costs in writing, so we had to obtain a written estimate from Lowes, which took me about an hour to obtain in person. I'm still not sure why a printout from Lowes' website with all these items in my cart wasn't sufficient....

I finally got to meet with the Power Company guy a few days ago, and we came up with a solution. It turns out that my neighbor had power run up to a camp he has bordering our property, and there is now a transformer there as a result. We can run power from there to our home underground, which was my original preference. The distance is a little under 900 feet, about 300 feet shorter than from the other point of access we had originally considered. Less feet = less money; we're still waiting for a final estimate from the power company.

The Power Company guy also mentioned that because we were isolated, in the event of a power outage we would be low on the priority list since they would try to restore connections first that affected the most amount of people. Makes perfect sense, but not a comforting thought. This statement, along with the superstorm Sandy which just went through, made us decide to bite the bullet and get a generator installed with the new house. We can get a generator that is tied into our natural gas line that will power our entire house in the event of a power outage. Not a cheap solution, but a worthwhile one in Western Pa.

The electricity solution, however, created another problem though - internet access. We had originally planned to have our cable for Comcast follow the same path as the electricity, whether it be overhead or underground. Our new point of electrical access has no cable nearby, and it's not practical to get cable to that point. I briefly considered satellite Internet, but because we work from home the technology wouldn't work for us. I made a call to Comcast and had a guy show up a few days later to evaluate the situation. I explained what I needed, and the cable guy said all they needed was for me to provide a ditch, and they would lay the cable and conduit for no charge - woohoo! In addition he gave me the number of his supervisor, telling me to call him when I was ready for the cable to be laid.

We also visited the offices of Guardian Security. They offer a free installation for new home constructions; you still have to subscribe to their monitoring service, which is somewhere in the $45-50/month range for the basics. They have a bunch of extra things they do, like a house intercom system, whole house audio/video, and one Sharon was particularly interested in - a whole house vacuum system. You have a couple of outlets throughout the house to plug your hose into, and everything gets sucked into a unit out in the garage. The big selling point was a rectangular vacuum slot mounted at floor level underneath the kitchen cabinets with a foot-activated switch; with this you can sweep crumbs on the floor into the slot, hit the switch, and they're gone. Very cool for hardwood floors or tile.

The coolest part of the Guardian visit was their conference room, which is separated from their call center by what appeared to be an opaque frosted glass. The sales guy hit a button and suddenly the glass is clear and we're looking at the folks in the call center! Apparently the glass has some gas between the panes that responds to electricity and becomes instantly clear - I want that!!!!

And finally, it looks like our subdivision plans are on track after a few delays from the surveyor and the county planning office needing more info from us.

Hopefully the next time you hear from us, the loan will have closed and the dirt will be flying! Until then......

Just A Few More Details...

Well, it seems like we're making progress towards our goal. We had a site visit from the Township Code Enforcement officer. He looked things over, and after showing him where all my utilities would be coming in, I received a Zoning Permit for the new lot.

Our surveyor also finished his drawings and dropped by to have me sign the Subdivision plans; he left a copy and is submitting a copy to the County for final approval. Armed with that information we'll be able to draw up new deeds for both the new and old properties. It's worth noting that our original 87 acre parcel has a deed from 1950 when it was purchased; as was common in those days, the boundaries of the rural properties weren't actually surveyed, but were instead defined by the boundaries of one's neighbors. the deed would say "bounded on the north by property of Joe Blow" or something similar. What that boils down to is if the outside perimeter is surveyed at some point, it may differ somewhat from the original, traditional boundaries. None of that will affect our subdivided tract since that has now been actually surveyed.

I emailed the guy from the power company the New Service application he had sent me, along with the subdivision plans. I almost fell out of my chair when he called me, unsolicited! He seemed willing to meet with me on site after receiving the final approved subdivision plans from the County and Township. Progress!!!!

Finally, we submitted our formal Construction Loan/Mortgage application this week as well. Our lender was good enough to let us handle this remotely because of our work schedules. He Fedexed the application along with a list of documentation needed -bank statements, W2's, pay stubs, etc. Luckily I had most of this info at the ready and it was no big deal to compile.

A side note - our plans to build during the Winter may have an unexpected bonus. Pennsylvania is getting absolutely swarmed with stinkbugs, and they will be dead or hibernating when the house is built, so they won't already be in the nooks and crannies of the house when it goes up!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad