Month: February 2025

Over the weekend, we applied for a building permit. The town now takes a month to respond, and we hope, grant us the permit (with one exception, see below). The packet we submitted includes detailed plans for the house. Here is the table of contents from the permit set.

I am not going to post all the drawings to this site. They are mostly either repeats of what I have posted before, or boring details about how the foundation, drainage, insulation, structural beams, septic system, etc. will be built.

There is, however, an interesting small note on on the first floor plan in the kitchen area.

The design calls for 2 gas (actually propane) burners. This is, unfortunately, not currently allowed under the fossil fuel infrastructure law. What we expect is that the building inspector will reject the two gas burners, but grant a building permit without that feature. Then we will be the first test case of the exemption granting process for the relatively new law. The inspector was warned so I doubt that he will completely miss that design point, but I can always hope.

Coming up soon: tree removal (next week) and asbestos removal (within a few weeks). With luck, I will capture some of the tree removal on the construction camera.

The head of the Concord Natural Resources Commission met me and the builder at the property this morning for an inspection.

It went fine. However, the NRC has asked us to start invasive plant removal this year, and not wait until after we move in. And, if possible, put in some of the trees that were in the landscaping plan (and far away from the house). Daphne suggests that we can start this in the spring and spend a few hours every few weeks working on it.

Next step is tree removal, and unfortunately, removal of a lot of the rhododendrons, both next to the road but also on the south side of the planned house. Although not in the plans, we will try to replant the section of the property next to the road to restore a sound barrier.

So there has been a bunch of activity since my last post. The oil tank has been removed from the basement (although we are still waiting for fire department inspection). Then the silt barrier was installed. Here is a photograph of a section of that barrier.

This morning I had to go to the Registry of Deeds to get the latest Natural Resource Commission Order of Conditions filed. Here is the proof that it has been filed, which I had to show to the NRC today.

Now for the bad news. I screwed up getting the construction camera started and did not get any movies from this week. Oh well. I will work on studying the controls and try to get it working for the next step.

Speaking of the next steps. Before we do anything else, we need to have a NRC site visit. Hopefully, the builder gets that scheduled for next week. Once that is done, we can do the tree and brush removal. We can also get the asbestos in the house removed (although I think that the asbestos removal is not contingent on the NRC site inspection).

Now that the Orders of Conditions (amended) has been registered, nothing is preventing us from filing for our building permit. Currently that is planned for February 18th (it was going to be February 17th, but that is a holiday).

I went to the site to satisfy rule 52 of the Orders of Conditions.

Here is the box, which I attached to the tree protection fence near the sign. Inside that box are the Orders of Conditions, the NRC filing, and the site plans.

While I was there, I noticed this new sign on the garage. So I assume that DigSafe has certified that there are no gas lines. (I can not figure out how to look up that file number).

Finally, Ben and I mounted the construction camera with a view of the back yard. We should catch them installation the siltration barrier later in the week. I will retrieve the camera next weekend and see if we got anything.