Building permit

Next up we had to get a building permit (which was just approved on Tuesday) from the regional district of the central Kootenay. This makes me wonder...if we're central then where is the west kootenay?

According to BC Law we are considered an "Owner Builder", which means we are the general contractor. By doing this we have less fees to pay (directly or indirectly), I do the overall project managing and I get to be more in touch with the details .

We had to navigate the BC bureaucracy. In order to let me build my own home I need authorization from the BC Homeowner Protection Office. I'm still not sure what benefit I get, but I had to pay $450 to get it.

To get the permit Hart (our designer) had to send the drawings to a structural engineer for approval. Hart recommended Cascade Engineering out of Canmore and thus Cascade made some minor changes, but overall the posts and beams remained the same. This cost $1700.

As a side note: In BC (or at least in the Kootenays, but I'm pretty sure it's for all of BC) you don't have to get a structural engineering approval if you're building a conventional timber frame, as all the details are laid out in the BC building code. However we are building a post and beam house, so we needed the engineer's signature.

The permit took three weeks and costed another $1000. So just over $3000 for the government bureaucracy on a 1200 sq-ft cabin.