Our neighbor offered to sell us her yurt. It includes the yurt platform, which is a significant expense. We have to move it.
It's 30' in diameter, for about 700 sq. ft. internal space. It was made by Pacific Yurts in 2004.
In talking to folks about yurts, I've learned that there's a lot of confusion about them. Many people think you're not required to permit them because they are temporary, like a tent. The building inspector I talked to didn't agree. He says that you can put one up for < 180 days without a permit.
My understanding is that the building department is complaint driven, meaning they won't notice an unpermitted structure unless someone complains to them. I bet you could put a yurt up without a permit for decades, and unless you pissed off your neighbor, it wouldn't ever be a problem. And if that did happen, the 180 day clock wouldn't start until that day. That's not my plan, though - I am going to permit it.
To permit it as a dwelling I'd have to install heat, plumbing, and a septic system. I don't want to do that, so I'm going to just permit it as a storage building. I can't live in it, and I can't install plumbing or heat, but it would still be very useful during construction of the house. And I have the option of converting it to a dwelling and renting it out in the future.
One advantage of going through this process is that it's easier than permitting the actual house we plan to build. So it lets us learn about the process and work out a bunch of issues (like roads!) without tying it to all the complexity of a residence.
To get the permit, I have to fill out a bunch of forms:
- A Master Permit Application, which is pretty simple in this case.
- Address request
- Road approach
- Stormwater calculation worksheet
In some ways it's simple. There's no existing "impervious surface" that affects stormwater. There's no plumbing, etc.
The county requires engineering calculations on the structure of the yurt. Pacific Yurts sent me the documentation. It's 87 pages long!
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Road approach
I went to the county building department for information on applying for a building permit. I have to apply for an address and a "road approach". This turned out to be interesting. Here's a map for reference:
N. Jacob Miller is a paved, county-maintained road. Rainshadow Dr. is a private road that serves some upscale houses to the North. I think that those folks don't want to share their road with us.
When my area was platted, they drew in roads around each block, but none of them were ever built. My land is surrounded by Market, Fern, Moss, and Sutter streets, but they don't exist. It's all wooded, but people in the area cleared along the green lines marked above, and it's drivable.
I asked the building department if I could put a driveway in to Fern or if I had to go to Sutter, and they referred me to public works. There I learned that, since these roads weren't built within 5 years of platting, the county has no interest in them any more. So these streets don't really exist. I can put in a driveway to any of them, without a road approach permit.
However, an address would be on N. Jacob Miller Rd. The way the county does addresses is based on mileposts. They measure the distance from the start of the road to the address, in 100ths of a mile. Then they tack on an extra digit - evens on the right side of the road, odds on the left. In this case, we are 0.75 miles from the start of N. Jacob Miller, so possible addresses are 750, 752, 754, 756, and 758. And they are already taken:
To fix this situation, we have to create a new road (what would have been Sutter), with a new name, and number off of it. I can't use the name "Sutter" because it's already used slightly to the East. See it here, marked in yellow:
I may also petition to name what-was-never-Fern, because I'd like my driveway to connect there.
Once the naming happens, all the addresses around the new streets get new addresses, based on the same algorithm. For example, 754 N. Jacob Miller is about 500ft. down, so it might get 90 New Rd. If I don't name Fern, then 750 and 756 will get renumbered on to New Rd. If I do rename it, then they get numbers on Another Rd.
The name has to be unique in the county (here's the current list). It can't even sound like an existing name, so that emergency radio communication isn't confusing. It can't be vulgar or obscene. (Which is which?).
There's already a Memory Lane and a No Way in the area, so those are out. What names would you use?
N. Jacob Miller is a paved, county-maintained road. Rainshadow Dr. is a private road that serves some upscale houses to the North. I think that those folks don't want to share their road with us.
When my area was platted, they drew in roads around each block, but none of them were ever built. My land is surrounded by Market, Fern, Moss, and Sutter streets, but they don't exist. It's all wooded, but people in the area cleared along the green lines marked above, and it's drivable.
I asked the building department if I could put a driveway in to Fern or if I had to go to Sutter, and they referred me to public works. There I learned that, since these roads weren't built within 5 years of platting, the county has no interest in them any more. So these streets don't really exist. I can put in a driveway to any of them, without a road approach permit.
However, an address would be on N. Jacob Miller Rd. The way the county does addresses is based on mileposts. They measure the distance from the start of the road to the address, in 100ths of a mile. Then they tack on an extra digit - evens on the right side of the road, odds on the left. In this case, we are 0.75 miles from the start of N. Jacob Miller, so possible addresses are 750, 752, 754, 756, and 758. And they are already taken:
To fix this situation, we have to create a new road (what would have been Sutter), with a new name, and number off of it. I can't use the name "Sutter" because it's already used slightly to the East. See it here, marked in yellow:
I may also petition to name what-was-never-Fern, because I'd like my driveway to connect there.
Once the naming happens, all the addresses around the new streets get new addresses, based on the same algorithm. For example, 754 N. Jacob Miller is about 500ft. down, so it might get 90 New Rd. If I don't name Fern, then 750 and 756 will get renumbered on to New Rd. If I do rename it, then they get numbers on Another Rd.
The name has to be unique in the county (here's the current list). It can't even sound like an existing name, so that emergency radio communication isn't confusing. It can't be vulgar or obscene. (Which is which?).
There's already a Memory Lane and a No Way in the area, so those are out. What names would you use?
Parcels in my area
Long ago someone platted out the neighborhood as 270' x 270' blocks, with 60'-wide roads and an alley through the middle of each block. Each block had 10 rectangular lots. It never got built that way, but you can see the remnants of that plan here:
The brown outline would have been a block, and the red is a single lot. You can still see the shape of the alley, too.
Since then, many parts of the county's rights-of-way have been handed over to the property owners adjacent, resulting in the complex set of property boundaries you see above. (The process for doing that is either "vacation" or "quiet title".)
The previous owner of my parcels did a "boundary line adjustment", as well as vacating the alley. So my parcels run North/South, while many others run East/West.
The brown outline would have been a block, and the red is a single lot. You can still see the shape of the alley, too.
Since then, many parts of the county's rights-of-way have been handed over to the property owners adjacent, resulting in the complex set of property boundaries you see above. (The process for doing that is either "vacation" or "quiet title".)
The previous owner of my parcels did a "boundary line adjustment", as well as vacating the alley. So my parcels run North/South, while many others run East/West.
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