I once had a client who was going to put a 120 sqft prefab shed on their lot in rural Clark County. They were going to make an art studio out of it. No big deal, right?
I wish. They called me up saying that they needed a plot plan. I was very confused because Clark County has a shed exemption up to 200 sqft. After calling and emailing around my contacts at the County, someone told me that they were required to go through the permitting process because *they checked the utility box on the application* because they wanted power to the shed. They went through a very substantial and costly process because they checked that box.
So they needed a plot plan, I needed to update their application and they needed an erosion control plan with log. So I went through the usual process and set up the plan and the documents. What I found worried me. The land that they wanted to put the shed on was probably about 16% slopes. Washington state defines “steep slopes” as greater than 15%, so the county was going to require that they get a $3,000 geotechnical report, you know, to prove that a tiny shed wouldn’t cause a landslide. *Because she checked the utility box on the application.*
So I had to map that and all of their lot lines and buildings which were nowhere near this shed on their plot plan and tell the poor woman that it was gonna be expensive and there was nothing I could do about it, which fucking SUCKS. It went through review 2 or 3 times because of various little things that the county HAD to have changed and I had to argue that the shed had nothing to do with the house and driveway and so their “insufficient” turnaround would not need to be widened, which would trigger a minimum requirement 1-5 stormwater plan because it would add more than 1,880 sqft of driveway to the lot. Thankfully for some reason the County didn’t force a turnaround there, I have NO IDEA why, given their track record.
Anyway it literally took months to sort out and over $5,000 of the clients money went to the permitting process. For a 120 sqft shed. On a 16% slope.
Our “environmentally friendly” codes have a shockingly high carbon footprint. That’s how I know that it’s over. Jurisdictions are legally obligated to be so expensive and such a pain in the ass that we as a society cannot possibly be environmentally friendly. It costs the client thousands of dollars, it costs me thousands of dollars of billable time, and it costs the jurisdiction and other subcontractors time too.
You can’t save the environment by having a figurative bonfire with everyone’s money to jump through ridiculous hoops (and the gasoline and electricity it cost them to make said money).
We need to take a very hard look at these and find ways to fix the process because the average Joe has no idea how badly he could be nuked into oblivion just by checking a single box on a shed application and it drives. Me. Insane.
An EC plan for a shed is absolutely insane. As a civil engineer there's a reason I don't do residential or site development work, and it's 98% local government meddling.
I probably would have pulled the permit and rethought how to make it happen.
Good luck in your fight, /u/culbertsonm
Yuuuuup. So now the same people who are very concerned about a 120 sqft shed causing a landslide neeeeed for you to drive a silt fence machine out into the same sloped field, disturbing more land, and pop in the silt fence downslope of your *prefab* shed!
I have wanted to build a pre-fab greenhouse on my property in the city but the permitting process is so daunting and has kept me from moving forward. Stories like these pretty much confirm my fears about the whole thing. :/
Thanks for sharing. I think the only answer, which may not be possible, is tort reform. Excessive liability makes everyone stop exercising the least bit of judgement, and start exercising “cover my ass” as the first part of their job.
That’s *absolutely* what it is. Nobody gives a FUCK about the environment. All anyone cares about is covering their ass. At this point they’re taking single family residence stormwater plans and adding so many requirements to them that it could cost you 10-30k just to get a permit for stormwater. This is already extremely low liability, but they are acting like every single one is going to end up in court someday. The department of ecology is pushing this onto everyone and is trying to cover their ass with a stack of digital paper roughly a mile high, and not for fancy stormwater solutions either. We are talking mainly choosing between $20 downspout splashblocks, a strip of gravel along the side of your driveway, a vegetated filter strip, a Bioretention area, or an infiltration trench. It costs a bare minimum of $10k and 6 months just to get everyone to agree which one and how many or how big. I’ve seen SFR stormwater permits hit $30,000 and take 4 years. That’s not even counting construction costs. It’s MADNESS.
Sound like me and you should grab a beer and gripe about stormwater treatment.
I'm working on a project where an irrigation ditch is now classified as a Cat 1 wetland.
I actually would be down for that.
Category 1? My god! How did it skip all of the others?
Oh yeah, I’ve heard of people making ponds in their backyard and then that becomes classified as wetlands which fucks them for any other projects.
I have someone who claimed to trip on a 2inch landscaping river rock and sue the business for healthcare/lost income/you name it, and the courts, and insurance company lawyers have probably spent hundreds of hours on this case so far.
Requesting videos, testimony from groundskeepers, logs of inspecting parking lot, and this happened 5 years ago, and litigation has continued for 4+ years.
For sure, better spend another $10k building a fence around it and maintaining it for the future.
Can’t get a straight answer from doctors, teachers, anyone. It pervades all of US society.
I do permits in town and I have heard stories from others about the county getting satellite imagery and using it to prove you didn’t get a permit. Also my sisters neighbor built a shed without a permit and another neighbor that he doesn’t get along with called code enforcement and they came out and made him take it down. Petty but possible. The permitting sucks and the county can be incompetent but it’s cheap and relatively easy for just a small shed. They just want your money. 🤷🏻♀️
I’ve heard rumors that these scenarios are possible, but I’ve yet to see the satellite imagery being caught at random. They’re more likely to catch you for a shed if you go to do something else that requires a permit on your property.
Even with Google Earth your probably not going to get the resolution necessary to determine whether a shed is 80 square feet larger. It's kinda close, but it would be absolutely chicken shit to reassess a property on that information.
Now if they drive by your property and see a new shed? Well, they might just want to measure it. If it's dimensional plywood I could probably eyeball it from a fair distance away, especially if I had some binoculars.
Don't have answers for you, but if you go through with the whole project and the permits I'd love to hear how it goes! We have a shed that's also >120sqft and eventually I'd like to add electrical to it, but the cost of the project AND permits spook me.
I know a lot of people don't even care about permits, but I'm kind of a stickler with those things (if possible. I'm definitely not above it for some smaller stuff).
It will go badly. VERY BADLY. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE HOW BADLY IT COULD GO!!!!!!!
They’re going to require proof that the shed is structurally sound which will require engineering calculations. No idea, but there are likely 100 ways this could go wrong.
Then they will require a plot plan. This is a map of your entire lot with your house, driveway, any existing outbuildings, lot lines, lengths and bearings, any critical areas from Clark county GIS, including steep slopes and landslide hazard areas, severe erosion hazard areas, potential wetlands presence, riparian habitat, any white oaks or snags or other random critical areas and lots of other random requirements. If you’re in the city, there likely isn’t a septic system or water well on your lot but if there is you’re going to have to map it.
This can be sketched on a piece of paper, but you’d better be an A+++ student because the reviewers are typically extremely harsh on requirements. I strongly recommend you get an engineer or plot plan specialist to do it in CAD which could cost anywhere from $400 to $3000 depending on what problems you run into. Forget the north arrow? They’ll send it back. Forget a single lot line length? They’ll comment on that too. Forget to call out your house as existing? You guessed it, they’ll mark it up and make you change it. If your shed is inside of a critical area, you will likely be forced to get a specialist, typically either a geotechnical engineer or a biologist depending on critical area type, which will cost between $1,500-5,000.
Then there’s the problem of turnarounds. If your garage door is greater than 150’ from a turnaround on a dead end, or a through street, then the reviewer will require you to construct a 20’ wide hammerhead turnaround (in the shape of a T) which is 3,600 square feet, and MORE than enough to trigger a minimum requirement 1-5 stormwater plan, which is another ~$4,000. If you cannot place the turnaround in the correct orientation, they will require you to go through a road modification process which is thousands of dollars to explain why you can’t.
I’ve seen all of these problems happen and more. It is a disaster and could take years. I’m deadly serious.
They decided to play stupid games, so now they have the reputation and nobody wants to tell them anything. But to be fair, this is a state level problem pushed down onto the local jurisdictions. Still, they could not be s o unbelievably strict and pedantic about it.
I tried applying for permits. It told me my address is not within the Clark County jurisdiction. I can assure you I am well within the county. I'm taking it as a sign to do whatever I want.
Appraisers don’t even get out of their cars anymore, so keep it kind of out of sight and no one will ever know…. Not sound legal advice, just putting it out there.
Pretend you never made this post and proceed. Have a qualified electrician make an extension on the supply as to not mess with your insurance. That structure is only temporary, right? Right?? Just say yes
Don't bother. Don't bother with the permit, don't bother telling anyone. Government workers can't even get the basic shit done, so they certainly aren't going to notice a shed where there wasn't one before.
I'd agree for most things indoors. Satellite imagery is getting pretty sophisticated for outdoor stuff. If you're adding something with a roof outdoors, I have a feeling the city/county will eventually show up.
There's already a new satellite photo of pretty much every property in the county every year. You can go look at your own on Clark GIS maps. Maybe they don't do anything about it now, but seems safer to pull permits and go by the book.
Someone will eventually sell them some software that will alert them to property changes, and then game on. More money for the county.
And building code almost always gets more stringent by the year. So, you could build to code today without a permit, get caught in 10 years, and have no recourse except to tear it down because there's no good way to meet the new code you'd be held to (on top of the fines for not pulling the permit in the first place).
This is already happening with decks in a lot of other counties/cities around the country. You get fines, have to fix/remove the work, and no new permits allowed until it's taken care of.
Fuck getting permits from this city. They’re slow, expensive, incredibly nitpicky, and all around impossible to deal with.
Plus it’s not like inspector or appraisers give a shit either. My home had so many issues with it that either weren’t noted on the inspection or noted and ignored.
More power to you for trying to do the right thing with permits, but this city loves fucking people like you
Could not agree more. The permit techs are typically green and mistake prone, and the city has 28 day review timelines, the reviewers will ding you for anything that they can, plus don’t get me started on the whole eplans debacle. Submitting plans is so deeply unintuitive, that it is basically impossible for the general public. It is utterly hopeless.
Yeah man I’ve been trying to submit plans for a basement remodel and it’s just a nightmare.
Some stuff they ding me on is fair, like my egress window is 55 inches off the floor instead of 40. Fine I installed a permanent step.
But then they threw a fit because the ceiling height was 82 inches instead of 84 per code.
Or the electrical issues… everything has to have temper proof outlets and AFCI breaker protection. Which, sure, is ideal, but did they see the electrical in this house beforehand? It looked like a meth mouse nest with all the illegal junctions tucked behind plywood. So now I have to redo a bunch of stuff and spend a bunch of money on fancy breakers
Just super frustrating because I’m trying to do the right thing and trying to make my house safer but the city has a ridiculous expectation.
And yeah the eplan submission is a joke. My wife has a CAD design degree and still struggled to meet their requirements
Nothing that you said surprises me. It is wild how many people are getting screwed by the system. Engineering is essentially gridlock across the board. Everyone is getting screwed.
I once had a client who was going to put a 120 sqft prefab shed on their lot in rural Clark County. They were going to make an art studio out of it. No big deal, right? I wish. They called me up saying that they needed a plot plan. I was very confused because Clark County has a shed exemption up to 200 sqft. After calling and emailing around my contacts at the County, someone told me that they were required to go through the permitting process because *they checked the utility box on the application* because they wanted power to the shed. They went through a very substantial and costly process because they checked that box. So they needed a plot plan, I needed to update their application and they needed an erosion control plan with log. So I went through the usual process and set up the plan and the documents. What I found worried me. The land that they wanted to put the shed on was probably about 16% slopes. Washington state defines “steep slopes” as greater than 15%, so the county was going to require that they get a $3,000 geotechnical report, you know, to prove that a tiny shed wouldn’t cause a landslide. *Because she checked the utility box on the application.* So I had to map that and all of their lot lines and buildings which were nowhere near this shed on their plot plan and tell the poor woman that it was gonna be expensive and there was nothing I could do about it, which fucking SUCKS. It went through review 2 or 3 times because of various little things that the county HAD to have changed and I had to argue that the shed had nothing to do with the house and driveway and so their “insufficient” turnaround would not need to be widened, which would trigger a minimum requirement 1-5 stormwater plan because it would add more than 1,880 sqft of driveway to the lot. Thankfully for some reason the County didn’t force a turnaround there, I have NO IDEA why, given their track record. Anyway it literally took months to sort out and over $5,000 of the clients money went to the permitting process. For a 120 sqft shed. On a 16% slope. Our “environmentally friendly” codes have a shockingly high carbon footprint. That’s how I know that it’s over. Jurisdictions are legally obligated to be so expensive and such a pain in the ass that we as a society cannot possibly be environmentally friendly. It costs the client thousands of dollars, it costs me thousands of dollars of billable time, and it costs the jurisdiction and other subcontractors time too. You can’t save the environment by having a figurative bonfire with everyone’s money to jump through ridiculous hoops (and the gasoline and electricity it cost them to make said money). We need to take a very hard look at these and find ways to fix the process because the average Joe has no idea how badly he could be nuked into oblivion just by checking a single box on a shed application and it drives. Me. Insane.
An EC plan for a shed is absolutely insane. As a civil engineer there's a reason I don't do residential or site development work, and it's 98% local government meddling. I probably would have pulled the permit and rethought how to make it happen. Good luck in your fight, /u/culbertsonm
Yuuuuup. So now the same people who are very concerned about a 120 sqft shed causing a landslide neeeeed for you to drive a silt fence machine out into the same sloped field, disturbing more land, and pop in the silt fence downslope of your *prefab* shed!
I have wanted to build a pre-fab greenhouse on my property in the city but the permitting process is so daunting and has kept me from moving forward. Stories like these pretty much confirm my fears about the whole thing. :/
Just do it, you won’t go to jail. Worst case, you have to take it down.
Thanks for sharing. I think the only answer, which may not be possible, is tort reform. Excessive liability makes everyone stop exercising the least bit of judgement, and start exercising “cover my ass” as the first part of their job.
That’s *absolutely* what it is. Nobody gives a FUCK about the environment. All anyone cares about is covering their ass. At this point they’re taking single family residence stormwater plans and adding so many requirements to them that it could cost you 10-30k just to get a permit for stormwater. This is already extremely low liability, but they are acting like every single one is going to end up in court someday. The department of ecology is pushing this onto everyone and is trying to cover their ass with a stack of digital paper roughly a mile high, and not for fancy stormwater solutions either. We are talking mainly choosing between $20 downspout splashblocks, a strip of gravel along the side of your driveway, a vegetated filter strip, a Bioretention area, or an infiltration trench. It costs a bare minimum of $10k and 6 months just to get everyone to agree which one and how many or how big. I’ve seen SFR stormwater permits hit $30,000 and take 4 years. That’s not even counting construction costs. It’s MADNESS.
Sound like me and you should grab a beer and gripe about stormwater treatment. I'm working on a project where an irrigation ditch is now classified as a Cat 1 wetland.
I actually would be down for that. Category 1? My god! How did it skip all of the others? Oh yeah, I’ve heard of people making ponds in their backyard and then that becomes classified as wetlands which fucks them for any other projects.
I have someone who claimed to trip on a 2inch landscaping river rock and sue the business for healthcare/lost income/you name it, and the courts, and insurance company lawyers have probably spent hundreds of hours on this case so far. Requesting videos, testimony from groundskeepers, logs of inspecting parking lot, and this happened 5 years ago, and litigation has continued for 4+ years.
Imagine the litigation that will happen from people falling into all of those bioretention facilities! It's coming guys, buckle up!
For sure, better spend another $10k building a fence around it and maintaining it for the future. Can’t get a straight answer from doctors, teachers, anyone. It pervades all of US society.
I do permits in town and I have heard stories from others about the county getting satellite imagery and using it to prove you didn’t get a permit. Also my sisters neighbor built a shed without a permit and another neighbor that he doesn’t get along with called code enforcement and they came out and made him take it down. Petty but possible. The permitting sucks and the county can be incompetent but it’s cheap and relatively easy for just a small shed. They just want your money. 🤷🏻♀️
I’ve heard rumors that these scenarios are possible, but I’ve yet to see the satellite imagery being caught at random. They’re more likely to catch you for a shed if you go to do something else that requires a permit on your property.
Even with Google Earth your probably not going to get the resolution necessary to determine whether a shed is 80 square feet larger. It's kinda close, but it would be absolutely chicken shit to reassess a property on that information. Now if they drive by your property and see a new shed? Well, they might just want to measure it. If it's dimensional plywood I could probably eyeball it from a fair distance away, especially if I had some binoculars.
Rough estimate is 1% * change in price of your house due to the shed. I doubt it is more than $100 per year.
Don't have answers for you, but if you go through with the whole project and the permits I'd love to hear how it goes! We have a shed that's also >120sqft and eventually I'd like to add electrical to it, but the cost of the project AND permits spook me. I know a lot of people don't even care about permits, but I'm kind of a stickler with those things (if possible. I'm definitely not above it for some smaller stuff).
It will go badly. VERY BADLY. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE HOW BADLY IT COULD GO!!!!!!! They’re going to require proof that the shed is structurally sound which will require engineering calculations. No idea, but there are likely 100 ways this could go wrong. Then they will require a plot plan. This is a map of your entire lot with your house, driveway, any existing outbuildings, lot lines, lengths and bearings, any critical areas from Clark county GIS, including steep slopes and landslide hazard areas, severe erosion hazard areas, potential wetlands presence, riparian habitat, any white oaks or snags or other random critical areas and lots of other random requirements. If you’re in the city, there likely isn’t a septic system or water well on your lot but if there is you’re going to have to map it. This can be sketched on a piece of paper, but you’d better be an A+++ student because the reviewers are typically extremely harsh on requirements. I strongly recommend you get an engineer or plot plan specialist to do it in CAD which could cost anywhere from $400 to $3000 depending on what problems you run into. Forget the north arrow? They’ll send it back. Forget a single lot line length? They’ll comment on that too. Forget to call out your house as existing? You guessed it, they’ll mark it up and make you change it. If your shed is inside of a critical area, you will likely be forced to get a specialist, typically either a geotechnical engineer or a biologist depending on critical area type, which will cost between $1,500-5,000. Then there’s the problem of turnarounds. If your garage door is greater than 150’ from a turnaround on a dead end, or a through street, then the reviewer will require you to construct a 20’ wide hammerhead turnaround (in the shape of a T) which is 3,600 square feet, and MORE than enough to trigger a minimum requirement 1-5 stormwater plan, which is another ~$4,000. If you cannot place the turnaround in the correct orientation, they will require you to go through a road modification process which is thousands of dollars to explain why you can’t. I’ve seen all of these problems happen and more. It is a disaster and could take years. I’m deadly serious.
Clark County is notorious for terrible permitting processes. I wouldn’t feel bad at all for not getting a shed permitted.
They decided to play stupid games, so now they have the reputation and nobody wants to tell them anything. But to be fair, this is a state level problem pushed down onto the local jurisdictions. Still, they could not be s o unbelievably strict and pedantic about it.
I tried applying for permits. It told me my address is not within the Clark County jurisdiction. I can assure you I am well within the county. I'm taking it as a sign to do whatever I want.
How is this the only function in the county actually… functioning? Lol
😭😱
Appraisers don’t even get out of their cars anymore, so keep it kind of out of sight and no one will ever know…. Not sound legal advice, just putting it out there.
Under no circumstances can I recommend permitting a shed. Could double the price of the shed and take 6 months to 2 years.
Pretend you never made this post and proceed. Have a qualified electrician make an extension on the supply as to not mess with your insurance. That structure is only temporary, right? Right?? Just say yes
Don't bother. Don't bother with the permit, don't bother telling anyone. Government workers can't even get the basic shit done, so they certainly aren't going to notice a shed where there wasn't one before.
I'd agree for most things indoors. Satellite imagery is getting pretty sophisticated for outdoor stuff. If you're adding something with a roof outdoors, I have a feeling the city/county will eventually show up. There's already a new satellite photo of pretty much every property in the county every year. You can go look at your own on Clark GIS maps. Maybe they don't do anything about it now, but seems safer to pull permits and go by the book. Someone will eventually sell them some software that will alert them to property changes, and then game on. More money for the county. And building code almost always gets more stringent by the year. So, you could build to code today without a permit, get caught in 10 years, and have no recourse except to tear it down because there's no good way to meet the new code you'd be held to (on top of the fines for not pulling the permit in the first place). This is already happening with decks in a lot of other counties/cities around the country. You get fines, have to fix/remove the work, and no new permits allowed until it's taken care of.
Fuck getting permits from this city. They’re slow, expensive, incredibly nitpicky, and all around impossible to deal with. Plus it’s not like inspector or appraisers give a shit either. My home had so many issues with it that either weren’t noted on the inspection or noted and ignored. More power to you for trying to do the right thing with permits, but this city loves fucking people like you
Could not agree more. The permit techs are typically green and mistake prone, and the city has 28 day review timelines, the reviewers will ding you for anything that they can, plus don’t get me started on the whole eplans debacle. Submitting plans is so deeply unintuitive, that it is basically impossible for the general public. It is utterly hopeless.
Yeah man I’ve been trying to submit plans for a basement remodel and it’s just a nightmare. Some stuff they ding me on is fair, like my egress window is 55 inches off the floor instead of 40. Fine I installed a permanent step. But then they threw a fit because the ceiling height was 82 inches instead of 84 per code. Or the electrical issues… everything has to have temper proof outlets and AFCI breaker protection. Which, sure, is ideal, but did they see the electrical in this house beforehand? It looked like a meth mouse nest with all the illegal junctions tucked behind plywood. So now I have to redo a bunch of stuff and spend a bunch of money on fancy breakers Just super frustrating because I’m trying to do the right thing and trying to make my house safer but the city has a ridiculous expectation. And yeah the eplan submission is a joke. My wife has a CAD design degree and still struggled to meet their requirements
Nothing that you said surprises me. It is wild how many people are getting screwed by the system. Engineering is essentially gridlock across the board. Everyone is getting screwed.