Three months ago I bought a piece of property in Snohomish County, Washington with the plan of building a shipping container home for Airbnb. The last few months I've been going through the grueling process of gathering documents in order to submit for building permit. In this video I explain what each of those documents are and how much it cost for each study/document. I also make a $10,000 mistake that you can hopefully learn from. If you have future video suggestions drop them in the comments I respond to EVERYONE and LOVE engaging with you guys!
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Documents I needed in submitting for building permit:
1. Architectural Plans - I worked with PSE Engineering out of Portland to design my container home, this process consisted of deciding how I wanted to containers oriented and determining what was feasible from a structural standpoint. This process also included the Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing drawings.
2. Critical Area Study - I worked with Eastside Environmental for my critical area study. This study included identifying all of the areas on my property that I can build as well as a site plan for where the buffers are. Make sure to dive into your County's critical area restrictions before you buy! I also bought a piece of land that was covered in critical areas and I wouldn't have been able to build.
3. Septic Design and Well Location - Now that I knew where I could build the home I was able to have Davis Septic Design come out to site to take some soil samples. These samples where to help determine what type of septic system I need. The septic system then will work with you to determine where your septic drain field should be as well as the location of your home. Once the design is complete your designer will submit the proposed plan to the county, these will be two separate applications, one for both the well and one for the septic.
4. Environmental Engineering - With the home, well, septic, and critical areas located the environmental engineering could now be completed. This includes getting a site plan for site drainage, a LDA (Land Disturbing Activity permit application) and a site plan (identifies locations of everything on site).
5. Structural Plans - At this point the architectural plans were finalized so we could start the structural design. This process took a little bit longer than anticipated (6 weeks) because I will be doing a lot of the welding/steel work and wanted it in a way that makes constructability a bit easier.
6. Site Clearing - In order to get the septic designer on site and locate the well and home I had to do some preliminary clearing of the lot. I did all of this myself which saved me a ton of money! If you can do it yourself it's worth it, labor is EXPENSIVE!
7. Site survey - This was the process of locating my property boundaries, in the video I explain the survey requirements and ultimately discover a process that can save you $10k when locating your property boundaries.
9. Submission Fees - The last step is to actually submit the documents to my county. In my case I was able to use MyBuildingPermit.com which was really easy to use. But depending on your county this process might look a bit different.