Hillsborough County Architects, Engineers and Contractors
Dear Peter Kent,
Harry Heuman (813-307-4503) called me back and said that he is not only the President of the Hillsborough Association of Retarded Citizens, but that he is also on the Board of the Holocaust Museum in St. Pete and President elect of the Tampa Rotary Club. He said keeping busy keeps him out of trouble. I have known him for at least ten years and never knew any of that. He said the expert on my question was Scott Pailthorpe (813-757-3808) who is the manager of the Plant City branch of the Hillsborough County Planning and Growth Department and Harry made the introduction for me via three way calling.
Scott was very knowledgeable, if not arrogant, and said that due to a glitch in the law architects and engineers are not required to be certified or even knowledgeable of the Building Code and that they just keep submitting plans until they pass the Building Department’s standard. He said that licensed contractors, on the other hand, must also be certified in SSTD 1099 by the Southern Building Code Congress International, which is located in Birmingham, AL and by the American Wood Products Association, who he had no idea where to find, but suggested the Internet. The Certification is obtained by attending their classes on high wind construction and wood construction in high wind conditions. That certification then has to be brought in to the Contractor’s Licensing Board and it will be noted in your file that you are certified to draw up house plans. He said your plans would then have to comply with the high wind manual and the rest of the Building Code before your plans would be approved by the Building Department. He said that because it is such a royal pain and outside the scope of what most contractors get paid to do, no one is doing it. He couldn’t think of anyone who had ever tried.
While this would make you the only person doing such a thing, I am not sure that jumping through so many hurdles is really taking you in the direction you want to go. I am not sure what that direction is, and until you know, I think this could be a lot of expense and “busy work” that really isn’t productive. It could be beneficial for the specialized sort of building you ultimately want to do, but first you need to get your certification with the German finalized, and you need your contractor’s license, which may be much more difficult to obtain than you suspect. Things have changed a lot in Florida since Hurricane Andrew. My brother had his contractor’s license in N.C. but never got one here and there is probably a good reason for it. The drawing program and the classes will only get better with time and it makes more sense to be ready for both when you do devote the time and money.
I asked what would be involved in converting the barn to a house and Scott said that if the barn was permitted and I would have to take the parcel ID# to Sarah Jimenez (813-635-7300) on the 19th floor of the County Building downtown to find out, then I could ask for a building permit for Occupancy Change. If it was not permitted before, then I would have to start from scratch as a new building permit and could not call it a remodel job because it would be changing from a barn to a house and while barns are exempt from certain standards, houses are not. One of the things that I will also have to check at the 19th floor is the flood zone. Barns can be built at grade, but the floor of the house has to be above the 100 year flood plain and most places around here are not. He said if I start from scratch I have to have an engineer sign off on every existing part of the structure saying that it meets the code and that even if my contractor had the certifications for SSTD 1099, he could not sign off on the existing structure. I said that didn’t make sense, but he said that is the way it is. I forgot to ask if they would accept an out of state engineer. It doesn’t seem that they would, but before your friend does any work on this, we need to know.
Feel free to call any of these people and get a feel for it yourself. I know you are capable of passing whatever courses are required of you, but want you to take some time to think about what your master plan in life is and how you want to get there. I don’t think that one person can compete with the building companies when it comes to building homes at a profit because, like everything, it takes loads of connections, cheap labour and the discounts that are only available in volume. I know you are looking at doing something no one else is doing, but it is a risk, given the general public’s lack of understanding of science. I think it also carries a considerable risk of liability from someone who pays more for the benefit of having an earth friendly home who later can’t afford it, or wants to move, who decides to attack the builder for having sold them a defective or ‘unprovable’ product. That would be a hard one to defend.
I believe in the idea and believe in the necessity of it, but I don’t think it should be your first move out of the gate. You were attracted to me for my good judgment and at the risk of offering unsolicited advice, which is usually despised, and thus rarely given, I would suggest the following plan of action:
Get out of debt by doing what you can without further training and expense.
Get yourself on solid footing by doing what you can without further training and expense.
Decide if you want to build houses, open a clinic, operate an Internet site and all of the workshops and speaking engagements that would take to succeed, or whatever the ultimate goal of your next 30 years will be. I am pretty talented, but I can only do ONE thing well.
Never spend more than 10% of what you make.
When you have set aside enough discretionary cash to start making some exciting things happen in your life, then leap out into the unknown. If there are set backs then, it doesn’t matter, because you are already comfortable and secure.
Follow those simple steps and you will have the comfortable old age the fortune predicted. I want you to realize every dream you could ever imagine. This is the best way I can help you make that happen. I love you, - Carole
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