Above 1200 Sq/FT New Mountain Garage

[Boon]

We are finally building a new garage. The old one is to small for what I need and it is right in front of the main picture window in front of the house. It really hoses up the view. We spent almost more than a year trying to get two lots joined together as the garage would have fallen on the property line of the lots. We spent another 8 or so months trying to get prints from our architect and his engineer. Those two were a real pain. We blasted last week. That took 5 days. Yesterday the folks that are going to do the excavation and the foundation showed up and started digging.

The garage is being dug into the side of the mountain on the upper end of the driveway. It is two stories tall with a carport one side and a covered walk way on the other.

We will store wood in the walk way. The carport will be for a dump trailer, ATV and a side by side. The top floor will be used for a wood shop. The bottom will be used for vehicles. There will be three bays and an office.

I am super impressed with the blasting crew and the excavator. This is what the excavation crew did in one day.

 

[68400BIRD]

That is a lot of wood and dirt moved in only one day. Looks like you will have a chunk of firewood if you burn pine. Looking forward to more progress.

 

[GlennSullivan]

I agree, alot of work done in 1 day. Is that snow falling in the last picture?

 

[MacTexas]

This looks like a build to follow.

 

[dmittz]

This looks like it will be an epic build! can't wait to see it go up.

 

[onsail]

looks like ya already have some wood to stack too!

 

[TurtleValley]

This looks like an exciting and familiar build! Popcorn in hand and watch'n!

 

[Boon]

I agree, alot of work done in 1 day. Is that snow falling in the last picture?

Yeah. We had a light snow for the whole day. It was supposed to be 7 inches but we only got about three.

 

[Boon]

looks like ya already have some wood to stack too!

We us to heat but we gave the wood to the blaster and some to one of the excavator folks. We have more trees than we can use.

 

[Boon]

I thought I should add some concept drawings, as rough as they are.

 

[nadogail]

You have my best wishes for enjoying your garage in good health for many years.

 

[littlebean]

following, hope all goes well

 

[MacTexas]

You won't be sorry if you put an 18 foot door to replace two of the 9 foot doors in the front.

 

[dmittz]

That's a great looking shop. What are the dimensions? looks like you are going to have a loft in it?

 

[Boon]

You won't be sorry if you put an 18 foot door to replace two of the 9 foot doors in the front.

I would love to but we have extremely high winds here. I don't want to risk a buckling door. We live at 8000 ft. The garage has to be designed for 179mph winds per code.

 

[Boon]

That's a great looking shop. What are the dimensions? looks like you are going to have a loft in it?

The bottom floor is 34X37. Top floor is 34X26. The top will be the wood shop.

 

[Boon]

Everything came to a stop. The drawings are unusable. There is a major engineering flaw. We were trying to make the plans work but the original engineer and architect refuse to work with me to make it work. The county has tried to help find engineers that can help fix it but the original engineer and architect have refused to help fix the flaw unless I give them more money. I got another engineer but she needed calculations to meet a requirement of the original engineer but he refuses to give us the load calculations for all the steel connections and the original architect has refused to let us add to the drawings making the original drawings useless. Engineer says we need to design connections (that he should have designed) and the architect says we can't add to the design because he legally owns the design. I will drill a hole in my foot before I give them more money to fix what they screwed up. My attorney said that we can't use the original drawings for ANYTHING if we intend on going to court. All of the drawings are in the guest bedroom in a closet. We have been working from my original concept drawings but we can only use those for the foot print for blasting and some excavation.

I hired a new architect and engineer. The architect sent me the finished drawings yesterday. I gave them to the new engineer this morning. He says he will have them done in three weeks. The county said they will fast track them when I get them from the engineer. They aren't happy with the situation either. They said their approval time will be less than 24 hours. I had to put my excavation/foundation contractor and my general contractor on hold until I get this all straightened out.

It is what it is. So far I have printed out a ream of emails and started to transcribe all my notes. Just one more thing on my plate. There has to be a reason for this to happen. It always works out when we run into an issue like this. We just have to work it through.

 

[dmittz]

Wow sorry to hear that you had so much trouble with the first engineer and architect, that really *****.
At least your city seems to be helpful, took me 10months for my city to approve my permit.

Wish you best of luck sorting things out.

 

[Boon]

Wow sorry to hear that you had so much trouble with the first engineer and architect, that really *****.
At least your city seems to be helpful, took me 10months for my city to approve my permit.

Wish you best of luck sorting things out.

Thanks. It will work out somehow. I really feel good about the new people that I have working with me now.

Our county has been great. The guy doing the review has been kinda hung out to dry by the two clowns that I was working with so he's motivated to help out. He has spent hours on the phone with me and another engineer to try to find a solution to work around the situation.

 

[dmittz]

Thanks. It will work out somehow. I really feel good about the new people that I have working with me now.

Our county has been great. The guy doing the review has been kinda hung out to dry by the two clowns that I was working with so he's motivated to help out. He has spent hours on the phone with me and another engineer to try to find a solution to work around the situation

Glad you have good people working on it now. Sounds like a breath of fresh air that a city offical actually wants to help you rather than fjnd reasons to hold you up or stop your project like my city does.

Anyway hope it all works out. Looking foward to seeing your shop get built, cheers.

 

[GlennSullivan]

In theory:

• If the drawings produced by the original architect and engineer were flawed and unusable to obtain a building permit, which was the purpose of hiring them.
• And the County has or will provide you written documentation that drawings / design submitted was flawed.
• And you have documentation that you requested they correct the flaws under the original agreement and they refused.

It should be fairly simple for you to win either a small claims court or regular court case and get your money back.

• You hired them to produce drawings to obtain a building permit to build the building.
• When drawings were submitted the County told you the drawings were flawed / not approvable and could not issue a building permit until they were corrected.
• The architect / engineer refused to fix said flawed work under the original agreement.
• The judge awards you a judgement for all monies paid to them or more if what you are paying the new architect / engineer is more than the original.

 

[Boon]

In theory:

• If the drawings produced by the original architect and engineer were flawed and unusable to obtain a building permit, which was the purpose of hiring them.
• And the County has or will provide you written documentation that drawings / design submitted was flawed.
• And you have documentation that you requested they correct the flaws under the original agreement and they refused.

It should be fairly simple for you to win either a small claims court or regular court case and get your money back.

• You hired them to produce drawings to obtain a building permit to build the building.
• When drawings were submitted the County told you the drawings were flawed / not approvable and could not issue a building permit until they were corrected.
• The architect / engineer refused to fix said flawed work under the original agreement.
• The judge awards you a judgement for all monies paid to them or more if what you are paying the new architect / engineer is more than the original.

Correct to all. The permit was approved with a caveat that the connections be designed, stamped. The county tried four times to get them to design the connections but they finally asked I would hire another engineer to design the connections like the old engineer was demanding. I was willing to just move on if they only would have cooperated. I didn't want to fight. I just want to build a garage. It shouldn't be this hard. At this point I just wanted to move on and be done with the original design team. The architect threw a tantrum in an email and told us that we couldn't make any changes to the drawings rendering the drawings useless. At the point where they refused to explain why he wanted a moment type connection and he told the engineer that was going to address the connection design that she couldn't work on the design without giving him more money we were done with them.

There are a bunch of issues that are going to be addressed and not just in court.

 

[GlennSullivan]

I don

Correct to all. The permit was approved with a caveat that the connections be designed, stamped. The county tried four times to get them to design the connections but they finally asked I would hire another engineer to design the connections like the old engineer was demanding. I was willing to just move on if they only would have cooperated. I didn't want to fight. I just want to build a garage. It shouldn't be this hard. At this point I just wanted to move on and be done with the original design team. The architect threw a tantrum in an email and told us that we couldn't make any changes to the drawings rendering the drawings useless. At the point where they refused to explain why he wanted a moment type connection and he told the engineer that was going to address the connection design that she couldn't work on the design without giving him more money we were done with them.

There are a bunch of issues that are going to be addressed and not just in court.

I don't know what you mean by connections (Electricity, Water, Etc?) but for you to be right and them to be wrong, the "connections" need to have been documented as part of their responsibility. When I built my garage, I only needed to show the electric and water lines from the house to the garage as part of the building departments requirements, but no details, which my architect did. Then I just needed to hire licensed electrician and plumber for the work. The building department did the normal inspection and approvals as part of the construction process.

 

[RoninB4]

I'm certainly no legal advisor, nor do I have any familiarity with construction standards in your location. What little I understand is that this seems like it ought to be sanctioned only to someone with a PE, in this case architect/engineer. That's why they go through a lot of extra expense and testing for, to obtain that stamp certifying that their designs meet the building codes for your area. Following that thought they should be familiar with the local codes yet have failed to provide a design that meets those codes. They should have, and likely did, know this during the design phase. Even if they were unaware, when it failed approval a more conscientious person would have "Oops, how embarrassing. Will correct that". Instead the reaction was "You'll have to pay more for MY mistake". Seems to suggest that was the intention, to extract more money at the critical moment. I understand you just wanting to build your garage/shop and move on, perhaps they were counting on that too. Perhaps a minimal consultation with a lawyer and a letter from the lawyer will be enough to refund the expensive fees already paid with no court case needed. If it's an open/shut case (seems like it ought to be) then the original shysters know they'll be paying for a lawyer and court costs. Also sounds like this isn't the first time they've pulled this. Real sorry to hear this has happened and hope it gets resolved for you.

 

[Boon]

I don

I don't know what you mean by connections (Electricity, Water, Etc?) but for you to be right and them to be wrong, the "connections" need to have been documented as part of their responsibility. When I built my garage, I only needed to show the electric and water lines from the house to the garage as part of the building departments requirements, but no details, which my architect did. Then I just needed to hire licensed electrician and plumber for the work. The building department did the normal inspection and approvals as part of the construction process.

Sorry about that. I should have been more clear. I am talking about steel connections for the beams and columns that make up the support framework to support the second floor. My bad.

 

[GlennSullivan]

Sorry about that. I should have been more clear. I am talking about steel connections for the beams and columns that make up the support framework to support the second floor. My bad.

Then in my mind there is no doubt about fault. If they drew the structure with the steel they are responsible for providing the connection details.

 

[Boon]

I'm certainly no legal advisor, nor do I have any familiarity with construction standards in your location. What little I understand is that this seems like it ought to be sanctioned only to someone with a PE, in this case architect/engineer. That's why they go through a lot of extra expense and testing for, to obtain that stamp certifying that their designs meet the building codes for your area. Following that thought they should be familiar with the local codes yet have failed to provide a design that meets those codes. They should have, and likely did, know this during the design phase. Even if they were unaware, when it failed approval a more conscientious person would have "Oops, how embarrassing. Will correct that". Instead the reaction was "You'll have to pay more for MY mistake". Seems to suggest that was the intention, to extract more money at the critical moment. I understand you just wanting to build your garage/shop and move on, perhaps they were counting on that too. Perhaps a minimal consultation with a lawyer and a letter from the lawyer will be enough to refund the expensive fees already paid with no court case needed. If it's an open/shut case (seems like it ought to be) then the original shysters know they'll be paying for a lawyer and court costs. Also sounds like this isn't the first time they've pulled this. Real sorry to hear this has happened and hope it gets resolved for you.

You are right. This isn't the first time that this kind of thing has happened with this architect. My contractor has worked on a few jobs that this guy has done the design for. Every time there has been some kind of problem like this.

I agree totally. People screw up. Nobody is perfect. I screw up on a regular basis. If he screwed up then I have no problem with that. I was willing to keep going as long as I thought there was hope of getting a resolution. I think that the original engineer might not have known what he's doing. He has a license so he had to pass a state test but when we started to ask for the calculations for the load points in the steel structure and asking why he wants us to use moment type connections they started to freak out. Moment connections are pretty complicated to design. They also cost a lot more as they take more to fabricate than a basic connection.

The contract does say that the person that loses in court has to pay court costs. I am not getting wrapped around the axle about it right now. I have other things that take priority over this for the present but I will get back to it as soon as I get some time. I am not on fire about it. It's just one more PITA that I have to deal with right now. The saving grace is that I have some great contractors to work with and they all know each other real well. They are all good friends so if they have an issue with each other they work it out. I don't have to babysit and they do great work.

 

[pima67]

For the cost of a couple of postage stamps, file complaints with the appropriate professional licensing boards for those two. If nothing else, it may make you feel better.

 

[Boon]

For the cost of a couple of postage stamps, file complaints with the appropriate professional licensing boards for those two. If nothing else, it may make you feel better.

Yeah, Planning on it. In this state when there is a court case involving an engineer or an architect that engineer or architect is legally required to self report the court case, an honest summation and the results. I will wait for the case to be decided in court and then check with the State Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Professional Land Surveyors to see if they have self reported. At the same time I will file my complaint.

 

[MileHighRover]

What state are you in? You have a beautiful piece of land.

 

[Boon]

What state are you in? You have a beautiful piece of land

Thanks. We love it here. We are in the mountains in northern Colorado near the Wyoming state line.

 

[jarhead]

Going to be a nice place when you get it all sorted out.

I am north of Fort Collins.

 

[Boon]

Going to be a nice place when you get it all sorted out.

I am north of Fort Collins.

I used to live just outside of Wellington in the 60s and 70s. Graduated from Poudre, went in the Army. Moved back to the area after I retired.

 

[racer-john]

Is that Purdue?

 

[Boon]

Is that Purdue?

Nope. It's Poudre. It's kind of a weird name. It means powder in French as in Cache la Poudre. It means "hide the powder". There were a lot of trappers here. It is what the trappers did in the winter. They buried their gun powder during a hard winter along the river banks of the river to keep the powder dry. The name of that River is now called the Cache la Poudre River.

There was a miniseries done about the trapping and such here. It was called "Centennial".

Centennial (miniseries) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Boon]

More progress. Working on excavation while the new engineer works on the new drawings. We hope to have the drawings by the end of the week or the beginning of next week. We have as much to still dig as has already been done. We are trying to get rid of dirt now to make room for more dirt.

 

[Boon]

Have had a lot of friends here with dump trailers all week getting free dirt from the mountain in the driveway. The hill is about half gone.

Got the rough drawings from the new engineer today. Everything looks good. He said that he should have the stamped drawings to me first thing next week. I just need to turn in the drawings for the roof trusses and the stamped drawings and I will be ready to get the new permit. The county is going to abandon the old permit since the plans are not usable. They are going to shift the money that I paid for the old permit to the new permit.

Till then we keep moving dirt out of the driveway. The whole flat area needs to come down about two foot. We also need to remove about three feet of the whole back wall. We still have a load of dirt to get rid of.

 

[Miss the Pontiacs]

Wow You are going to have a great space. Having to clear and blast to allow for your building is a major undertaking. We are building a garage at the lake so trimming back a few trees and moving about 2 feet of loam topsoil to hit some clay is minor. They managed to get one semi-load of earth out and it started raining and now we have a pond. That. Was 3 days ago and more rain on the horizon. Hope you have more agreeable weather for your build.
Will check back to see how you are making out. Good luck.

 

[dmittz]

Wow that is a lot dirt you moved!

 

[Boon]

Several updates about our new garage.

1. The original plans were useless. The county approved the permit but with a stipulation. The stipulation was that we find another engineer to design the steel connections. This was also stipulated by the original engineer that declined to finish the job by engineering the connections for the steel. The original architect and engineer refused to go any further with the new engineer that I hired to finish what the original engineer couldn't. I went to an attorney and he said that I had a great case. It would cost me a minimum of 16k to take the architect to court. We would have to hire legal experts and it could take a long time to run it through the courts. The original architect doesn't own his own home. He has no assets for me to attach or money to recover. He has major health problems so he is probably in the hole. The attorney told me that the most stupid decision I could make would be to sue the architect.

2. We had an excavator and foundation contractor scheduled and they actually started the digging but since we use the original drawings they had to stop. They did actually move a lot of dirt.

3. I hired an new architect and engineer. It took me six weeks to get new drawings. It took me a week to get the plans run through the county and a new permit issued. They put a rush on it for me.

4. Spent months getting rid of dirt from the original excavation. Several people came and got dirt. I delivered dirt. I used a lot of dirt on my own place. You can't have enough flat areas in the mountains so I expanded a lot of our flat areas.

5. I got on the schedule for the contractor to finish the excavation and start on the foundation and walls. They started back on the job this morning. They said I should have a foundation and walls in the next two weeks. They finished the rough excavation today. They will start digging and building footers tomorrow.

6. The metal fabricator says that he can meet the schedule and can start installing the steel right after the foundation crew is done.

I hope we are finally back on track. I will post new pics as the project moves on.