Normally I try to keep pretty upbeat posts. This one isn't quite as upbeat as I like but fortunately it is better than what I wrote originally. Fortunately, I procrastinated working on this and ended up with a somewhat pleasant surprise. If I hadn't waited, I would have to admit (another mistake) and admit that a company did do what I thought they were going to do.
This post documents a bit of the pain endured to simply get an 18' x 20' enclosed metal structure on a new concrete slab that I hope to use as a workshop.
Spoiler - If you want to put up something like a shed in Florida, you really should get a quote from a general contractor that can handle all the tasks so you don't get stuck having to figure out the system and pay multiple people just to manage things with the county. It may turn out very close to the cost of (or cheaper than) using one of the carport/shed type places - especially if you have things like a slab or maybe electric to do at the same time.
We moved to Florida about 2 years ago and it has been a bit more than a year in a house we purchased. When we moved in we didn't know that the existing shed was totally shot. During the inspection, there was a ton of stuff everywhere in it and you couldn't really check it out. A quick visual inspection from the outside didn't indicate much to me but I wasn't really thinking about it. When we moved in, we found that the floor was shot and sections of the roof were missing. I suspect some of the junk inside had been holding up sections of the shingles. So it took awhile but we got it torn down and transported all of it to the landfill in about 3.5 trips with the 5x10 utility trailer. My mom and dad even joined in the tearing down "party" but it took a lot out of everyone. I didn't end up taking the kids (14 & 17 at the time) to the landfill but wish I did just show we could all share the same fond memories of the stench. My kids were heartbroken they didn't get recruited to go.
With that out of the way, I had spoken with my dad and came up with a plan to put a concrete slab and metal building up instead of a wood structure. I will never put up a wood structure here in Florida after causing 1000's of roaches to lose their home. It was just too painful hearing so many of their pleading cries as they were squished or coated with Roach spray.
An interesting aspect to Hillsborough county is that it uses "points" to charge you for using the county dump stations and landfill. I had never heard of that before (up north it was just included in our taxes) and the first time we did was while sitting at a county dump station talking with the person responsible for determining my points. The conversation went something like this:
County: Sir, do you know how many points you have left?
Me: Ah, what are points.
County: You get 10 points at the beginning of the year and trips
to the dump stations or county landfill use up those
points.
Me: How do I know how many I have left? We bought the hous
in the spring. No one told me how many were used or are
left!.!.!
County: Hm, I think it resets when a house is sold. Call the
county and they should be able to tell you.
County: ... more info on how the "cost" is calculated...
car size/type + # of axles + trailer size + # of axles, etc.
Me: Ahhhh.. I'm driving an F250 with an 8 foot bed towing a 10
foot long trailer. I think you just said that I used up
all my points in one trip?!?!?!
County: Sigh, tell you what.. since you have never been here
before I will let you slide today.
Me: Sigh of relief.. ** thank you **. Can I send you a Christmas
card?
... many months later.. we determined that going to landfill (instead of dump station) for what were were dumping was a much better plan. Turned out that landfill cost was by weight of dumped material - something like a point per 500 lbs. In the end, we used up pretty much all our points last year getting rid of the shed.
So with the old shed gone it was time to think about a new building, we did some checking around and decided that the structures from a local Carport / Shed company associated with a common national "carport" company would meet our needs. You can get what amounts to a fully enclosed carport with windows, roll-up door and some windows - all engineered to handle Florida wind loads. I'll eventually insulate it and run power out to it so I can do metal and woodworking projects or my dad can work on his various hobbies.
Back to why you should get a quote from a general contractor for doing this type of work instead of the local "carport place" middleman. This is going to take a while.
Because one of the first things the middleman asked was "Do you WANT to pull a permit?". Ahh, don't I NEED to pull a permit for this type and size of structure. Well technically yes but.. Then YES, I want to pull a permit for this so the county doesn't force me to remove a ~$5000 structure because I tried to avoid a permit. I am a follower of Jesus (aka Christian / imperfect person with many faults to work on) and to say that with any meaning I must TRY to do what is right though.
Ok, next - are they going to pull the permit for you? Yes - I really didn't have time to go downtown for this since I put in a good number of hours with my real job. Cha Ching.. aka more dollars leaving your pocket for them to take it downtown and get the paperwork submitted. Is it worth it? It was pricey but time and headaches cost money and since I knew nothing about how things work here it was bound to take extra time.
Oh, don't forget that they don't do concrete so now you need to find your own concrete contractor. What? Ok, so I've got the feeling this isn't a full service company? We can do this - it shouldn't be bad. It wasn't bad up north getting stuff like this done.
So then you pay the local middleman his part and plan to pay the main company the rest of the money - some early on for the plans, permit, etc and the rest when the structure is up. The main company sends out a crew to assemble the building on-site - that is a benefit.
So next you try to get the local middleman to recommend a concrete person. This seems to make sense - if they have worked "together" before then you should have a pretty good chance with it coming out ok. They finally give up a name but the person is always "too busy" so you are back on your own. I finally asked my parents to help find someone since I just didn't have time to spend on the phone calling people for this. They did some calling around and found a guy who they felt knew his stuff and was REALLY eager to help out. In fact, he drove up after talking with my parents and said he could start in a couple days. We were excited and it was obvious he had done concrete work so we went ahead and signed a contract since his quote was pretty reasonable.
So he scheduled, had delivered and spread a load of dirt since our location was pretty low. Now since there was a pretty long delay between us signing the carport contract and finding a concrete guy we gave the carport people a call just to make sure we were not missing anything. They indicated that our slab must fit their criteria and must be inspected.
Oops, hm, our concrete guy never said anything about an inspection even though we made it clear we were putting a structure on it. So we gave him a call and asked if he was putting in the permit. Silence. So Kevin, can you put in the permit for us? Uh, I can't directly. I have a specialty concrete license but I can have my friend put the permit in. Huh? You are licensed and insured right? Yes, I have a specialty concrete permit and have been doing concrete for 30 years. Ok Kevin, do us a favor and send us a copy of your license and insurance. Here is where the Jeopardy game show music starts and runs for 2-3 weeks.
While we waited for our "concrete" guy to show that he was licensed we did some research...
A quick digress, let me say that the failure that got us to this point was a lack of communication. I had assumed that my parents asked if this person was licensed and insured to work in our county. My parents didn't ask that and neither did I which is my failure.
So we started by trying to contact the county via their web request page. At this point, I don't know ANYTHING about what the county requires, etc. My attempts at trying to determine if our concrete guy and his hypothetical concrete specialty license really mean anything went unanswered. On my second of a good number of attempts to get any info, I created an account on the site which supposedly would allow me to see my past requests and such. This site was useless - I was not able to see past requests. I was getting one line non-helpful responses at best to requests which were immediately closed. I never found a way to lookup past request/responses. So this whole research process was going no where. For all appearances, the person handling the request was likely getting paid by the number of request closed and probably making good pay from the looks of it. Eventually, my wife had a good number of minutes and called. The people answering the phones were more helpful and I was beyond grateful. Turns out that Kevin was not licensed in any way to work in Hillsborough County - not directly and not through any local reciprocal agreement with a neighboring county.
We texted him and were ignored for a while. Finally we called and said we are terminating things. Now, at this point, Kevin get some additional negativity in his attitude and tells us that is fine but we must pay him $ to break the contract. Sorry Kevin, but that isn't going to happen. We (ok, more my wife) did research and found that a "contract" with an unlicensed contractor isn't binding in Fl. In fact, we could have sued to get some money back from the load of dirt that was brought in but I figured it wasn't an appropriate response.
We did report him to the county because they have big messages saying "report unlicensed contractors".. Now, I REALLY hate to say this but.. think twice about that. Reporting him to the county as advertised turned into - you should report him to the district attorney, police, etc.. which turns into "you need to press charges".. and basically means you acquire another full time job for what you thought was just a "do some other poor homeowner a small favor". Right or wrong, we didn't pursue it - if I didn't have time to go downtown for the construction permit process, I certainly didn't have time to participate in getting someone prosecuted for being less than smart in their method of trying to operate a business.
Now remember all this "Kevin" junk because it bites us later too.
So now we are back to square one more or less.. A load of dirt spread in back yard but no concrete person. I did some looking around via Angie's List, etc. I finally identified a company that ** advertised their license # ** and gave Larry a call.
By the end of the call, I was very depressed. The company I called is a good company with plenty of experience and they pointed out all the oddities of what I was told by the carport company. This included the fact that the carport company has a generic concrete slab detail that is in no way tied to the specific building you are putting up. Anyways, at this point I really wanted to just cancel my order but some of the money was already spent with regard to building plans and the permit process. So I decided we must just carry on to the good or bitter end.
I talked to Larry a few times and after a bit of back and forth was able to agree on the scope of work that he was responsible for vs what the carport place was doing. This was not a fun process and cost more than it should have since it meant multiple different permits and trips for this single project.
Had Larry come out and had more conversations along the lines of "what was Kevin doing???". Nothing totally crazy but just some oddities/annoyances.
So Larry had site specific concrete plans put together and went out to the county to submit them as we agreed on. This is where I mentioned "Remember the whole Kevin thing".. the county told him he couldn't submit the plans because someone else was already associated with the project. What?????
Here we go back to trying to contact the county building dept people and then the contractor licensing person (since we got some info saying that was related). So I couldn't get any real response over the web request system and the contractor licensing person would never answer his phone. Finally left an exasperated message with him indicating that email wasn't going to get this solved. So what happens?
And next.. here it comes.. feel the anticipation.. He called while I was at the hospital for a kidney stone followup and couldn't talk with him. Arrrrrgghh..
My wonderful wife finally started calling the "building dept" people and finally determined that if you spoke to different people you would get a different answer. After we did this round about for about 2 weeks - we finally had someone saying "we don't see any issues on your account. Larry should be able to submit the plans.".
Was it real or just someone playing a mean joke? Well, the building dept person on the phone said that if he has problems, he can get us on the phone right then and work it out.
Ok, so to keep a long story long. Larry was able to submit the plans for the concrete and other than weather delays related to rain the rest of the concrete related work went pretty well. The slab area was termite sprayed as required (and everyone says "why spray a slab area where only an unoccupied metal building will reside"?? Who knows but the county and they don't provide reasons). I got a bit of fright related to the concrete footer inspection though.. Larry called and said the inspector couldn't find where we had the permit/notice of commencement papers. Sigh, they where on the inside lanai window where Larry indicated I should put them. That was my only "argggg" with regard to Larry - maybe it was just the inspector, etc.. anyways, I took a pic of where it was at and sent it to Larry and the inspector found it the next time. Oddly per Larry, the inspector took the entire pack of info. I'm guessing/hoping that was correct..
So anyways, now the concrete is done. Then I decided to take a couple large limbs off the tree that hangs over the area from the neighbors out back. That was a back/body killer.. parents, me and my daughter trying to get a rope saw over the 2 large limbs and get it down without destroying a fence or taking out our pool enclosure. It could have been a 3rd place on Americas funniest videos... I ended up tying a rope to the hitch on our Rav4 so I could tension the limb so it wouldn't fall straight down onto the fence or enclosure. It took a hour or so just to get the rope saw over the correct limb in the right location. A bit of circus act while on the ladder trying to toss the saw.
Succeeded at getting the limbs down without maiming anyone or destroying property - not even much of a real scare. Following weekend used the indigenous workers (aka our kids) to go cut as many small limbs off and get them into trash cans for the yard waste pickup people. This was a blessing since my back was killing me from the odd contortions on the ladder. The Following weekend I got the chainsaw out and finished things off - left myself a pile of logs on some stacked concrete blocks with a halved metal stud across them.
I contacted the carport people and let them know that the concrete was done and inspected - not long after that we were scheduled for building installation. That day came and around 8 am a small crew of guys showed up with the materials. They got going pretty quick and by mid afternoon they were done except for the roll-up door. That would have been done but they had a mishap in loading and forgot some components. The next day a couple folks returned and finished off the roll-up door and I then called in our final payment.
A few days after that I got to thinking that I didn't hear about an inspection. I thought for sure that the inspection was left for me to coordinate and I was a bit agitated at the thought. I procrastinated in contacting the county to figure out what to do and happily the carport people called and asked me when it would be a good time to get the inspection scheduled. Guess I shouldn't carry around all the aggravation of the past.. The inspection is scheduled and hopefully will be done and out of my hair.. Too many other issues to deal with.
Here is a poor quality picture from the lanai before the roll-up door is on and they were still finishing up the front wall.
Overall, I'm glad I'm doing this. The building quality is ok. It looks relatively nice inside and out. The structural members are pretty beefy but I was surprised a bit that a few supports only use 1 bolt on an end. I like the roll-up door other than the fact that it is pretty loud when opening/closing and the installer said "it will get easier to open over time".. It wasn't terrible to open but my wife might have some trouble. I am also a little concerned that it won't be as easy to insulate *well* as I hoped. I'll probably start with around 2 in of solid foam insulation for the ceiling and maybe the walls and spray foam the seams between solid foam panels and awkward areas. I might want to tape/seal each seam on the wall - still deciding whether the cost to do so will result in a meaningful benefit. There is a ridge vent which means that I won't be keeping moisture out without closing it off which may not be a bright idea either unless there is a way to remove moisture from the building. Maybe I'll seal off an area inside for some stuff where I can try to limit the moisture - just trying to keep some tools from rusting up so much but maybe some rust protection coatings will be needed instead (https://www.theruststore.com/Tool-Rust-Protection-W8.aspx).
I had though about putting a small mini-split heat pump on it but I don't think it will seal up tight enough to warrant one. At most I will probably put a small window AC unit in that I can run when needed.
Next, I want to get electricity run out to it but I need some time for my experiences with this whole project so far and the county in particular to fade a bit first. The pile of bricks in the picture is unrelated to the building - tearing out the overgrown grill that was housing many lizards.
So I survived "It's only a shed". It took a little over a year in total from ripping down the old to having the new one standing. Maybe I should get a t-shirt made.
I learned a lot of things. I found that I need more patience (still) and I need to deal with problems better - much better. Hopefully we are getting closer to where our "house" is more enjoyable rather than just being a painful mass of new problems to fix.
I'm thankful that Jesus forgives us for our failings - even when we fail over and over.
Isaiah 55:7
Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.
Psalm 103:10-12
He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
[Edit 2018/10/8] Sigh, I had thought that all was done and well but I received a call in early Oct from the carport company saying that I had paperwork related to the termite inspection still outstanding. They were nudging me so I would "do something" so they could finalize things with their books. The termite spray was done prior to the slab going in and I had a receipt so I assumed (which was a bad idea) that all I needed to do was get a copy to the county.
I called the county and received an email address to send to - easy as can be compared to everything else that went on. I ended up busy and didn't try sending something until a couple days later. When I did try though, my emails were bouncing. So I tried a variation of the email thinking I wrote it down wrong - nope not working still. Ok, finally broke down and called a day or so later and the very kind person in the department I called emailed me the correct email address. It was not close enough that I would have guessed the correct one..
Ok, so NOW this should be easy, right? Uhh, nope - not easy. I sent in a copy of the receipt and was told they didn't accept receipts and needed a "certificate of compliance" which should should come from the termite spray people.
So I call the termite spray people and email them - making sure the message gets through.. they got back with me and informed me that they didn't find my name in their paperwork. Eh? Ok. They mentioned that sometimes it is under a contractor.. Ahh, ok - we tried that and they found me. Next they told me that the initial spray was done but a spray is required after all construction is complete too. What? No one told me that? They informed me that often it is the concrete person that coordinates that. They did some checking and my concrete guy got a hold of me and it turned out that wasn't our agreement. And off course the carport people were not taking that coordination task on.. so I asked the termite folks to come on out and just get it done. We got that done (another $75) and they sent me the certificate the next day via email.
So I sent it to the county along with a note stating that I had 2 projects in their system it applied to. The termite people had asked me what permit to put on the certificate and I had them put the # for the building itself. So I checked afterward and the paperwork did result in the permit for the building being finalized but my concrete permit was still listed as open.. Hmm.. maybe it just needs to wait on a batch process or something to find it - that is the IT side of my coming out.
Several days later, guess what - concrete permit still open. I contacted the county and they said I need a certificate with the concrete permit # on it. What?? Why didn't they *tell me* that when I was obviously expecting them to close both and had included information for both permits in my communications with them?
Ok, back to the termite people. They were great! They emailed another one with the concrete permit on it. I emailed that over and then I got a reply that both permits were now finalized..
Is it over??? Not quite. I got a call later (since I had left a voicemail at one point) and they told me it would be 3-5 days for the files to get reviewed and the permits finalized.. Uh, ok..
I'm not going to mention the email that told me that it was done already. I'm closing my eyes and pretending all is well. As far as I can tell, it is now.
Phew.. tires me out just thinking about this.
