March 31, 2005 Budgeting & Yet another Permit Update

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Permitting

Remaining Agencies Update:

• Building & Safety/State/Fire Department I spoke with the factory as they were just redlining corrected plans that are being prepared for resubmittal. I am very surprised that the engineers already revised the plans. However, there is a wrench in the works with our corrections. I picked up our corrections from the Fire Department today and it looks as though the engineers will have to incorporate their requested items as well. I am happy that I caught them just before she finished redlining the State/Building & Safety corrections. We're hoping that most of the items are redundant and that it will be an easy fix. We'll have to review them tonight and send them via email to the factory so the engineer can catch them in the morning. I am hoping to get the revised plans on Monday. If I get them on Monday, I'll have enough time to resubmit them to Building & Safety and the Fire Department during their Tuesday submittal hours. (We can only submit or resubmit on Tuesdays or Thursdays). In any case, the state items have already been addressed and the factory hopes to get the CA State approval going as planned. We're getting our final pricing tomorrow. We'll immediately (within-a-few-minutes immediately) request a draw to pay for our first installment. The timely organization of all of these documents is crucial at this point.
• Forestry Division I just reviewed our correction sheet. The items are fairly minor, although the forestry division is requesting that we remove a few more trees. I will have to re-draft a landscaping plan tonight so I can resubmit tomorrow.
• Drainage/Grading We've resubmitted and we're just waiting for our final approval.

Budgeting

Our radiant floor heating is likely to put us over a couple of thousand dollars than our original estimate. There is also an issue with L.A. County and the State and our coice of PEX plumbing for our radiant floor heating. Apparantly, it's not approved for use in an open system. --An open system is where domestic water use and the water in the hydronic floor heating are mixed. Although the factory is preparing to have State approval for PEX flooring in a couple of weeks, it will put us behind and probably cost us more if we don't compromise. Our compromise? Two water heaters and onix plumbing for the floors.

We have to work through our budget tonight in order determine where we are. There are a lot of items we need to include and exclude as we have a better handle of what everything costs. We'll also have to determine what will else be included on our pending draw request. We'll also have to determine if we'll need to take out more money and have our project reappraised. It looks as though we're in for a busy night!

Trees

I am trying to find anyone interested in taking down our four eucalyptus trees in exchange for firewood. They need to be removed per Forestry Division/Fire Department regualtions. If anyone is interested, let me know. I know it's a long shot, considering the weather is starting to heat up, but worth a try.

Meanwhile, the guy who took our tiki bar came to the rescue again and is planning to take all of the oleanders that need to be removed.