Demolition permits aka fun with bureaucracy

Today I ventured into the world of permitting.

Where we live, it turns out you can’t just tear your house down (let alone light it on fire) without a permit. Now, I tried to get a demolition permit before, but didn’t have enough paperwork with me to swing it. Today I am better prepared.

I brought with me:
One building permit application
That’s right – the permit you use to demolish a house is titled “Building Permit Application.” You can imagine the kinds of details that form calls for. It’s hard to fill out details on the “new dwelling area” when the goal is to tear out an existing dwelling.

A legal description of the property (which took us two days to find, since we still have belongings in three homes)

A plot map
The directions for creating the plot map are two pages long and rather daunting. I faked my way through this by sort of, ummm, making up the property elevations at various points. They seem to require an elevation survey ($500) in order to tear down the structure. I suspect this is solely due to the fact they’re using the building permit application, but it’s confusing nonetheless.

The county has a new “campus” of a jillion buildings. If you have a hybrid car, you can park right up where it’s convenient. Fascinating.


The Planning and Development office is in a large, open building full of light. The receptionists are very helpful, very well-caffeinated and you HAVE to talk to them before you can do anything else. They fill out a time-stamped routing card based on your situation, and tell you what “stations” to go to, in what order.

Me, I started at the Permit desk. The nice gal there got me started, verified that I had what I needed to proceed, and directed me to Planning. However, I decided to open a whole ‘nother can of worms with her instead.

Back when we first got the trailer, we worked with an electrician to install a temporary power pole on site. This is standard during a construction project, and it lets you plug into electricity while you’re working on things. The electrician did the standard submit-electrical-permit thing, assuming the permit would come through.


The county, however, declined to issue the permit. We could only get a permit for temporary power after getting a building permit. Since that’s likely to take until the end of August, this was not a good answer for us. Once the house is demolished, we’ll be dependent on the good will of our neighbors for electricity – not a situation to look forward to.


I’ve talked to several people in the construction trade who are shocked that we weren’t granted a temporary permit. “It’s never been a problem in the past” is a frequent comment.

So, I thought I’d plead my case for getting the temporary power pole permit approved.


It was pitiful, really. I threw myself on their mercy, explaining that it was a matter of public safety. After all, wouldn’t the fire fighters want lights on while they did their training? And we’d need lights to be able to properly observe the house after the burn, to make sure no one stumbled into the smoking crevasse. Not to mention how much easier it would make the demolition process itself. Come awwwwn, man!


No dice. I did inspire the woman at the desk to go to the back office and confer with someone more senior. Neither of them could make much sense of my case. The permit was declined with some sympathy. The explanation?


“Not that you would do this of course, but you’d be surprised at how many people will use temporary power to put an RV on their property and live there. That’s a violation of code and we just can’t have that. I’m really sorry.” Blink. Innocent look. "Really? Thank you for explaining," I responded.

So, I moved on to Planning. Their role involved disappearing into a back room for about five minutes, coming back to do something on the computer and initialing my form. Then I was sent to WES, which is something to do with water and the environment. I think they handle different sewer systems.


Trudging up two flights of stairs I arrived to find a note on the door: All WES employees will be in training from 1 – 2 p.m. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.


I looked at my watch. 1:07. Hmmm. That’s the perfect amount of time for not getting anything done at all. The department wasn’t locked so I took a seat and settled in for a nice, long wait with my book. Time went by. 1:30.


A woman emerged from the bowels of the cubicles, purposefully on her way to a late lunch. She stopped when she got to me. “Are you being helped?” she asked, noticing the complete absence of anyone helpful.


I explained the situation and she was appalled, nearly to the point of speechlessness. Once she got through muttering about unacceptable customer service she asked what I needed. In about 30 seconds she popped open my application on the computer and approved it. Wuh hoooo!


Now, back to the Permit desk. I mean, back to the queue for the Permit desk.

After some more (brief) waiting and $21, we are now the proud possessors of a demolition permit. Hallelujah.