A bit of venting with a question

Welcome to the whacky world of over-regulation for no reason.

Not sure I follow tho - you should be able to install electrical service without needing everything else built - electrical is often the 1st installed because you need it to build everything else. What need for a foundation???? That is very contrary to how it works here. No you don't get the final breaker box on your wall, but you get a temp construction breaker on a post by the transformer.....

--->Paul

 

dig the footing only, pour no concrete, get the electricity, then see what happens with the septic. You will only have a little money at risk this way. The reward outweighs the risks associated with the effort.

 

Hire a professional soil scientist to do your septic evaluation. Most states have done away with the perc test requirement because the test is not accurate in many situations. A soil scientist can look at your soil profile and and pretty much tell you what effluent dosing rate your soil will be able to handle...in the long term...which is important.

 

The electric coop around here has a similar policy...a permanent dwelling structure has to be significantly under way for them to install electric. Basically they want to know that if they run wires they will get repayed for their credit amount by the monthly bill generated by a household. Of course they don't do it for free..around here it is $15.50 a foot with a credit amount that is I think around $3k.

Find out for sure what the minimum is to get a temporary construction hookup. Usually they give you a year or longer to convert that to a permanent hookup.

Can't give you much advise on septic/perk etc.. it varies too much from state to state. Try contacting those who install septics for a reference for an engineer who is reasonable (in my opinion some over-engineer everything) and talk with him. He should know the regs for your area.

Eric

 

A perk test can be a pain this time of the year but if the inspector knows what he's doing you probably will get a good result.

mikell

 

Ask them to come out and do the perc test even though it's still relatively damp. You might still pass and then you're all set.

Also, will your underground electric run under/near the driveway?? It doesn't make sense to install a driveway just to have it ripped up by the electric company. My underground power goes back 1,100 feet (cost me $2,100) but it's right along the edge of the driveway.

If they still insist that you 'need a driveway', just put down some gravel.

 

/do as some one here suggested and pay for the services of a professional soil scientist/engineer. The few hundered dollars you spend on his opinion ( as long as he can find a spot to perk) will be the best investment you ever made.

 

Get a backhoe guy to put in your driveway and to clear and level the building site (preferably on a high spot on your property so your septic field can be simple gravity type), and even maybe dig the trench from the county's power pole to your building site. Then see if you can get a permit to set up either a temporary power pole for construction or a more permanent thing called a mobile (home) panel. Can't remember the exact terminology.

Backhoe guy shouldn't cost too much.

 

While you've got the soil scientist/engineer out there finding a place that will pass perk tests (NOT just doing the test) ask him for an informal opinion on where he feels good places for a driveway and building site would be as well. DON'T make up your mind before then, but DO find out all places from where the electricity are prepared to run their line before he comes. Let him know in two or three sentences all your parameters before he starts, and his opinion could save you thousands of dollars in constructing driveways, avoiding future erosion, getting isolated during floods, whatever.

 

Talk to the people who do the perk tests. Do you have SEO's (Sewage Enforcement Officers) They should be able to tell you if they think your land would pass the perk this time of year. Clay is a very hard soil to pass for a regular system in our area. The SEO would be able to tell you if they will do some of the testing now and then finish some more test later so that you can cash in on the savings on running the electric. I wish you the best of luck...Laurie

 

You might understand this, but I don't! If it's too wet to do a perc test now then what makes "this guy" think the soil will absorb the effluent once the system is built when the soil is this wet again next year? To be conservative, the perc test should be done when the soil is wet. In fact, many states require that the soil be saturated before the perc test is actually run. When the perc test was still required in Minnesota (about 2 decades ago, BTW), the perc test holes had to be kept full of water for a minimum of 24 hours before conducting the actual test.

 

You can get some guy with a bulldozer to make a driveway and cover it with some gravel pretty fast. Around here, they want their meter reader to be able to drive to the meter to read it regardless of the weather.

I'm not sure I understand about having the foundation in as you should be able to have electric service for even a camper on your property. What if you were having a mobile home put in? This part just doesn't make sense to me. Ask to verify this info with a supervisor. If you were building, service of some kind would have to be in for construction tools to plug into. I'm thinking that what they really need to know is where the house is going to be as they don't want to spend the money to install all this only to find out that you changed your mind and it has to be moved. If you already have a foundation there, you are pretty much committed.

If you were building a house, you would not put in the septic before a huge part of the construction was complete as you would not want trucks and equipment running over your tank or septic lines. Rules vary from place to place, but typically, the septic tank is within 10 ft of the house with the lateral lines off from that. You should be able to just have a perk test done to show that you will qualify for a septic.

Talk with someone farther up the decision pole.

 

I'm gonna sound like a broken record here.....hire yourself a soil scientist to determine where to put your septic. I know what I'm talking about...I AM A SOIL SCIENTIST!! There is no county personnel, no guy with a backhoe, no professional dern engineer, no one, who can tell you any better than a soil scientist where the BEST place is to put your septic.
I'll get off my soap box now.....

 

For us, this is how it's going... In order for the electric company to even come out and tell us what we need for utilities, we needed to have the 4 corners of the future house site pegged.. They need to make sure how far from the road to the transformer, then from the transformer to the house.

For our septic - it was tested before we bought the property. In our area... 48 inches is the magic number of top soil needed for a conventional system... We had 35 inches, which qualified us for the smallest sandmound system. It cost us $125 for the engineer. Our excavator is charging between $8500 and $10,500 to dig the trench for underground utilities, install the complete septic system, dig the foundation hole & fuel tank hole, backfill everything and do the final grade... price depends on how much rock he runs into.

Our driveway must be dug out and have a good base before the work can begin on the basement... We're doing that ourselves... then the excavator is coming in and digging the foundation, etc., and installing our septic system. THEN the electric company will be out to install the electric, followed by the telephone company with the phone line and the basement contractor will be starting his work. Once the house is delivered (we're going with a factory manufactured home) then the electric contractor comes in to do the basement wiring, connects the house to the meter socket, then the well will be drilled and water run to the house.

Don't know if any of this was helpful to you... this thing is a big mess in my head... it actually looks kinda organized when I tell you about it!