Building / contractor recommendations

[sdduuuude]

Well, greetings from a long lost Pigg. Has been a long time since I checked in here. Much to tell about my housing ventures, and some favors to ask.

In a nutshell, we moved out of Clairemont, rented in Carmel Valley, bought a piece of property in Carmel Valley and are now under construction on a modern house there. No HOA. No Mello Roos. Zoned agricultural residential. SD Realtor responsible for making it happen.

Anyway, The house will be one of only a handful of houses in 92130 that are not Cali-Mediterranean, and possibly the only one where the the owner is neither a real-estate agent or contractor but did the general contracting himself.

It took a couple of years to pull the permit, and there were some delays in demolition of the existing house but we are well under construction now.

Construction is going pretty well but I am looking for some subcontractors and hoping the Piggs can help. Some of my subs are either flaky or creeping their prices up now that we are getting down to actual bids so I am looking to get some competitive bids going now.

Right now, I am looking for these:
– Under-floor radiant tubing installation.
– underground (below slab) plumbing.
– framing
– swimming pool re-plastering.

I look for small one-owner companies where the owner lives in east county and is the guy selling the job and doing the work. And they often have a bad attitude, which is OK if they know what they are doing. If they have a sales guy wearing a polo shirt and the office or owner is in North County Coastal, I don’t even want to look at them. They charge too much, for sure.

Take the swimming pool re-plastering, for example. I don’t want a pool company. They will just go sub-contract out the work to the guy I want to hire directly. I want the guy who comes out w/ a jackhammer and two of his employees to get ‘er done.

The under-floor radiant folks are particularly hard to find. I have found a few companies that will turnkey the system, but they farm out and mark-up all the work. I just want the little team that ties the piping to the steel under the concrete.

OK, Piggs, what-choo-got ?

[sdduuuude]

I should say – in return, I will gladly answer questions about the process of designing and building a house in San Diego. Been contemplating my own blog, actually.

One interesting thing I learned is that different people mean different things when they say “square foot”.

[Rich Toscano]

Welcome back.

(I don’t have any useful info for you, just wanted to say that).

[treehugger]

Gardner Pool Remodel, a few folks we know used them and loved them. I hear definitely not the cheapest, but supposedly the best in the business.

801 Gable Way, El Cajon CA 92020
 619-593-8880
 619-593-8886

https://www.gardnerremodel.com/contact/

[sdsurfer]

I’d be interested in reading your blog and learning about the process you went through. I have plenty of friends that have talked about doing what your doing, but none of them ended up doing it. I’ve told myself (and the wifey) that I think if we approach it the right way it would be cool to build a house one day. I think there are a lot more people out there telling people not to do it than people explaining that it is possible. Good luck with everything and your logic seems super reasonable to me as far as who to work with.

[sdduuuude]

That is an interesting way to put it – that there are more people telling others not to do it than people saying to give it a shot. And likely the people saying “don’t do it” have never done it or tried it.

It definitely isn’t for everybody and it requires, above all things, patience.

Also, you have to be able to see things both from a very high level and at a very detailed level. If you are only comfortable with one of the two, you will drown one way or another.

Buying a property that has already been “developed” is also key. Because my property had a house on it when I bought it, I was able to rent it out while we worked on the permit, and it saved me about $66,000 in school fees and Mello Roos-type fees as well. Again – not a typo. $66,000. I think it also saves on utility infrastructure costs, as well. $4500 for water, probably $10K for electric, etc. ALso, we were able to finance the purchase as a normal mortgage instead of a land purchase.

Also critical is understanding that interest is a real, hard cost and along with “patience” comes the ability to afford to be patient.

[sdduuuude]

Thanks, Rich. I have been going back and forth over the concept of doing a blog on the house build. Just not sure I want the general public knowing where I live. I have lots to tell about the city, architects, inspectors, etc. Seriously, if anyone is looking to DIY a new house, I’m glad to help.

Unfortunately, contractors are pretty busy now and lumber skyrocketed in the last six months. I expect the next downturn will come as soon as I finish my house, after which builders will be begging for work.

[sdduuuude]

RE: Gardener Pools.

Thanks for the referral. Good news is they are family owned and in east county.

Bad news is they have a nice website and are partnered with Leslie pool supplies. Companies with partners like that are unlikely to work with me cuz they won’t want to come out and do just the pool surface. They will want to turn key it or they won’t do it.

[OnPoint]

Let a robot build your house!

http://www.blueprint-robotics.com/video/

[sdduuuude]

I tried that. Couldn’t get it permitted.

[Rich Toscano]

Wow, for real, you tried it? That robot thinger is so cool.

I am generally un-handy and know nothing about this sort of thing. But lately I’ve been harboring a fantasy that it might be cool buy a property along the Tecolote Canyon ridge in west Clairemont, and replace the existing house (most of them are small 1960s numbers) with a nice modern open-plan house. That would result in a killer, modern home on a property with a spectacular nature-y view, right on a great walking/biking trail I go to all the time, for a cost that’s not TOO much more (I think?) than our current Bay Park house.

My girlfriend says it’s way too much hassle and I think she may be right. Reading this thread reinforces that idea… the permitting alone sounds nightmarish. But, it’s fun to think about.

One thing I thought was that if I could find a good prefab home with a design I like, it would simplify things a lot. Fewer choices/decisions to make. They seem expensive though. The robot house kinda reminded me of that, though I guess that’s a lot more customized.

[sdduuuude]

No, of course I didn’t ACTUALLY look into it. That was just me being snarky.

I did look, very briefly, into using shipping containers for a pool house, though. It is doable, but the structural engineer said it won’t really save you money because if you cut them, you have to re-engineer everything.

Permitting in Clairemont shouldn’t be too bad. I would recommend doing what we did and submit a Preliminary Design Review to the city DURING escrow. This is a process by which you ask the city specific questions about building a loosely defined house on a specific property.

We checked up on all the overlays that apply to this particular property and any specific rules so you know, before you close escrow, what you are dealing with.

We learned, for example, that the property was not in the coastal commission overlay. If it had been, we would not have purchased it.

The prelim. design review cost about $4K but it paved the way for a little easier permitting, and let us know what to expect. We also requested exemptions that we were able to use when it came to permitting time.

In Clairemont, you will run into “steep hillside” overlyas, but you can get exemptions by pulling up old grading maps that show the slope is not natural.

I would say the permitting process is not so bad. Again – patience is the key and playing the “I’m just a homeowner” card goes a long way. Finding an architect that is both creative and knows how to negotiate the permitting process is probably the biggest challenge.

And budgeting the city fees is impossible.

Tell your girlfriend “In a year, you will wish you started today.” As much time and hassle as I have put into this house, I am so thrilled that I started it when I did.

We pulled a permit in 2 yrs in CV and we used an architect that was more commercial than residential for personal reasons. We could have done it in about 6 months w/ a residential architect.

[Rich Toscano]

Cool… very interesting!

[XBoxBoy]

sdduuuude,

Hope you will post some more here about your experiences. I for one would love to hear what you’ve done and how things worked out for you. (And what didn’t!)

Did you use an architect? If so, how did you go about picking them? Do they bill based on a percent of construction costs or a flat fee rate? How much help were they when dealing with the city? Did they try to sell you a lot of “interior decorator” services too? Did you have a good idea of what you wanted when you went into the project or was this something where they provided a lot of the design and ideas?

Do you have a construction company overseeing everything, or maybe a general contractor, or maybe you’re doing it all. How much time has this taken?

Are you doing a lot of foundation work, or is that a pretty small part of the job? What style is the house? Where do you see most of the costs coming from?

Anyway, want to really encourage you to either do your own blog, or to post more here about your experiences. Yes we want to hear about it!

XBoxBoy

[Hobie]

I’m very interested in the radiant floor. Not very common on the west coast but I think it has great potential, especially with high ceiling homes or just taking the chill out of a workshop.

Since the tubing is embedded in the concrete they create ‘zones’ with specific runs. I wonder if they build in any redundancy using side by side backup tubes? Also, do you need a thicker slab due to the tubing potentially creating weak points or thinner slab cross section.

Do your architect create the working plans? I’m looking for a draftsman for such.

Thanks and good luck.

[Author]

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