Current county contractor requirements hurts jobs, consumers (condos, house)

[Restrain]

All due respects but I looked at various storage buildings. The differences was the rafter tie-downs, wall bracing, bolting of the floor plate, and tie downs from a typical storage building. Right now the county requires a set of engineered plans be submitted for every storage building over a 10x12. Even if built by the same provider. Every. Single. One. This is the Engineer's Permanent Employment Program.

Every requirement can be set forth in an addenda to the permit.

Yes, engineered plans for residences, etc. but the rest is overkill.

[Macgregorsailor51]

I have to kind of agree with ya.. though a 10x12 shed is a good size shed and IMHO the tie down is Critical ... I will ask, dont these "shed people" supply Their Engineers Signed Stamped and Approved plans for these units? Its something I need yet to do, so I am truly interested...

Originally Posted by Restrain

All due respects but I looked at various storage buildings. The differences was the rafter tie-downs, wall bracing, bolting of the floor plate, and tie downs from a typical storage building. Right now the county requires a set of engineered plans be submitted for every storage building over a 10x12. Even if built by the same provider. Every. Single. One. This is the Engineer's Permanent Employment Program.

Every requirement can be set forth in an addenda to the permit.

Yes, engineered plans for residences, etc. but the rest is overkill.

Allow me to add ... I believe the county needs to hire someone that can look at simple plans bought off the internet for such projects and approve or not and even circle () whats wrong etc etc ..

[Travelassie]

Originally Posted by JasonAnc

The porch/lanai directly caused the near total destruction of both my dad's house and my uncle's out in Harbor Heights. The porch getting sucked off took part of the roof with it, which let the wind get into the house cavity and blow out windows and more of the roof (and the garage door on my dad's). And it's a fact that the porch and screened in cage that was ripped off my dad's house would have killed the neighbors across the street if they were home, because it destroyed their house to the point that it was razed. (On Trevino) It was crazy, the cage and lanai rubbed up the backside of my dad's roof, taking nearly all of the shingles and tar paper with it and some of the sheathing at the SE corner. Then that material buzz sawed its way through a gorgeous Live Oak that my dad's house was built around in an L shape. It was the biggest tree in the entire neighborhood (it's how I always knew where my dad's house was), and the top half of the tree was lopped off almost clean at an angle, and then all of that debris and tree limbs were deposited into the house across the street, whose front wall and entire roof had collapsed into the house cavity, or been blown away.

Part of one of my uncle's roof trusses wound up speared into the side of a minivan parked in the neighbor's yard. Someone's reasonably sized flat bottom fishing boat wound up flipped up onto his own roof/collapsed carport. The boat was still on its trailer, which was still sort of attached to his truck. I remember one of the bigger/nicer/newer houses on the river that looked virtually mint from the street, but when you went around to the river side of the house, the entire back was gone or destroyed. Looked like the glass got blown in, and then the wind unleashed its anger on the innards of their formerly lovely home.

But I tell you what, as stunning as the destruction was, what I saw after Charlie was tiny in scale to what I saw when I did disaster recovery after Ivan up in the Pensacola area. Whoah... it was like Charlie, but over an area 10x bigger.

That sounds like the kind of damage we saw after Hurricane Andrew- it's unbelievable the damage that those hurricane winds can cause.

We live upriver, and hadn't built our house yet when Charlie hit, we'd filed the notice of commencement, with the county a week before, and clearing the property became debris removal- I recall seeing a lot of aluminum sheets from a neighbor's "ex" porch covering, downed trees, and a boat that had been blown into where our canal comes off Jim Long Lake ( that's at the northern end of HUnter Creek). Our other next door neighbor had had his closed in porch roof ripped off, and it took part of the roof as well- leaving the inside exposed. It happens quite a bit in those storms, where a house will look pristine from the front, but when you see the back, it looks like it's been bombed. That happened to this neighbor's house too. We have about an acre of land, but about 1/3 of that hadn't been cleared completely before now (except for the bigger trees, which have grown back since Charley.). They hauled off stuff- including what they thought was an old garage door, that we all figured was debris from Charley- this about a month ago.

Thank goodness those neighbors you spoke of across the street from your dad weren't home- I don't know what the death or injury toll was from Charley but I think it was likely it have been higher if many of those homes weren't owned by snowbirds who weren't there at the time.

One of the good things, if you can call it that, about Charley is that it was a small, fast moving storm, and that made the area affected by the storm smaller than a larger, slower moving storm. This is why the damage from Ivan in the Florida panhandle happened over a more widespread area. An even wider path was affected by Hurricane Wilma in 2005, although it was a Cat 1 storm, it affected many parts of the state.

[The Villages Guy]

Our house was built in 1995, all block and cement, except hip roof made of wood and aluminum lanai cage of course. But the thing that amazes me is that it still has its original crappy single pane windows. How is that even possible?

[Travelassie]

Originally Posted by North_Pinellas_Guy

Our house was built in 1995, all block and cement, except hip roof made of wood and aluminum lanai cage of course. But the thing that amazes me is that it still has its original crappy single pane windows. How is that even possible?

I'm guessing that the former owners saw no reason to change those windows? Windows are pricey items and a lot of folks add that to a "round tuit" list they'll get to some day.


Do you have any plans to change those windows?

[The Villages Guy]

Originally Posted by Travelassie

I'm guessing that the former owners saw no reason to change those windows? Windows are pricey items and a lot of folks add that to a "round tuit" list they'll get to some day.


Do you have any plans to change those windows?

I hate the windows, but they will stay having lost my income due to becoming disabled.

I just don't know how they have not blown out or been torpedoed in some storm yet.

[JasonAnc]

Originally Posted by Travelassie

One of the good things, if you can call it that, about Charley is that it was a small, fast moving storm, and that made the area affected by the storm smaller than a larger, slower moving storm. This is why the damage from Ivan in the Florida panhandle happened over a more widespread area. An even wider path was affected by Hurricane Wilma in 2005, although it was a Cat 1 storm, it affected many parts of the state.

Yeah, I did disaster recovery after Wilma too. Very widespread and surprising level of damage for what was supposed to be a lesser storm.

I have pictures from Brickell where I walked around the Four Seasons with 6-12" of shattered glass accumulated like it was snow. Shredded the bottom of my thick steel-toed work boots. They didn't walk level anymore and I had to throw them out.

Lots of roof damage and trashed porches all over west Broward, which is where I worked. I only saw one house that looked trashed though, and that looked like it was from a toppled tree.

[JasonAnc]

Someone brought up sheds... As in a pre-engineered structure built from a kit. Much different than a site specific, hand built structure, like a porch, Florida room or lanai.

[Travelassie]

Originally Posted by North_Pinellas_Guy

I hate the windows, but they will stay having lost my income due to becoming disabled.

I just don't know how they have not blown out or been torpedoed in some storm yet.

I'm sorry to hear about the disability, that's a tough way to go.

You're located in Pinellas County though, aren't you? If that's the case you're in an area that has not gone through a direct hit from any of the storms we had from 1995-2005, at least not with winds strong enough to blow out the windows. So those windows would likely stay unless an owner just thought it was time to replace them, and had the $$$$$$$ to do it.

Drive around nearly any location here in Florida where there are older houses, you'll see lots of old windows- some downright ancient- jalousie windows, with the small horizontal panes of glass that open and close via a crank- when it works, LOL, to awning windows, which consist of three framed panes of glass in each window that also open and close out via a crank- when it works. Those are notoriously energy inefficient as especially when they're older, you can crank them shut tight enough to keep the outside air out or the AC in. We had the awning windows in our house in Miami, half of them wouldn't open or close easily, if we'd stayed there I'd have seen what we could have done to replace them with hurricane impact glass casement windows.

[Macgregorsailor51]

Double Pane windows seemed to have never became popular down here for some reason.. ( Not until lately ) We all had them up north on anything built new in the 90's maybe even earlier??? Storm windows are popular elsewhere in the country to try and bridge the gap for thermo protection for a lessor cost.. I dont see why Hurrican storm windows are not popular down here. your talking what 1/5 the cost of a new window ? They wouldnt protect as well as a New To Code Hurricane Window but they would/could, bridge the gap..