Gottfried Green

I can't say how many times I've had to stop and help a gopher tortoise to cross the road. It's always a wrong time wrong place situation for the tortoise. If they could only keep to digging their burrows and remaining safe. I guess even then they find themselves between a rock and a hard place literally. A friend sent me news about the practice of "entombment" where developers build on top of the burrows and the tortoises are left buried alive ultimately unable to dig through the concrete and asphalt laid on top of them. To spell it out more directly here is a quote from the article in The Washington Post, "Trying to dig out, day after day, but not being able to, it's got to be pretty horrible," said Matthew J. Aresco, a biologist at a 50,000-acre conservation area in Florida who helped bring the tortoises' cause to light. "It's truly appalling." This has turned out to be a win win situation as the fine the developer would have had to pay to bury the tortoises was more expensive then having them relocated. When it works out this way it makes for one less excuse when destroying the environment for the sake of development. Visit Nokuse Plantation for more information about the rescue effort. From the site: "Nokuse Plantation is 48,000 acre private conservation initiative in the Florida Panhandle conceptualized and funded by M. C. Davis and Sam Shine. It is designed to be both a model and a catalyst for future landscape level conservation projects, which is the only way to preserve nature’s intrinsic biodiversity."

Labels: permits, wildlife

The concrete blocks arrived and the cascading corner foundation sections are being laid. Another survey will then be done to document that the house is physically on the land where it should be. If I had people commenting on the blog I might bring up how non-green I know concrete block is but because of solving the elevation issue and budget it makes the most sense in the grand scheme of things. So beyond that the house is moving forward at a brisk pace so far.

Labels: building envelopes, materials, permits

The trenches are dug for the footers to go in. The inspector just happened to be there when we got there. We had to go but we'll know tonight if we passed because the footers will be in when we go back to Gottfried. The county comes to inspect frequently throughout each phase. The trenches were dug this morning, the inspector showed up by noon and then (hopefully) the footers will be in place later today.

Labels: building envelopes, permits

I just paid $6285 to the Englewood Water District for water and sewer hook-up. Believe it or not I saved $3900 because someone in 2001 paid that amount toward the cost. Yes, it would have cost around 10k otherwise to connect to the county sewer and water. Between this cost and the impact fees, I would assume the county is glad we came along. I think of Olga next door and her struggle with the EWD. They offered to hook her up for free at a certain point. My only thought is that they are still going to have to run the pipe from the road back to our house and they run it on the North property line which borders hers. I'll just have to keep an eye on the destruction. Read more about Olga's experience at the Link.

Labels: cost, permits, water

I had posted a few days ago about, Olga, my 92 year old neighbor who has lived in Englewood since the 60's. Back in January, The Englewood Sun printed her story. The Englewood Water Board apparently didn't get the concept of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". She has a cistern system that has been working off rainwater and providing her the water needs of the household for over 40 years. They water board was trying to enforce a law which demanded that she hook-up to the public water supply. I'll need to find the law makers on this one because as the news is highlighting everywhere, a blurb in the NY Times here, we are in a water crisis. Not yet quite as severe here as in Atlanta but anyone who has lived in this area for a few years has noticed it just hasn't been raining as much during the time of year when it is supposed to be raining a lot. I have so many issues with the waste of my big tax dollars locally in Sarasota County. FL embodies somehow the idea of doing things wrong the first time so that you have to go back and fix them i.e. the everglades restoration. She should be featured in every local newspaper as what you should be doing and celebrated for having done so for so many years. Why would someone who has been a water conservationist for 40+ years have to suffer anything but celebrity in the area?

Labels: Englewood, permits, water

It seems that we've reached a point of no return. The permit is ready to be issued. It has finally sunk in that we are going to be building a house. I still can't help thinking something will delay the ground breaking but I guess that is because it has been over a year since we've been working toward this day. All the heavy duty paperwork is behind us.

Labels: permits

Indeed it is. During our tree inspection, Bryan the inspector, told us that we had a grand tree- the Live Oak above. It meets all the criteria Sarasota County specifies here. Besides having the beautiful tree which we've always admired there are a few more perks to having it on our lot. Because it is a protected tree, it goes on record with the county and in a way is landmarked. This means in the future anyone wishing to cut it down will have an impossible time (i.e developers). It is because of this unwanted red tape with future freedoms on the property that our property appraisal should be lower and our taxes could see a small reduction. These are all great bonuses for us and the property.

A few more things from the county site about Grand Trees. "Trees produce oxygen, provide wildlife habitat and play many important ecological roles. Certain trees also provide psychological benefits in response to their impressive size and great character. Such trees have been determined by Sarasota County to be “grand” in nature.

Grand Trees are an especially significant component of Sarasota County’s urban forest and have a unique and intrinsic value to the general public because of their character, age, size and ecological importance."

Labels: landscaping, Nature, permits

We are having a final site inspection done this week. They want to insure proper erosion control along the bank of the Gottfried Creek. As it turned out, the main clearing will be 3 stumps of non-native trees that would be removed regardless. There will also be a dead slash pine removed and a cluster of 2 palms. This is a plus because of cost but mostly because we won't disturb any old growth or scrub habitat that sits mostly along the opposite end of the site.

Labels: Nature, permits, siteplan

The rainwater falls from the gutters into the cistern below.

It couldn't get more basic. Rainwater falls into a bucket for use here and there.

As fate would have it, my 92 year old neighbor, Olga, has been harvesting rainwater since she and her husband built their house in 1961. She has never been connected to the county water supply. I found this out the other day when she told me how they had been demanding that she hook up because it was the law. She lives alone now and has relied on her cistern for almost 50 years. She uses this water for everything in her house except drinking water. It is very expensive to run water lines from the road, as our properties are set back a few hundred feet. Not only could she not afford this but why should she have to. She was told that if she refused she would have to pay the water board $27 a month to continue to receive no service. I wonder what we'll have to go through when we build a 600 sq ft guest house completely off the grid? This is of course, part of my 10 year plan. In 10 years, I don't think we'll have a problem because the water supply will have already been depleted.

Labels: permits, water

We closed on the construction loan today and the permit has been in review over the past week or so. There are a few specs we'll need to clarify on plans and some coordinating of a few preliminary inspections on site. Things are just about to officially begin on ground- we hope.

Labels: permits

It's hard to know how to feel overall when you find that your Scrub Jay review finds no evidence of Scrub Jays. Of course, if there had been evidence of Scrub Jay activity it would have been next to impossible for us to build on our property. We did have indicators that we would not have a problem building on the lot before we bought it but to hear it officially gives us the real green light. I spoke to my neighbor who has lived in her home since the 60's and she said the area was teaming with Scrub Jays at one time. Quail were also everywhere. All I can say is that we are keeping all the scrub habitat that exists on the property intact. The area where we build is mostly cleared with a few non-native trees we'd need to get rid of anyway.

Labels: permits, wildlife

With all the costs just to build any old house down here, we certainly won't be able to afford solar electric although we are going to try for solar water heating. Just to power a modest kitchen with appliances etc would cost about 20k in solar panels but I am looking into incentives that may bring that cost down. We hope to add some solar in the future but for now we have to rely on the FPL to help us get started. We'll need to get the energy calculations done for our home. When we get the revised floor plan end of week from Rocio Romero, we'll be able to run some numbers on specific energy needs. Because we are still going for passive solar and best wind flow placement, we should be OK much of the year. Even as we come up on June, there is always a breeze and the trees help keep it somewhat comfortable. It will be interesting to see how much we really would end up using the AC at all.

Labels: Energy, permits

We knew going into this a year ago we were in the red zone. This is how a scrub jay zone is mapped on the county's GIS system. We had an environmental assessment done prior to purchasing the property to make sure we could build on the lot. Regardless, I still have to submit a Scrub-Jay Review Package to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. I think this is good thing and was prepared for some federal reviews because the property mostly remains as it always has. The initial assessment found no evidence of scrub jays which isn't great news on any level. Also, where we are building on the lot is not near the zoned scrub habitat. We plan on only removing a few palm trees of which there is an over abundance anyway. If there are scrub jays that want to visit our property, there will still be scrub for them to enjoy.

Eco Florida Magazine provides this information about the Florida Scrub Jay. "As the name implies, the Florida scrub jay thrives in a scrub, which is an extremely dry habitat. Their ideal environment is a relatively open flatwoods of oak or sand pine scrub with trees less than 10 feet tall, wide apart and providing minimal canopy cover. Most of this scrub is bare ground having a few plants that are less than half a foot tall."

Labels: permits, wildlife

We don't even have an official address or a home for that matter here in Sarasota County but we've definitely paid our share in property taxes. That was one reality we struggled with when we first realized our taxes quadrupled after our purchase. We've come to terms with that only to get to the county's impact fees. Any new build here should expect to pay a one time fee of 19k by this time next year. This is up from 10k currently. Somehow I'd hope to have our building permit submitted in time to pay the current impact fee but who knows. I guess if we miss it by a week it will cost us another 10k. I feel like the county should just have my PIN number to save me the trouble of writing all the big checks.

Labels: cost, permits, taxes