Naive To Say The Least

Call me naïve , for some reason , maybe because I think things should be simple and uncomplicated , I thought all we had to do was go to the permit office, get a building permit , and off we'd go . Wrong , oh so wrong ! Every step of the construction process has a permit involved , and almost every permit has to be obtained from a different department . I don't know about other areas , but Kent County Delaware has an extremely disorganized permit system . . Instead of having all the related departments , located in one building , they are strung out , all over the city of Dover DE , and of course they don't seem to communicate with each other . The proverbial , left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing . So if you're in the Dept. of Natural Resources office (which is where you get a septic and well permit) , and need information ... say , about obtaining a plumbing permit don't bother asking . Further more , every permit has an initial fee , and some have additional inspection fees . Some permits , make no sense at all , we ran into several of these . One was for a highway entrance permit , permission to have a driveway . OK... there had only been a driveway , ( two in fact ) on our lot for over 25 years . The second was an environmental impact permit , this was to determine the impact , that building a house on the lot , would have on the environment . There had also been a house on the lot for over 25 years . We even had to have a demolition permit , to tear down what remained of the more than half burnt old house . I started to argue these permits , but got frustrated and just let it go . I had visions of my paperwork getting shoved to the bottom of the pile . The one permit , that burnt me up the most , was the actual building permit itself . It was close to $4000.00 , and the only thing we got for that ... was permission to build . This fee was for absolutely nothing else , no additional permits , no inspections , nothing . Along with having to have a permit for every stage of construction, every stage has to be inspected and in some cases , you can't move to the next phase , until the previous one has passed inspection. Generally there is a waiting period before the inspections, can be done . If a stage doesn't pass inspection on the first shot and has to be re-inspected, your waiting again . The lesson here is ... before you do anything find out what permits you need , what they cover , and have your check book ready .