Pre-Building process for Weber County

I'm going to do my best to remember our pre-building process so far so I can possible help others in the future.  But please don't read this unless you have to because it's sooooo boring.

We moved to Huntsville June 4, 2017.    It wasn't until January 3rd, 2018 that I actually walked through the Weber County Planning Division doors and started the process (I was trying to avoid it I guess?).   And it wasn't until May 24th (ish) 2019 that we finally got a building permit.

Subdividing: So starting the process in January, the first thing we needed to do was to subdivide (through planning division). In order to subdivide we needed a perc test for our septic (through the health dept). But they don't do perc tests in the winter and told us we'd need to wait until March 1st. We didn't actually get the perc test until mid-April because of weather I guess? I can't remember. I do remember calling the health dept. every Monday in March to see if they could do it that week.

Water Rights: Also, around this time we were told we needed to get going on getting water rights- so Joey applied and paid the fees to Weber Basin to get our water rights with them. What we didn't know was that wasn't getting actual rights or the hard part everyone was talking about. We thought we were done and had "water rights". But found out much much later that the lengthy process of getting water rights is actually through the Utah Division of Water Rights. And they said it could take 4-6 months. We found this out in January 2019 when we thought we would start building in February. I remember being on the phone with Joey and being so sad when he told me. But I think it only took 3 months and we were able to get a preliminary permit to dig a well. (thanks to Blake Bingham who told us about it and helped us through the process)

So back to subdividing. This process took an entire year. While we were waiting on the perc test, we did have the land surveyed by Ensign Engineering. So after the perc test and everything had been submitted in the Spring - it took the REST of the year to get it approved. It went back and forth from every department in the county and our surveyor. And then our surveyor had some personal stuff go on and took months to send some of the corrections back. So we finally subdivided on December 28th, 2018.

Plans: We looked at plans for years and everyone told us to find a pre-made plan you like and have it built. But we looked and looked and finally ended up doing what everyone told us not to do and designed our own. My dad drew up lots of plans and when we had a good idea of what we wanted we met with a draftsman, James Hoth. We loved him but he will be remembered by us for over-promising and under-delivering. But we were mostly happy with him. He was really a cool guy and had really nice program that allowed us to virtually walk through our house and we loved that. We finalized our plans with him on December 10th, 2018. And that was after having them mostly done in August. So it was just a few changes. And we finally got our plans on January 18th. And I have no idea at this point if our plans are good or not. TBA. Haha.

Well:  We got the provisional well permit (start card) in the middle of February.   Zimmerman was scheduled to drill the well in mid-march but kept pushing us back and finally came on May 3rd to drill our well.  But once they were here, they got her done FAST.

Building Permit:  The good news is that Jed took care of the building permit so I know nothing about it.  I do know that we had to wait until after the well was drilled and the water was tested (the testing took about 2 and a half weeks)

So that is pretty much all I can remember at the moment.  It was painfully slow and tedious and I always tell people that even though I went through the process myself - that my idea of what happened is foggy at best.  It's all so complicated.  And lame and boring so I'm bored even writing about it.  But it's documented (kinda) so when we block it out completely - we can refer to this when someone asks. :)