Survey completed. Took a while, but we had some unfortunate difficulty with a simple thing like a cashier's check from the bank that the surveyor's bank wouldn't accept due to the payee's line on the check including my name. I never saw it, but why the heck the teller had my name on that line, I don't know. Of course the nearest branch for the bank was almost 4 hours away round trip and there's no way we were going to spend the time and expense for that, so we had to re-scrape together the funds for another check while sitting on the now useless check. Argh. And the bank wouldn't cancel it over the phone. A little early in the game to be running into difficulties, one would think!
At any rate, the surveyor only mapped about 30% of the land in the area of the proposed build site. It makes sense not to do the whole thing as that would incur additional and unnecessary expense. Pretty basic layout, a virtually straight driveway directly to the site; the house is first, then the leach field, then the creek, all the appropriate setbacks included. Progress is progress!
Also, the architect did some checking with the building department regarding our intent of building a small accessory apartment first and then building the house later. Seems like it was an acceptable idea to the building department, and they suggested that we pull and yearly renew a building permit for the "big house", that way if the regs change in such a way that it would no longer be able to build the second house we'd have the approved permit in-hand and would still be able to build. Never would've thought of that on our own; just goes to show you that if you're going to build, let the building department know of your plans and ask lots of questions! Could save some grief later.
