Tag: permits

City Troubles

February 5, 2025 / / 0 Comments

In my last post, about the Garage build, I mentioned we got a stop work order from the Building Department claiming our permit was invalid, which they later agreed was incorrect and allowed us to proceed. Unfortunately, that isn’t the end of the story. At the conclusion of that email with the building inspection supervisor, he indicated he would try to ‘pull back’ the case and if he couldn’t it would be dismissed.

We then received several copies of a summons from the city to attend a hearing on the violation. There was an option to avoid the hearing by providing the necessary evidence of remediation to the inspector beforehand, so I contacted him asking what I needed to do.

After some back and forth, he called me on the phone, and after I explained that we weren’t developers, flippers, and we lived in the property, he agreed that this could be dismissed. Apparently the city has changed how they manage permits and they have enacted a process for cancelling them after a period of inactivity which ours fell into. Since we’d gotten the permit to build the garage as part of the permit to remodel the house, but decided it was too expensive to do both at the same time, we delayed the garage build until this past summer. We checked at that time and the permit was active on the portal, but after we received the notice of violation, the permit disappeared from the portal.

We still had the physical copy with signed inspections on the back, but it was still disconcerting to feel like the evidence we had a permit was being deleted. In any case, the supervisor asked me to send all the details to him in an email which he would then forward on to the people that do the hearings and ask them to dismiss, which I promptly did.

With the deadline nearing and no word back, I emailed again and got an out of office from the supervisor. I followed up via email again but realized that while he had called me, I didn’t have his phone number and I couldn’t find it on the city website. Finally, the day of the deadline, he called back and after I reminded him who I was and what I was trying to do, he found the email with the details and sent it on to the hearing department requesting they dismiss the case, which they did.

This whole ordeal was stressful, but ultimately it worked out without serious problems. The garage was finished and we didn’t get fined. The fact it all stemmed from an E311 complaint by an “unknown” neighbor did sour some relationships, though.

Sewer Repair

February 10, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Work begins

Work begins

Finally, something got done. Apparently, CDoT (Chicago Department of Transportation) had a moratorium on permits for street work over the New Year, so that was the primary cause of delay (this time). The plumbers also said their sub-contractor’s plumbing license with the City had expired and they were trying to resolve that, but they eventually wound up hiring a different company. Either way, the sewer repair work in the street has been completed as of about an hour ago. Presumably that means now the city will come out and re-inspect the sewer line to confirm that everything looks good so it can be re-lined.

Nearing completion

Nearing completion

The biggest frustration is that from a permit perspective, this work probably could have been done back in December. I’m still not entirely sure why it wasn’t. Instead the street work permit expired and getting a new one took over a month. In the mean time I need to clean up the weeping trench, since it’s a bit of a mess where the new water service comes in.

Basement Plumbing Update

December 1, 2015 / / 1 Comment

One of the biggest frustrations with our project for the last several months has been the basement plumbing. First, it took us forever to get quotes from more than one plumber. Then we selected a plumber (not coincidentally one that gave us quotes fairly quickly) and gave them the initial deposit. The original estimate for work was about six weeks, which was over two months ago. Most of the work hasn’t been done yet and the source of delays has largely been the City of Chicago. We pulled our original permits three years ago with a different plumber. Because the permits were already pulled, the existing permit had to be reactivated and the plumber changed. Once that was done, they were able to put in the underground plumbing for the basement bathroom, the floor drain, and the utility sink, including the ejector pit. That was when they told me they were waiting on me to finish the weeping system, which I did.

Sewer work

New basement plumbing

At the same time, they scoped the sewer with a camera and submitted the recording to the City, who came back with a concern about the “tap”, or the connection between our sewer and the sewer main under the street. The plumbers ran another scope, after which the water department decided they wanted the tap repaired. Around this time they said that our other permit for the new water service was approved, but then they turned around and said that the whole project had a “red flag” on it because the original permits weren’t pulled properly. We didn’t get an explanation of what was wrong or how that happened, but the result was that no work could be done at all.

The plumbers reported that they were able to negotiate with the city and get the red flag lifted, and the last update is that we should finally have our permits today. Then the plumbers can finally schedule the tap repair, the new water service, and the sewer re-lining. At this point I’ve gotten a bit skeptical, but this is the most positive sign so far that something is actually going to happen before the ground freezes. The plumbing is the only thing we’re waiting on to pour the new basement floor.