When searching for vacant land, the costs of getting utilities must be considered before you can decide whether or not developing a particular parcel is feasible. There are two possibilites for water and sewage: Public or Private. If your parcel is in town, close to town or in a platted sub-division, you probably will have city water and sewer available, or there is a community water and sewer entity set-up to service you lot. There are three costs associated with these services:

1). The membership fee is the cost of buying into the service

2). The cost of actually installing the service

3). The cost of actually using the service.

Let’s take for example, a community water service that is available to people who live in the Sunnyside area of Sandpoint. The Sunnyside water system charges 5000.00 to be a member. For this, they install a water meter and pipe water to your lot; It is then your (or your contractor’s) responsibility to run pipe to the water meter. You then pay 75.00 a month fee for using the water and more if you go over a certain amount of water used. Most of the Sunnyside area is on private septics not sewer.

For the City of Sandpoint, you can plan on spending about 11,000 to hook up to  both sewer and water to your lot. Prices vary a little depending on the size water line they need to run to get enough water pressure to your site and from their line to your house.In addition, the city changes rates all the time, so check rate before you buy! Again, there is the sign up or membership fee, the cost of getting it from the street into your home, and then the monthly fee. Each of the community water systems vary in membership and monthly fees, so finding our IF there is a community water system available, what the membership fees will be, the costs to install and the ongoing charges are really important BEFORE you purchase the lot. If no community or city water is available, your next option is drilling a well and installing a septic field. There are not many rural parcels of property for sale that have wells already in place. It becomes SUPER important to find out what the wells in the area are like. You can do this through the Idaho Department of Water Resources site: http://www.idwr.idaho.gov/apps/appswell/searchWC.asp Thislink leads to a page on the site where you can type in the section, township and range of the parcel you have (or are thinking of purchasing) and it will give you reports on wells in the area. The section township and range of the parcel can usually be found in the legal description, or on a forest service map. If you are using a realtor, they should be able to give you all this information. Deciphering what wells are close to the subject property can be tricky and again, the advice of a GOOD realtor can be priceless in this area. While you can find well information on neighboring wells, it does not mean that you will automatically find water on your property at the same depth and the same gallons per minute, but it is a ‘tell’. If  the neighboring wells are all very deep with little water, it is a good sign that you too might have trouble. Anyway you look at it, drilling a well is risky business but the more information you can find about wells in the area, the less risk is involved. I always try to knock on neighbor’s doors and try to find out the most information I can from them. Neighbors are a wealth of information. The usually know who has problems with water or if there is an abundance in the area and I have yet to have a neighbor who is not willing to share that information with me.

As far as sewer goes, again if the land  is in a city or platted subdivision, you probably have community or city services available and the same costs apply as water: cost of membership, cost of installation and then cost of use. If a public   sewer is not available the second most important thing (next to a water source for your property) is knowing if you can have it approved for a septic and what kind of septic is required for your soils. This is done by having PANHANDLE HEALTH perform a perc test. A perc test costs 860.00 .  (http://www.phd1.idaho.gov/environmental/documents/SepticPERMITfees7-01-11.pdfline ) This link will lead you to the permit to do that. Don’t get confuse by theline item that charges 50.00 for the soils tests. You want to have full approval for the site; you then have one year to install it or you can pay and additional 100 before the first year expires and extend it for one more year. The 860.00 charge  pays for a Panhandle Health guy to come out and approve your site for a septic installation. You also will have to hire a backhoe to dig 8 foot holes in the ground for the Panhandle guy to look at and determine what type of soil you have. You can plan on paying about 200- 300 .00 for the backhoe to be hauled in, the holes dug, and hauled out. You want to make sure the backhoe operator is there at the same time as the Panhandle inspector in case the holes he digs fail and you have to dig additional holes to try and find ones that don’t. Panhandle wants to see an 8ft hole that is good, and another one not too far from it that is also good so they know the soil type is consistent. A ‘good’ hole means that water will ‘percolate’ down through the hole and not sit on top of the soil. If there is any ground water on the property, it could be a problem. Septic systems can’t be installed near ground water and you will need 100-300 feet distance to the septic. There are a lot of details that determine how far away from ground water you have to be including if a creek or pond is seasonal run off or who long the water is around. Hiring a backhoe operator that also specializes in septic installations will help guide you through the myriad of govermental regulations that exist in developing raw land. The take away for water and sewer is this: Before you purchase raw land, find out if there is a public or community water system available. If there is not, you will need to find out how deep neighboring wells are and how many gallons per minute they produce. In addition NEVER EVER EVER buy a piece of property without doing a perc test… even if you have to bear the expense. A standard septic system install starts at about 2,500.00 but if you need a special system the can run15,000 up. I have seen more than a few systems cost 25,000. The point is, you want to make sure you can get water and septic to your property at a reasonable cost. If you can’t then the property is really worthless. Another take away is to make sure you use a local real estate agent who is knowledgeable about local governmental regualtions when looking at raw land or you could wind up buying a piece of property that is not buildable  which could be a very very expensive lesson.  Stay tuned for our next blog on getting power to your site!!!…..Jeanie

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Kitchen and Bath Show…. Click Here to watch the video……

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This article was published in the May 2010 issue of Fine Home Building. The construction details are some of the best I have seen published. I like that the house is built in one of the coldest climates in the country – Minnesota. There are a lot of experiments going on with energy efficiency in  homes, but unless they are built in similar climates to Northern Idaho, the information is not appropriate for what we deal with in energy conservation. For one thing, solar is not effective here. We have 9 months of grey skies and even though you do get some energy produced in grey, when you factor in the cost of solar, for the amount of energy it provides,it is very hard to re-coup your initial investment before your system needs to be replaced or repaired.  I have had some success in using solar as a secondary, but the homes that use it as a primary source of heating just aren’t cost effective in our climate. If, of course, you are not hooked into the grid, sometimes solar is your only alternative and becomes cost effective if power is miles away.  That being said, this article is great. The few things the reader should note, is the windows on most of the elevations are small… this is a detail most homeowners are not willing to do. One of the reasons people move to Idaho is for the beauty all around them and I have not found clients willing to sacrifice those views from inside their homes. It is important to keep this in mind when designing your home. Keeping bedrooms and bathrooms, where windows can be smaller and more intimate, to the northern side is generally a good idea. Keeping public spaces (and maybe the master)with  big views to the South, and porches built according to the elevation of the summer and winter sun is also a good idea.

There are  two criticisms I have about the construction details: I would stagger my double wall system. Where the two studs meet in the article, the insulation in-between is very little. Staggering your studs would prevent not only thermal bridging, but give you more insulation than what they have in the article with no added expense. The other detail I did’nt like was that the rafter tails were tacked on to the building… not a great idea in terms of strength for that connection, especially given the amount of snow that we can get here. I would insulate the outside soffit instead so that you would have both strength and insulation in your envelope. In the end, it all comes down to cost. Maybe I am an eternal optimist, but I believe everyone would build the most energy efficient home that they could, but what prevents new homeowners from doing that. is the cost factor. I am extremely grateful many people are now choosing to limit the size of their home in exchange for more energy efficiency . Less is becoming much more. My hope is that we can find as many cost effective energy efficient  systems to put in our homes that clients actually look forward to their utility bills. To balance aesthetics and energy dependency is the greatest challenge and responsibility, in my opinion, of our generation of builders.

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There was a time that most custom home builders would answer that with, ” That depends…” and then spend time on educating their buyers on the process of comparing apples to apples when building a custom home. Now, custom home builders are forced to quote prices that are in line with ‘track’ builders who build the same house or variation thereof over and over again, in hopes of not scaring a perspective home buyer off. Anything but the bottom line square footage cost sounds like an excuse from the builder not to be competitive. No matter what is said, most of today’s perspective home buyers are looking for a bottom-line number.

If I could tell people who are trying to get a handle on the true cost of new construction in this economy one thing, it would be this: asking how much a custom home builder charges a square foot is like walking into a Toyota – Lexus dealership and asking the salesperson how much they charge a square foot for a car. Assuming he would play along, the salesperson would have to ask, ” Well, do you want a Toyota, or a Lexus?” His next move would be handing you a list of all the amenities you could choose. Once he knew all the specifics of the car you are looking for, he could take his cost, divide it by the square footage of the car, and come up with an answer. If he has not had this conversation with you, he might quote you a price for the stripped down Toyota on his lot, when you were thinking he was quoting a price for the Lexus with all the bells and whistles.

To truly know how much your custom home is going to cost, a builder needs specifics. If I just finished a custom home for a client, I can tell you exactly how much that house cost and assuming your lot had exactly the same development costs, materials prices were stable and fixed, and you wanted exactly the same house and the same finishes, you would receive a true cost of building that home. Unfortunately people building custom homes do it so they can get the home they want, not necessarily the home their neighbor built. Isn’t that the meaning of ‘Custom’? Rather than quote you a square footage cost that really has no meaning other than to get my foot- in the -door so to speak, (no pun intended), a reputable builder will sit down and spend time getting to know your wish list, find out what your site looks like, and spend hours pouring over a set of blueprints to truly give you an accurate square footage cost. Ask me how much the last house I built cost, I will tell you if you let me walk you through it and show you the apples to make sure that when you go shopping you are comparing it to similar apples. Ask me how much your house is going to cost, be ready for a two way education- You telling me about your dreams, and me sharing with you how much your particular dreams will cost in light of today’s economy. It can be the start of a beautiful thing! Trust me when I say, there has never been a cheaper time to build a quality home.

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