Building Permit for New Barn

Sep 29, 2024
Structual & Architectural Drawings

Here is a detailed post on the whole 5-month journey to get our building permit to build a new barn at Kindred Farm. It was a lot and a huge learning curve for me.  And just for fun, a lot of curve balls were thrown in.

Enjoy reading it here and find out what the next step will be

George Gadon of Rising Structures has been hired to build the barn. But before we can actually start building there are a couple of steps and they seem to be taking a LONG time.

First rendering of the new barn

First, I needed to get a survey of the farm.  This took 2 days in June for the survey and two weeks to receive the plan. Cost was $2,625.  

Second step was to get structural drawings. I hired Neale Engineering in July and received the drawings at the end of July.  The cost was $4,155.

I had everything I needed and went the Township of Langley (TOL) to submit the application.  But was told I was missing a “Building Permit Referral Form” stamped by a Waste Water Management Professional. 

So it was back to the drawing board. I had to get the septic field scoped and located to get the stamp. I knew this one would be a tough one because we already had a Waste Water Management Professional fail to scope the field when we inspected the property last year before purchasing this property. This is just one of the huge issues on this farm because they were not done to code by the ex-owner and he kept no records 🙁  

Not too sure if you want all the details, but the main problem was that the inspection box for the septic field was covered in cement!   

Graham at Customline Excavating went above and beyond and I was able to get the approval stamp. Cost $1,339.
The approval stamp came in while I was away on holiday, so Chandra Vitomir from our FUN-raising team took the drawings and supporting documents to TOL City Hall for me. 

Final Survey Plan

While I was away, I received an email from the TOL that the Building Permit Application was still not complete!  We needed the distance from the location of the new barn to the nearest water course and architectural drawings.

I didn’t want to delay our new barn project any longer so I had to deal with this while on holiday. Neale Engineering drew up the architectural drawings and I had to ask the Geolink Land Surveying to get me a new survey plan with the water course measurement. Cost for the updated survey was $368. I finally received the Approved Building Permit on September 20.  Cost for the building permit was $1,119. 

All in all this took 5 months to complete and at a total cost of $9,606.  Our builder told me that he could do this preliminary work but it would save us money if I did it.  It did save us money, but I think it also saved George the stress of getting this done 🙂

This is the behind the scenes stuff that is not very exciting but is now behind us.  

The next step is to set up a new indoor/outdoor space at Kindred Farm for the 24 Rabbitat bunnies in the Grape Barn so that the Grape Barn can be demolished….. stay tuned