How to Apply For A Building Permit In Burbank

In this podcast I discuss how to apply for a building permit in burbank California.
I explain how to start the process to obtain your building permit, do not start your demolition until you have your permit in your hands or you may risk being fined.

Website link to Burbank Building & Safety Division
https://www.burbankca.gov/web/community-development/building-permits

Location:
Community Services Building
First Floor
150 N. Third Street
Burbank, CA 91502

Building Permits/Plan Check
(818) 238-5220

building@burbankca.gov

My how to demolition a bedroom video is now available on my youtube channel https://youtu.be/3_RVrk2SZuU

Transcript

John Laforme: 0:00

Buying a home. Don't panic. Just listen to the rest of this podcast Welcome to my podcast everybody. My name is John laforme. I'm a certified home inspector and the owner of home inspection. My podcast allows me to share my day to day home inspection experiences and knowledge to help homebuyers, homeowners, realtors and other home inspectors set realistic expectations with each other during the home buying process. Okay, everybody, how's it going out there? Today I want to talk about my experience dealing with the city of Burbank permit department to get the permit I needed for my bedroom, two bathroom, to laundry room to bigger closet upgrade. So I just wanted to go through the process with everybody and just, you know, kind of give you a direction to go in because I hadn't done this in years. And I was just like, the thought of dealing with the city to get a permit from my house was just like, overwhelming to me, I just I do not want to do this. So but I had to really gear myself up to get it going and, you know, get myself hyped up here. It's, it took a while. I mean, I literally spent months staring at that empty room going, what the hell can I do with this? What can I do to make this more functional. I had to add a second bathroom to my house, you know, the three of us live in here. So that was the main goal here was to get a second bathroom. And at the same time, I wanted to get my laundry room. Inside the house, it was originally in the garage. I didn't like that. So, so bathroom was priority. Second to that was the laundry area inside the house. And then I really want to add a bigger closet to my office, which technically is a bedroom. So later on, if I wanted to use it as a bedroom, I'd have a nice big eight foot closet in here. So the biggest question you all probably have is, where do I start the permit process? Well, my best advice for you is this because I just went through this, start by designing and planning your project before you contact the permit department, because there's nothing they can do for you unless you have plans ready for them to review. So take your time designing your project, or you may regret rushing the process. If you do rush it. If you submit plans and then decide to change them in the middle of construction, you are required to resubmit changes for approval, which will delay your project and put construction on hold until approved by the permit office. This might even increase your permit costs if you make changes along the way. So I would definitely think it through. As I mentioned, it took me at least two months to really wrap my head around the design of this area that I didn't and I was only using a already existing space, it was 120 square foot bedroom with two windows in it and one door in a closet. And that was it. So I just made do with the space I had I didn't move any bearing walls load bearing walls, I just I just worked within that space. And that was my goal to minimize construction, minimize cost. And the permit office will require your existing floor plan as it sits now. And then your proposed floor plan drawing. So understand that, you know, submitting to them, you have to know what to submit. So existing floor plan drawing is what your house currently looks like before you do any demolition or any kind of work to your proposed floor plan is going to be what you want to make out of it. So you know, your contractors will also need to see this also to get you a ballpark cost. So there's a couple of reasons why this is the first step. So if you if you're not able to draw this out yourself, now you can always hire someone to do that for you. I drew mine myself because I have experience with this in the past so it wasn't my idea of a good time. Honestly, I'm not an architect, but it just it just allowed me to make mistakes in the first couple of drawings and and then correct them as I went. I'm like, oh, you know what, I can't do that because this is here. So let me go remeasure and the good thing about it was I mean my office is right next door to this room, so I go in there and measure, come back to my office and keep drawing and then, you know, put my measurements in and then realize, you know what, that's not going to work because I don't have enough clearance for the door or clearance for the vanity or the toilet. So I had to really go back and forth quite a few times. And that's what took me so long, getting the design exactly how I wanted it. But overall, I think that was a good thing I think that was meant to be. So I approached my project as owner builder. And what that means is, I'm basically playing the general contractor role. So if I'm gonna do as much work as myself as I can, and then if I have to bring in a specialist, like a plumber, or electrician, or a heating and cooling or whatever I got to bring into the to get this job finished, I would, then I would then just hire them myself. And I would be responsible with the city to make sure everything passes inspection. If you're not going to be an owner builder, and you're going to hire a contractor to do all this for you, he may actually pull a permit for you. So that's probably an option for you as well. So you can have the contractor pull the permit, and then they can deal with all the submitting of the electrical details, plumbing details, and so forth. So there's a couple of different ways of doing this. The way I chose, like I said, was owner builder, because I have experience with this, if you don't have any experience with this, I suggest you get a contractor to do this job for you. So as far as designing the plan yourself, that's something you can still do on your own, even if you're going to have a contract to do the work, you can still design it if you want. So what I did was I went to Staples and picked up a pad of the drafting paper and the one with the little squares on it. And I just use that. And that's all I did. And I submitted it. And you know, I was a little concerned that they were going to reject my plans only because I'm not an architect. So I just did my best I submitted it. And, you know, they just came back with some corrections that had some questions for me. And I was like, Okay, that was easy to answer. So I just kind of let them know what I was doing. And the goal is to design it in a way where they are, you know, they're gonna be able to understand very easily by looking at your drawings. Okay, well, this is what it looks like now. And this is what he wants to do. So it's long as you don't make it look horrible. I guess you'll be okay. Because you can count on, no matter what you submit how perfect it is, they're probably going to come back with questions anyway. So don't even stress about that. Just allow allow the process to happen. And I think you'll be pretty impressed with how easy it is overall, it just takes time. It's they don't rush this, they're not going to give you an answer in two days. It took me approximately seven weeks to get my final approval to go pick up my permit. So if you're going to do this as an owner builder, and manage all the contractors, you want to get all their quotes ahead of time before you submit for your application, because the permit office is going to ask you what your construction valuation is. This means what is your project going to cost you. Okay, so now when you have everything figured out, you have your your existing drawing, you have your proposed drawing, you have your construction valuation project cost, when you have all that ready, and now you have to fill out the permit application. I will have a link for that below in the description of the podcast here. Also include the following information in your email when you submit everything, your name, your first name, last name, let them know who you are, if you're going to be the person that's going to be doing all the correspondence, uploading plans, and all that stuff. They want to know who you are in relation to the project. If you're the owner, let them know, if you just have or if you're just a person that's going to be handling this, let them know, send them your make sure they have your email in your phone number and of course don't forget the project address that's important. And also how many square feet your project might be. And let them know if you know type of construction. Is it a remodel is just an upgrade? Are you the owner builder or do you have a contractor? Try to give them as much information as you can in that initial email. So once you email everything to the permit office to get your permit process started, you'll then be contacted with a link to the project docs portal. What that means is you're now in their system. They've acknowledged your request for a permit MIT, and now the ball is rolling. So, but you got to be patient with this, it takes a while to get through this process because it is a process. So the portal is very easy to use, I had a few learning curves with it. But if you're really savvy to portals, and you know, using computers and all that stuff, you should be okay with it. And, by the way, the staff over there, very friendly, very, very helpful. They don't want to stop you from improving your house, they want to help you do it, but they want to help you do it the right way. So don't don't think they're not trying to help you. They're definitely trying to help you over there. So keep that in mind when you call them be nice, don't be rude. And just, you know, ask nicely. Okay, so let's talk about different types of permits, they have two tiers, they have a tier one and tier two, depending on what you plan on doing, put you in one of those categories. A tier one building permit application, you know, like, for example, reroofing Kitchen and Bath remodels, without, you know, demolition, like removing walls and stuff like that are adding walls, you know, drywall replacement, replacement of siding materials, electrical service upgrades, HVAC unit replacement, those are all pretty much tier ones. When you get into tier two, that requires plan check. And that means that like, if you're planning on adding an addition to your house, or an adu in the backyard, that's a tier two, because you know, you got to plan check has got to get involved. And they got to make sure that you have proper clearances from the neighbor's property line and your property line. And so it's a much deeper process. So I actually had to do a tear to building permit because I was actually adding walls and modifying walls. So that's what I had to go through a tear to. So if you go to the city of Burbank website, which is Burbank ca.gov, and that's going to show you where to get building codes, building inspections, building permits, they have a very good website, by the way, this is actually a very good website. So go through that and familiarize yourself with what's going on. And then they kind of explained you the process of what to do, which is kind of like what I'm doing right now for you. So just read through this. It's pretty good. It's a very helpful website, like I said, and I think it'll answer most of your questions. If not, you can always go down there and just talk to someone in person. They're located downtown Burbank, and like I said, very friendly group of people there and they're, they're always willing to help out. Oh, you can call them as well, their phone number is going to be on the website as well, you can give them a call sir, during certain hours. Okay, so now during the process, I found out that there's some stipulations that you have to follow in order to get your permit processed. And one of those stipulations was I had to contact the Department of Water and Power. And they basically had to let me know if I had a big enough meter water meter on my property. Because whenever you coming to upgrading, adding faucets and fixtures, they have to make sure that there's enough water coming in from the street to set to satisfy all those those needs. So what I had to do was I had to I had to go from a five eighths three quarter meter to a three quarter by three quarter meter. And I also have to install a shutoff valve after the meter in between the meter in my house at the sidewalk area. So the city will not the city sorry, Burbank Department of Water and Power will charge you a fee to change out your meter that's something they do only they can do that. So that will cost me $463 For them to come out and change my meter and that included the meter enhanced installation. So then I then have to contact a plumber or I can do it myself to install the shutoff valve after the meeting because this Department of Water Power will not do that. I asked him if they would do that while they were there. They said nope. We don't touch anything after the meet at the very strict on that. And don't be turning off your water meter by yourself. They find out you're doing that they're gonna probably find you for that. So don't do that. And so I talked to a plumber and he's probably going to charge me you know, probably 250 300 bucks to come out and install a shutoff valve right there at the meter, even though I have a shutoff valve at the exterior of my house, they'd still want another one right after the meter. So that was an unexpected cost that I wasn't planning on. But it could have been worse, what I found out, because the amount of fixtures I'm adding in the amount of fixtures I already have, which creates the total of fixtures. Got me in, I was just under the guideline for a three quarter inch meter. If I would have had to go to a one inch meter, it would have cost me about $8,000 to change out that meter. I was like, what? Like I was like, yeah, it's a huge jump. So I, I even I told him on the phone, I said, Look, I have plans for this property. Not only am I doing this bathroom and laundry area right now, but I have plans to put a adu in the back of over time. And he goes, Okay, well, let's count that in. So how many fixtures you think you'll have in there. So all that together, my, my future plans, my current plans and my existing home all combined, I just made it underneath. To stay within the three quarter inch meter, I almost had to go into the one inch meter, which would have cost me $8,000 For them to install it. Crazy. So depending on what your project is, there may be some, you know, expenses that the building department is going to throw at you along the way. And unless you're used to doing this, you're just not going to anticipate that. So after submitting my plans, dealing with the department waterpower getting my meter installed, I went and did that right away, I just brought him a check and did that right away. So after that all being done, and then I'm still waiting on my approval for my plans, and my permit to get issued, because I had to get all this stuff done first. So I'm just waiting on all that. And like I said, I waited about seven took me about seven weeks. I think I made a mistake along the way. I think I could have got it done in like six weeks. And they told me four to six weeks when I applied. So I think it was my fault that I went an extra week. But the learning curve, you know, I haven't done this a long time. So all said and done. During the process, I was contacted by the person handling my permit, and they had questions about my drawings. And we set up a phone call. And he just kind of walked through it what he needed. And then at the same time, he also emailed me with some red lines on the plan. So he actually drew out in red areas what I needed to, you know, address like, Hey, John, you forgot to mention how thick this wall is? Is it a two by four wall? Or is it a two by six wall? Just stuff like that? I was like, oh, okay, yeah, let me do that. So he sent me a version of his his notes. And then I just kind of went off of that and made those corrections. And he gave me a little punch list I went through and my punch list wound up being move about, let's see 5678 like nine different things. But there were just mine, like I didn't I didn't mark with exhaust fan was gonna go in the bathroom. I didn't label the receptacles as GFCI protected. I had to I didn't provide the interior dimension of the bathroom after I made my changes on the proposed plan. And so yeah, it was just easy stuff. But it just had to be addressed. So that's what, that's what the communication is all about. When they need something, they'll just ask you for it and then you just supply it and bam, you're on to the next step. Oh, I also had to provide a window schedule. They wanted to know exactly what kind of window I was putting in. So I sent them over the window specifications from the manufacturer, they want to make sure it was energy efficient, double pane glass. In my case, I needed safety glass because I have a closet door that's going to open towards the window. So in case it could hit but the handle wouldn't shatter. So a lot of little things like that, that you're just not going to anticipate these things. There's just part of the process and it'll just happen. So anticipate, anticipate anticipating so all I can say is one last thing I want to mention Before I got my permit, and had a few conversations with the people over there at the building department, they specified to me Do not start demolition, without your permit. So if you get anxious, and you anticipate you're getting your permit tomorrow, and you start doing construction today, and they happen to want to come in and do a visit, you could get yourself into some trouble, which means you might get fined. So they were very adamant about that, don't start your demolition, until you have your permit, you can do some exploratory demolition, like make a hole in the wall just to see how deep the wall is. Maybe if that was if that was the deciding factor on how big you can make your room like something like that something small like that they're okay with, but don't be demoing the room until he ready. So I went and picked up my permit. And I honestly was blown away with the cost of my permit. So let me explain this. So because plan check had to be involved, to see, to get involved, you know, with the part of plan check is water and power, and so forth. And these other small details that they have to go through to get you what you need, like your your electrical, they have to see if any major electrical things need to be done to make your project happen. They need to make sure there's no major plumbing things that need to be done to make your project happen. I already covered my plumbing issue, and that was that I had to upgrade my meter. That's all I had to do. Electrical wise, I didn't have to do anything different. I was only adding a bathroom circuit and a light circuit in a outlet circuit. That's all I was adding. And I did have room on my panel for that. So that was good. So that fee alone was 1045 33. For plant check, if you don't have to use plant check, then you probably avoid that cost altogether. But the permit fee was $1,579.93. I was not expecting the plant check fee. I was only expecting to pay for the permit because they did mention probably be about 1500 for your permit. I was like Okay, so some time went by. So I was I was ready for that. I was I was anticipating that when I showed up like okay, the total was 2625. I'm like what I'm like, let me see that. Let me see that damn invoice. So I started reading through it was like, Okay, well, I waited this long and wasn't about to say no. Because I gotta get this bathroom installed. So that's what I paid. Plus the 463 for the water meter install. So right now I'm looking at like,$3,000 before I even get started. So luckily, I drew my own plans that didn't cost me anything. And yeah, that that was a total right there. So about $3,000 for me to get this off the ground. And that's it. So it took me about seven weeks cost me about $3,000. The process was, like I said, very, very easy. I think overall, it was easy. It just takes time, so you gotta be patient. Okay, so one more thing I want to mention. As part of my project, I did videotape my demolition of the room. And I've just released that video on YouTube. I'll put the link in the description of this podcast so you can check it out what I did so far. Okay, so that's it for this episode. I just wanted to share my experience with the permit department in Burbank, I don't know if it's going to be the same for you if you're outside of Burbank, with the City of Los Angeles, LA, I'm sorry, Washington county or the city of LA. I don't know, I've never had to deal with those guys before. So I have no idea what to expect with that. But I'm sure it's going to be somewhat similar process to get a permit. So, like I said, they're not trying to stop you from doing what you want to do to your house. They're just trying to make sure it's done correctly. So keep that in mind when you call them be nice. Don't be rude or beyond anybody. Be patient and I'm sure they'll help you out. So thanks for listening and I'll catch on the next one.