The path toward progress

Our road and site clearing is coming along:

The First of the Headaches

Well, as we knew and have already experienced, building a home is complex and curveballs seem to be more common then fastballs. We're just in the early stages of building (yay! our road is underway as is clearing) but two items have come up (one more of a headache and delay with some cost and the other a big cost issue).

We're running electric to the site as we're digging the road so as to put the cables underground. It costs a bit more but there's no chance of a tree taking them down. We have to run off the neighbors pole that he put in last year during his house build. He's supportive of the plan but there are still a few wrinkles to work out with him. Our electrical sub submitted the plan to the utility (or their agents) and they poo-pooed it. Why? They want another pole for some goddam reason. Well, I kind of know the reason its because they would have to reconfigure the existing pole due to some transformer issue bla bla bla. That's because once a pole serves more then one customer the utility has to buy it from the owner and maintain it (it is a private pole currently owned by the neighbor). If they get us to put in another pole they can shift the burden to me to do the transformer thing.

This is not only a problem because it would cost more money but there is only one real place the pole can go: on said neighbors land right in the middle of their view. An obvious no-go and I haven't even bothered to ask. My electrician is appealing to the utility and seemed confident he could convince them to go with the original plan but we're still waiting to hear. Its getting tight as the electric is supposed to go in the middle of next week.

The bigger, costlier item came up today. Our energy efficient Canadian triple pane window company that gave us a great quote for all our windows and doors this past summer has significantly increased their price on our bid. This is by $20k or nearly 40% of original cost. Previously, they not only beat all the other window companies but also offered increased energy efficiency with their technology. So they get the bid and now suddenly it goes up because "they missed windows on the original bid" and "shipping surcharge" and "raised prices" and other BS. Hey, I recognize the US/CAN $ rates have changed and prices can go up but you can't just "miss" windows and put that back on us. Our architect is trying to resolve this but they better throw in something for this screw-up.

Oy!