Pulling permits - looking for trouble?

[hazmat]

Unless you are a plumber, you can't get a plumbing license in the state of MA. They can give you (as the homeowner) the electrical permit at the town's discretion.

You may or may not need a building permit depending on the nature of the "carpentry".

I have a "walk up" third floor complete with dormers. When they built the house, they called it an "attic" - the floor joists are sized / spanned for 30 lb/sf live load although they should have been sized for 40 lb/sf as it has "reasonable expectation of future expansion".

I'm adding a play/media room - I had to get a structural engineer to sign off on the floor. Also have to rip out & upgrade the bearing wall between my living room & dining room as they didn't double up the studs there to support 2 floors above it. Lastly I have to add three columns in my basement complete with footings since the beam isn't sized right. This is all on a 10 year old house that clearly wasn't built to code. Turns out in MA that legally the builder is responsible for meeting code, not the inspector. I don't have any legal recourse since I bought the house (3rd owner) and there is also a 6 year "statute of limitations" (It's called something else) protecting the building industry.

I can't fault my building inspector as he is doing it by the book. What is frustrating is that the floor spans & bearing wall code is based on deflection (1/360) so that plaster doesn't crack which works out to a safety factor of ~8:1. Personally I'd be willing to risk a cracked ceiling...

So to anwser your question -they very well can make you fix existing problems. My inpsector wouldn't issue the permit until we had worked out a plan for upgrading the bearing wall, columns and got the floor signed off.

 

[hazmat]

Unless you are a plumber, you can't get a plumbing license in the state of MA. They can give you (as the homeowner) the electrical permit at the town's discretion.

You may or may not need a building permit depending on the nature of the "carpentry".

I have a "walk up" third floor complete with dormers. When they built the house, they called it an "attic" - the floor joists are sized / spanned for 30 lb/sf live load although they should have been sized for 40 lb/sf as it has "reasonable expectation of future expansion".

I'm adding a play/media room - I had to get a structural engineer to sign off on the floor. Also have to rip out & upgrade the bearing wall between my living room & dining room as they didn't double up the studs there to support 2 floors above it. Lastly I have to add three columns in my basement complete with footings since the beam isn't sized right. This is all on a 10 year old house that clearly wasn't built to code. Turns out in MA that legally the builder is responsible for meeting code, not the inspector. I don't have any legal recourse since I bought the house (3rd owner) and there is also a 6 year "statute of limitations" (It's called something else) protecting the building industry.

I can't fault my building inspector as he is doing it by the book. What is frustrating is that the floor spans & bearing wall code is based on deflection (1/360) so that plaster doesn't crack which works out to a safety factor of ~8:1. Personally I'd be willing to risk a cracked ceiling...

So to anwser your question -they very well can make you fix existing problems. My inpsector wouldn't issue the permit until we had worked out a plan for upgrading the bearing wall, columns and got the floor signed off.