Incoherent Rant Included At No Extra Charge
Posted by Robb Allen | Filed under Do It Yourself, Nanny Business
I shouldn’t blog angry, but if I took the time to calm down before I wrote anything, you’d get biannual posts and like it.
So, this morning I’m talking with a friend at work. Said friend (we’ll call him “Sally”) is a flaming Democrat. Sally tends to be fairly even headed and not a complete socialist twat, but he still has that core belief that for every problem, the is an equal and opposite government program to fix it.
To Sally, the government is a benign entity that only can be corrupted by Republicans. If only Democrats were in charge, nothing bad would ever happen, hence, it is totally permissible to submit every last facet of your life to Uncle Sam’s caring and compassionate scrutiny.
Yet he thinks that the government shouldn’t butt into your home life. Go figure.
This morning’s conversation with Sally entailed my consideration of the addition of a swimming pool to my house. Imagine my fury when I found out that, as a free citizen of the United States of American and resident of the State of Florida, I must ask and gain permission to modify my property as I see fit!
Permits. To build a fucking swimming pool. I was incensed at having to have an inspector come out for my patio addition, and this has finally pissed me off to no end.
Here’s how I see it. If I modify my house, and something happens because I did not ‘meet code’, the fault is mine and mine alone with the payment for the damage coming out of my pocket. If I purchase a house, it is between me and the seller to agree on what constitutes the purchase and what I expect the terms to include and, being that I don’t trust him or her to indicate where there might be problems, I hire a third party who’s very existence relies on providing accurate assessment of the house’s structural integrity.
If I wish to rent a backhoe, dig a 16.3′ hole, cement the walls, fill it full of water and install some pavers, it’s none of the government’s damned business. And if you purchase the home from me, it is up to you to ensure you know what you are buying. You have to do the work to ask me who built the pool and verify that it meets the standards of what you’re willing to accept. You. Not some overworked government lackey who, if they fail to perform their job correctly, feels no punishment and therefore no incentive to do a better job.
Sally, on the other hand, feels it’s not his place to make those decisions. In Sally’s world, the government should make the process easy and risk free. Now, Sally is from another state where he says that the inspectors are quality people who, apparently out of the kindness of their heart, will not allow construction to continue if there are failings in the workmanship. That’s all well and good, but I’ve watched these inspectors ‘inspect’ my house. It took the gentleman less time to ‘inspect’ the new addition than it did for him to park in my driveway. In fact, he leaned over the fence, saw some construction, then left. The only thing he signed off on was the back of the check for the permit.
But to Sally, the requirement to ask permission from my masters is a small price to pay to “protect the children.” Sally wants liberty for cheap, wants it easy, and risk free. When I challenged him on the effectiveness of these inspections (after I got him to admit the government suffered no consequences for a poor job) his response was “we have to do something!”.
No, Sally, we don’t have to do anything. The human race has managed to stay afloat for millions of years without government licensing of pools. In fact, lakes have been around since well before man decided to invent Marcite and yes, people drowned, but it wasn’t because of shoddy construction or failures to maintain the proper alkalinity.
What permitting entails is two fold. It is a source of unearned income for the state and a tool that can be wielded against businesses in a political manner. Don’t want to donate to my campaign? You want to argue about my latest bills in the works? It’d be a real shame if we increased the permit costs for your line of business. People might not want to build if they go up. You’d meet hard times if that were to happen.
This isn’t about safety. If it were, pools would not be permitted at all with the high rate of drownings (Think Of The Children™). This is about another way to control the populace. It’s just one in a long line of small violations against our freedoms that “feel” like they do something, but accomplish nothing except to erode our self-reliance.
The Founding Fathers would roll in their grave if they knew this is what we’ve become. Of course, that would assume they’ve applied and received their “Post Mortem Rotational Motion Permit” good for 5 years.
Tags: hype-no-tized, licensing, permits, socialism kills, Swimming pools, Uncle Sam hold my hand
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June 2nd, 2008
I can’t go into exactly why (not on an open forum, anyway), but I truly do feel your pain. In ways and for reasons you don’t yet understand.
I LOATHE such worthless fees and mandatory inspections. With the energy of a thousand GRBs…
June 2nd, 2008
After I had dug the trenches and laid the PVC pipe I was informed that I had to have a permit to put a sprinkler system, er, ah, make that an IRRIGATION system in my puny yard. I have the distinction of being the first in Osceola county to have done so after the new permit requirement was instituted. I had in fact previously called the permitting folks and had been told no permit was required. I guess the person I spoke with had a desk under a mushroom.
And totally screwed up it was.
I’m paying for the meter; I want it on my side of the sidewalk, my property. No. The water meter has to go on county side of the sidewalk. OK, Kissimmee (city) came out and put it there at a cost of $250 to me, prepaid.
THEN the county permitting people tell me I can’t run pipe under the sidewalk. Excuse me, but how the hell do I get the water from the meter to my property? And how do you think my household water gets there?
It took a week of conversations from the bottom to the top of the county permitting and engineering department food chains.
End result was permit approved and an apology and admission by top dog that when he signed off on the new procedures he really should have read closer and noted that issue as well as two others I brought up during the process.
All that to water my damned grass.
And now a permit is required to just to put a fence up, too.
June 5th, 2008
I agree that towns use permits to generate revenue (a permit for a fence, why exactly?), but I do think there are some things permits are good for, like in ground pools.
Why should there be a permit? Two reasons. One is safety, ideally the person inspecting the work knows enough about it to judge the quality and to know if you’ve used the correct mix of materials to the proper dimensions. If Joe-Blow put in a swimming pool without a permit, he may have cast the walls such that the wall thickness is a constant 6″ from 12′ deep bottom to top, when the codes state that the walls at a 12′ depth must be 12″ thick to safely contain the pressure. Those walls are underground, and there is no way to know if they are done right without digging up the pool.
Right now I live in a house that is 80 years old. Sometime in the past, a previous owner who fancied themselves an electrician, decided to upgrade from the old Tommy Edison wires to modern Nomex, and upgrade to a 200 amp service from the old 60 amp service. So he rewired the house and put in a new breaker box and 200 amp main.
Of course, he failed to upgrade the wires coming from the pole to ones that could safely pull 200 amps, and his idea of running circuits leaves me so confused I now get to drop $800 on an electrician so I can get my spare bedroom and bath wired correctly.
And this brings me to the second reason for permits, insurance. If I buy a house and do the work to redo some electrical, or I install a pool, and the work is not inspected and not to code, if said work fails and causes damage to my house, family, guests, or neighbors, my insurance company is gonna give me a big fat piss off and not cover anything.
So yes, some of the rules and permits communities require are Teh Stoopid!, but some have merit and value, so don’t be so quick to damn them all.
June 5th, 2008
*sigh*
I don’t think Government should manage education. That doesn’t mean I don’t think there should be education.
Just because I don’t feel the government is the best entity to ensure proper construction doesn’t mean I think there shouldn’t be any at all. Either way, you put your faith into some third party you hope knows what the heck they’re doing.
June 5th, 2008
No one can know everything, we all have to rely on the expertise of a third party at some time or another, and not every government inspector is a clueless hack, many are former constractors who can determine a lot from a very casual inspection.
Also, Kim has a response for you as well.