Can A Building Permit Protect Me?

 

Buyer Beware

City building inspectors rarely if ever look at the work a retrofit done by your contractor.  They must do 10-15 inspections a day and take 1/2 hour for lunch and simply do not have time and except in San Leandro they do not carry the appropriate safety equipment.  In addition, unappealing crawl spaces the the one shown below are the rule rather than the exception. 

Here are a few examples from September 1st and October  15th 2024.  This is the rule rather than the exception. 

Pleasanton: Homeowner was told by inspector that “We are not allowed to crawl underneath the house. I will just look at pictures”

Palo Alto: City inspector looked at 1 photograph. Total time on-site less than 5 min including the necessary paperwork for the City.
 
Berkeley: Did a virtual inspection. Inspector was never on-site
 
Napa: Inspector arrived and asked “What are we looking at”. I replied with  “All underfloor. Grab your knee pads”. He replied “I’m not crawling underneath the house” then he requested that I show him pictures. Total time on site less than 5 min including the necessary paperwork for the City.  
 
At this point we always expect to show them a few pictures and because they don’t actually look at the house they don’t even know if the pictures are of your house or someone else’s. 
 
If you really want them to crawl under the house get the building official’s name and phone number (that is their boss)  along with your City Councilperson’s name and phone number and threaten to call them if they don’t spend the half hour or so it takes to inspect a retrofit.  That is the only advice I can give that might get you the service you paid for. 
 
 

THIS IS WHY INSPECTORS DO NOT WANT TO CRAWL UNDER HOUSES

There is neither special licensing for retrofit contractors nor a retrofit building code to follow.  From the building department’s point of view if you want to put in shiny hardware that may or may not help the house resist earthquakes it is not their place to stop you.  It is your house and you can do whatever you want to.

Building departments do not even allow mentioning the words “Seismic Retrofit” on permit applications.  At the most one can say, “voluntary seismic upgrade”, or “put in shiny hardware” and some cities, such as San Francisco, won’t even allow the that.  They don’t want you to provide plans. From their point of view, why give them plans to look at when there is no code to evaluate the plans with?  It is a waste of their time. What they do not tell you, is that the retrofit and the retrofit  might be a waste of your money.  Further, it takes at least 45 minutes to fully evaluate a retrofit. Building inspectors simply do not have that much time to waste on a project they will pass no matter what it looks like.  Engineers do not have adequate training.

When You Sell Your Home

The only time the permit issue comes up is upon time of sale.  You must disclose all work that was done without a permit.  Many buyers hire a private home inspector to examine the house. These inspectors know that the permit means at me nothing but do want to let the buyer know if the work was properly done.

Therefore, it is important to have all the documentation you can get to show the home inspector in the form of photographs and a set of plans that shows exactly what was done and where. Your contractor should provide you with this when the job is complete.  Bay Area Retrofit gives you a choice between either a permit or the photographic/plans documentation just mentioned.