What the hell was I thinking! A tale of land development and our 1st rodeo in such.

[Homer Dokes]

And so it begins....

Greetings all.

Discussions in the dozer thread have conjured up an interest among patrons of HEF in some long term reading material. I am embarking on my 1st rodeo of a 65 home subdivision. This will be a 'living' thread in that my intention is to keep it up to date for the duration of the project. The civil infrastructure is expected to take 2 to 3 years and will be done in 3 phases. Each phase will prepare a section of the development for a build of approximately 16 homes per year over 4 years. I am the general contractor and I have a financial partner who has ponied up $750,000 towards the project. $500,000 is for the civil infrastructure itself and the remainder had gone towards all permits, surveying, engineering, etc. costs. Below are bullet points to draw from on where we have been and are to date:

* The project started in October 2022 when we first were introduced to the property
* The property is 24 acres with 2 acres being a utility easement running along the east side of the property and therefor we can not develop on it.
* The property was initially farm land and zoned RR (Rural Residential) which essentially meant one house could be built for every 18 acres.
* Property has been rezoned to R1 (Single family dwellings)
* All lots are at minimum 6000 sq ft. The largest being 17,000 sq ft.
* We are fortunate that we are just outside city limits and therefor not subject to city requirements, only county
* Housing is desperately needed in these parts for the blue collar worker which is our target clientele.
* All rezoning, hearings, approvals took from fall of 2022 to this last June to be completed/approved.
* Pushing dirt started this last June.
* A mile of silt fence has been put up around the perimeter.
* There is a 2.85 acre retention pond that is in progress at the moment.
* We were extremely fortunate that at the time we began this process the state was putting in a brand new water and sewer system that boarders the development on two sides and the state has offered taps at both points.
* Grinding pumps are required on each lot and therefor the sewage is a pressurized system. No septic or grading for sewage lines are necessary. All storm drains will drain to the retention pond.
* We have a creek that traverses through the property and is fed by local farm land runoff (we are the beginning of the creek) which is the main reason for the retention pond.
* A portion of this creek currently traverses the area the retention pond is being built. The pond will have a floor approximately 5 feet below the current creek floor (i.e. it is intended to hold 5 feet of water at all times.)
* The entire creek area is heavily vegetated. All has been cleared over the pond foot print, 55% has been cleared otherwise.
* The pond is trapezoidal shaped with the north and south being parallel, the south being shorter than the north.
* The property is also trapezoidal shaped and the pond sits essentially center of the property.
* There are two rows of houses separated by a looped road with a single point of ingress/egress.
* The 'inside' row will have the luxury of water front property (bordering the pond)
* The engineering has made the development nearly dirt neutral. A lot of dirt has to be moved from the north side to the south side. The east side, which will be the 1st phase of housing has minimal dirt to be moved.
* Initial housing build (Phase I of 4) will start next May.
* Roads will be done with a mixed lime base to the soil instead of a gravel base.
* While we initially wanted to build the homes, we have found a reputable builder in the area which wanted to purchase all developed lots and that is the path we are going down.
* We have been very fortunate to have gotten a TIF package for this development. It covers approximately 55% of the cost of the total civil infrastructure development. The remaining 45% comes out of our pockets.
* All roads, sewer, and storm drains will transfer to county ownership 5 years after completion.
* This is our 1st rodeo, as it is the 1st rodeo for all govt. personnel involved with it. The last subdivision that has gone in in this county was in the 70's and pre-dates all involved today.
* All construction criticism and comments are welcomed but please understand, we are bound and tied by a number of restrictions which will/have affected our ability to travel down a desirable path over a not so desirable but necessary path.
* Our equipment resources are not unlimited however they do continue to expand. Suffice it to say we are NOT a large developer with redundancy in equipment and deep pockets for the latest and greatest. Many will question our sanity taking on such an endeavor... hence the title of this thread. Many planets had to align for this project to move forward... and they did. It doesn't mean it won't be without it's trials and tribulations... in other words... this is not a your standard boiler plate civil development. That will be the next one. Please take all of this into account as you contribute your .02 cents. In most cases I'd like to think that there is method to our madness... that doesn't always mean there is.

I know there is much more to add to this list and it is unfortunate that the owner of the thread does not have unlimited editing rights and I don't think we have the ability to moderate the thread so any additional information will be added through the individual posts and would have to be searched upon to review. It also means there may be redundancy in questions asked and answers given. As stated, this is my first rodeo in a subdivision development. I have a small crew and all of us are involved in every aspect of the development. This is absolutely an OJT environment so please be discerning and gentle with your comments. At 67 I probably should be on a cruise ship somewhere... accept I don't like cruise ships. I do like jumping in with both feet however and I don't mind being the underdog.

The purpose of this thread is to provide others an idea of the beginning to end process of a civil infrastructure and the equipment used and tasks performed through the entire process to allow discussion and comments to be contributed by the reader and to allow those much more experienced than I to play the role of mentor which I thoroughly embrace. My time is limited on the editing of this and subsequent posts so if anyone reads this sooner than later and has any other questions or desire for info make it quick so I can include it on this initial post. I will continue to add other posts in the process and procedures that have led up to pushing dirt.

It is possible that a parallel post on YouTube may be tied to this thread for the purpose of video accompaniment as well.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

 

[bam1968]

Does this creek run water 24/7/365? If so, I think one of the first things would be to dig a 'run around' so you can get the holding area dried up ASAP.

 

[Homer Dokes]

It runs water every time it rains. If it rains enough... it will have water for some duration (days/weeks) and yes... we have begun our 'run around'. It actually has little one inch fish that show up out of no where when water is running. Apparently a type of fish that lays it's eggs in the bed of the creek and it has to dry out and re-hydrate for them to hatch. It's the weirdest thing. Did I say we were the 'beginning' of the creek? Side note... if the housing doesn't work we can raise crawdads.... 100's on the property. Purchased a Ditchwitch 4500DD with a 5' trencher and boring attachment which will be useful down the road for sewer and water lines under the road. It also worked very well for installing the silt fence.

 

[f311fr1]

be very careful about the creek/retention pond/fish. that very setup halted a TVA dam for a snail darter fish that 40 years later can't be found but still have flooding and lack of water depending on rainfall.

 

[Homer Dokes]

Certainly hoping that more reasonable minds prevail at the EPA now that Trump has revamped them.

 

[HarleyHappy]

A lot of towns in my area have had to accept the demands from the state legislature for more housing.
Therefore the towns that were giving all the builders that weren’t on the favoritism list a hard time, that has essentially ended.
When I built my last (hopefully) house, on the cusp of Covid, they were mean and unfriendly.
Now, with arms wide open, they welcome all builders.
Good luck with your project.
I built my second to last house in Tennessee and when I went down there to build, I had 5 sets of building plan, for every aspect of the project.
There was no one to look at them.
No building inspector, nothing.
Only met the mayor of the town, showed him my plans and his response was “ oh, you’re out in the county, just don’t use 55 gallon barrels for a septic, please “.
While I despise all this building going on and feel it will help ruin the country I grew up in, I will be dead before I see a house from my deck view.
It will be my children and grandchildren that will figure out that once you built a house on that hunting land, they will never unbuild that house.

 

[Homer Dokes]

I'm originally from Montana and grew up in Seattle. All the libs from California have long since ruined both. I can certainly relate. Still.... greater population translates to greater needs and it's difficult to find a balance. In this area affordable housing (not welfare housing) is impossible to find around here. Manufacturing is making a come back and young families need homes. Our homes will be in the $250 to $350 range. Nearly impossible to build a new home for less. There is another subdivision going on in the area that is in the $350 to $450 range. Quite out of reach for the blue collar worker.

You probably wouldn't want to hear all the crap we had to deal with in the public hearings leading up to our approval. All that boarder on the property seen this as their own personal sanctuary and had long since encroached on it. They had every opportunity to purchase this land as we did. We got called liars, thieves, and cheats and they had no idea who we were or knew anything about us and certainly never bothered to get the facts. I should probably get into this as it was a part of this process.... a very undesirable part of it.

 

[Homer Dokes]

Okay.... lets start with the preface to this project. My background started out in construction as a teenager and into my early 20's. I rather thought that my profession would be that of a general contractor back then. My dad's profession was HVAC and at one time had the largest residential HVAC outfit in the northwest. So I cut my teeth on duct work fabrication and the like from the age of 14 on. At 18 I became a licensed electrician in the northwest. Was licensed in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon. At the age of 21 I managed a semi automated sheet metal production facility specializing in all HVAC fittings, duct work, round pipe, etc. for commercial and residential environments. I also was going to college majoring in accounting and minoring on the very first Apple computers. Realized technology was where I needed to be. Couldn't afford to quit work and go to school full time so in '82 ended up joining the Army and got the best component level electronics training I could have. That's what brought me to the midwest. While still in the Army I had an IT business installing, repairing, and programming computer equipment of that period. This was in the original IBM PC, XT, and AT days and spent the next 35 years owning an outsourced IT business covering the midwest area. After that length of time fixing other peoples stuff, over and over again... I got quite burned out on it and decided to shut down my business and jump back into construction and renovation. This was just prior to COVID and one would have thought that would be the worst time to get into such a business but my business flourished during that period. My partner approached me (I had been doing work on many homes he owned) about teaming up in real estate projects. Initially it was to flip homes but we could never find anything we could buy, put the money into, and make anything out of it after the fact. Then started thinking outside the box and looked to create multi family dwellings out of abandoned churches. There was a 35,000 sq ft church in the area we tried to go after and it turned out that it was very heavily water damaged. The owner then piped up and said he had 24 acres outside of town, would we like to see it. Well we fell in love with it in Oct. of 2022. From there forward we set out to rezone the property and put ourselves into a position to develop it.

So this is the beginning of this endeavor. We made an offer on the property contingent on rezoning and set out to do just that. The property is in a beautiful setting of soft rolling hills (a far cry different from the flat corn belt that makes up a good portion of the midwest) bordered on three sides by tall trees and the utility easement on the east side with an old subdivision on the other side of it.. The property was initially land locked but the previous owner, who had the property for ages and the forethought to purchase two lots that tied the north side of the property to a county road and also two lots on the west side that tied it to a state road. The property adjacent to the state road is just shy of 2 acres and we decided to hold it till after the subdivision project is complete and pursue some type of commercial/retail use of it. It however has a pole barn on it already and it is the only way to enter and leave the land locked property. The other two lots mentioned earlier are completely vegetated and will require clearing and all before it will become the primary ingress/egress of the subdivision. Had we just the property along the state road we then would have had to negotiate with the state and be subject to their whims regarding ingress/egress from the state road. We knew right away we didn't want any part of that.

As I stated, the first thing we had to do was to get it rezoned. Our initial desire was to rezone it R1 and R2. This would have allowed single family dwellings and multi family dwellings up to 6 plex units. Our intent was to have a section that included duplex's. In the first public hearing required by the zoning commission, we had numerous city and county dignitaries, including the city major, show up to speak in support of the development. The mayor got up to speak and expressed how ours was one of 6 potential subdivision developments that would add up to 250 new homes to the area. Right off the bat the audience, comprised of nearly all of the neighbors of the property took that comment to mean we were going to put 250 homes on essentially 20 acres (the actual acreage being developed) and we were off to the races. For 20 minutes they argued with the Mayor who was trying to set the record straight that 250 homes were not going on our property. Then it was the audiences turn to come up and speak there opposition to the rezoning. They proceeded to interrogate my partner and I and questioned why we were putting in low income housing and how many. We were doing nothing of the sort. Further, we had no idea at that time what the actual housing count would be and we told them so. We were called liars... we then told them this was not low income housing... and we were again called liars. What was supposed to be only 20 minutes of opposition turned out to be 2 and half hours because the planning committee lost control of the hearing. We were called everything but white in that meeting. Kinda humorous as I am native american. It was not an enjoyable evening. It took nearly a year to finally get approval from the commission to rezone. The vote was 8 to 1 in our favor. The one descending vote was a board member who's family was preparing to do the same thing with their property and have it rezoned. He seen ours as providing competition and voted against ours when he should have recused. No matter... we achieved what we needed to and now were off to the next hurdle... providing a conceptual set of drawings of the property and what we intended to do with it and getting preliminary approval. I should mention that during the rezoning phase, all the opposition were convinced our development was going to lower their property values so between the first and second public hearings we chose to only go after R1 and forgo the duplexes in an attempt to appease the natives. We found this made absolutely no difference to them and we should have just left it in our plans. In the end we were approved for R1.

Stay tuned for the next adventure in our tale.....

 

[chidog]

So who are the operators for the machines? Is that just a learning experience?
How many yards of dirt to move and how far? Is it used to fill an area? If so is it good construction fill?
How much is top soil or over burden?
You want the job done fast that means good and large machines not small junkers.

Oh just now checked on facebook market and in shelton wa there is what says a 1960 D6 for $2500. said was running when it was delivered 4 years ago. I think its a bit older though.

 

[Mcrafty1]

Following.....

 

[Homer Dokes]

Our goal is to have the east road graded in, the pond complete, and the new ingress/egress area cleared before winter sets in. In these parts that hasn't been happening till mid to end of December.

There is a very thin layer, 6" or so, of top soil. It doesn't take long to get into clay and with the drought we have been having it is tough to cut into the clay with the D6 blade. Wants to skip across the top. We had three days of rain last week which did two things. 1st, while raining it made it very slick and sticky to get much done. 2nd, it put enough moisture in the soil that I was able to peel 2" to 3" slabs of clay while pushing. We are not supposed to have rain again for at least 10 days. Considering sprinklers through the evening to dampen the soil but not make it slick. I certainly have better results and productivity with the dozer when it is. Doesn't take long to dry out however with the sun beating on it. I have segregated top soil from clay thus far. Maintaining reserve for use where needed down the road. I am hopeful that we will have two dozers in play midweek next week on the pond. One with a substantial ripper which will break up the clay allowing the D6 to better cut and evacuate.

Appreciate the line on the D6 in Washington... believe transportation costs to the midwest would be substantially higher than the dozer itself. I will look for it however. Curious to see what kind of shape it is in for that price. My D6 has broken tension springs and a leaking tension cylinder on the left side. I have identified and purchased new tension springs but can not find tension cylinders. Have figured on putting the new springs in during January and February and hoping at the moment the cylinders can be rebuilt. Have fitted brackets to hold the left cylinder out to it's full extent which has helped to keep the track tight. It's not perfect but is working. In the first month I lost the track three times. I haven't since.

Will follow up with your other inquiries this evening.

 

[materthegreater]

Sounds like an interesting project. Any pictures?

 

[Homer Dokes]

Sounds like an interesting project. Any pictures?

Soon to come

 

[Vetech63]

 

[CM1995]

A lot to unpack here and brings back some memories.

Over the years I have developed a subdivision or two and now do primarily commercial site work as a subcontractor.

What type of street - asphalt, curb/gutter?
San sewer - HDPE main pressure pipe with taps for each house? Assuming the builder will install the grinder pump and tie on as each home is finished. At least that is how it is done here.

You said the state recently ran domestic water and san sewer mains that they are letting you tie on to. Lucky. Once had to run 4" DIP sewer force mains several blocks up a neighborhood road from the wet well we just installed complete with a 350 natural gas generator that I had to pay for all of it.

HOA - yeah the dreaded HOA and ARC. Have you set those up?

I too have been called a liar, crook, etc. Developed a 61 unit townhome project in the early 2000's. At no point was there a pool or a clubhouse that was designed, marketed or most importantly budgeted for the project. About mid-way through the project a group of owner/buyers decided that the project deserved a pool and club house and demanded I build one - after the fact.. Needless to say I was called all sorts of things after that and they didn't get a pool or clubhouse either.

The most disheartening thing from being a residential builder/developer is the realization some people will lie like a rug if there is even just the minute amount of money for them to receive.

Looking forward to your progress.

 

[aighead]

This is interesting, thanks for bringing us along.

We have a 33 acre parcel of land across the street from my house that is for sale but I don't think there are any many interested, which is ideal for me. They just farm it for now but like some of the folks yelling at you I'd be nervous of a subdivision going in. I live on a very quiet road but we are only 4 miles west of Downtown Dayton, so I could see how the location could be attractive to a developer. Luckily (in a strange way) our local school system sucks, so there aren't many folks wanting to come join the 'hood. I'd love to buy the land but I think he's at 10k an acre or thereabouts, and there's no house on it, just an old falling down barn.

I don't know much but it sounds like even though this is your first go that you are on the right path.

I can't believe that 250-350k is blue collar house money. There is tons of that around here, mostly south, that are new build or relatively new build for that kind of money but it's still amazing to me that houses cost that much. That being said- I'm blue collar, lower-middle management in a house that was around that when we bought it. Now "worth" almost double 9 years later, though I think we could over double it if we wanted to sell...

Good luck with the project, I too would like to see pictures!

 

[Homer Dokes]

HOA - yeah the dreaded HOA and ARC. Have you set those up?

It was a requirement during the engineering phase to have the bylaws of the HOA already in place and submitted for approval by the county.

 

[AllDodge]

Don't see how a HOA requirement is a benefit to middle income home buyer. That's all they need is have to pay into some crud which will require more funds later

 

[Homer Dokes]

What type of street - asphalt, curb/gutter?
San sewer - HDPE main pressure pipe with taps for each house? Assuming the builder will install the grinder pump and tie on as each home is finished. At least that is how it is done here.

We are putting lime mixed with the soil over a gravel base.

The street, which is essentially a large trapezoidal loop will be asphalt.

Going with predominately gutter but there will be some curb involved as well.

The builder will indeed be installing the grinding pumps with each house. That plus the county permit fees for each home caused a $10k reduction in what we will get for each lot.

 

[Homer Dokes]

Don't see how a HOA requirement is a benefit to middle income home buyer. That's all they need is have to pay into some crud which will require more funds later

Agreed. I have no use for them.