Permit fire comments for FA workshop

[topograph]

Slowly making our way through permitting, with only fire and building departments left, when yesterday we got rejected for not showing the turnaround area and water hook-up for the Fire Department. This is for a workshop/storage building, 400 foot from the main road. The frustrating part is that the fire department doesn't even service Fern Acres...

[Rob Tucker]

You seem to be applying for a commercial building permit. Re apply as a residential garage. Fire Department drops out of the loop. There is no permit language which says how large a garage can be. We just had an affair in Hilo where a business garage/warehouse was built in a residential area by calling it a residential garage.

[kalakoa]

applying for a commercial building permit

Note that if you actually intended to use the structure for commercial purposes, it might require additional permitting, which the various agencies won't bother to mention.

[topograph]

Not sure we could apply for the residential garage, as we have no residence yet. Not planning on using it for commercial purposes, just trying to build the workshop before the house so we can use it to store tools while we still live on Oahu.

[shockwave rider]

You can permit the garage first, it happens all the time that people build the outbuilding first. There is a guy in Seaview whose house was shown in a documentary on tiny houses who did exactly that, and then never built the house, just put his home in the very nice "garage" with a bath/laundry room and wet bar.

[topograph]

Tried to permit it first, was rejected. We were told we could not permit an accessory building without having a residence. Might have been different if we showed a house to be built in a later phase? But am certainly getting a clearer view of why there are so many unpermitted buildings in Puna.

[kalakoa]

could not permit an accessory building without having a residence

Correct, if you claim it's a use which is customarily associated with and subordinate to the main or principal use and which is located on the same building site as the main or principal use.

Build a barn for hatching chickens, this is a "permitted agricultural use" that happens to require electricity and which has no need for plumbing.

[Seeb]

I think so many people are trying to pull one over on the building dept with the whole shed house with no septic thing that they are getting tired of it.

It would be easier for people just to build the smallest package house get it permitted and finaled, then build whatever unconventional thing you want behind it. It would be cheaper in the end because then you can claim owner occupied for taxes

[Clayjacks]

Second that, Seeb.

[kalakoa]

pull one over on the building dept ... they are getting tired of it.

If County has a problem with illegal land-use or habitation, then County should enforce those things on their own merits, not pre-judge the hypothetical uses of an otherwise valid building permit.

The land is zoned Ag, which outright allows any "permitted agricultural use". If these uses are only acceptable when subordinate to a "residential use", then the real problem is that the land is not correctly zoned.

Ag structures may be exempt from County permits under exemptions granted by the State in 2012.

http://manage.hawaii.gov/gov/newsroom/pr...al-farmers