Logan County looks into setting building standards

[April 07, 2017]  LINCOLN -  On Wednesday, April 5, the Logan County Board's Planning and Zoning Committee held their monthly meeting. One focus of discussion was building standards.

This past summer, the committee began discussing the need to set up some kind of building standards and trying to decide what would need to be inspected. Various committee members had said structure, electric, and plumbing should be part of a home inspection before allowing occupancy.

Zoning Officer Will D'Andrea has also worked on drafting language to add to the building permit section of the zoning ordinance.

Committee member Dave Blankenship said they should follow "best practices" rather than "building codes." He has researched some of the best practices to see what many follow.

Committee member Kevin Bateman said he wanted a licensed home inspector to look at the home and approve it for occupancy.

At the last few meetings there were just brief discussions on building standards.

At Thursday's meeting, Blankenship said the building standards issue is at a "standstill right now. I don't know where we want to take it from here."

Blankenship said he could take a look at more best practices.

Bateman asked, "What if we just backed up to the original conversation thought of having to have a licensed home inspector and just leave it at that.?"

Board Chairman Chuck Ruben said, "But you have got to have standards for him to inspect to."

Bateman said, "If he is licensed, he should know what the standards are."

Blankenship said, "ASHI (American Society of Home Inspectors) is what he would go by, but then you run the issue if the contractor has the right to know what standards to build to."

D'Andrea said, "If it is a new home, there is an existing statute that says the contractor and homeowner need to agree on which building code you are building to, but that is kind of a private party transaction. The county does not get involved in asking if they have got a contract or which building codes because we don't issue a certificate of occupancy, so there is no enforcement or checking."

Blankenship said, "We could just straight out go with ASHI standards because they have a pre-drywall inspection standard that they go by. That is the easy way out because the standards are already written."

Ruben said, "What we want to do is keep it easy, but maybe we ought to consider first off taking it out of the hand between the contractor and homeowner as far as which standards they are going to build to." He said, we would "pick the one we want them to build to and then say, you are going to have to have this home inspection and then have a [certificate of] occupancy."

D'Andrea said that would be fine, but "there's dozens of different codes to choose from."

Bateman said, "If home inspectors use ASHI, why don't we just use ASHI? I guess my whole thought on this process is taking the county liability out of it." He said if no one is checking the standards and something happens, there could be problems in a "sue happy world."

Ruben said, "Right now, we have no rules for it, so it is hard to be sued for it because we have no standards. You can't be liable for something you don't control. Once we start getting these rules, we open ourselves up to that."

Bateman said, "Let's face it, if you make someone follow the standards, the house is worth more money and we end up with more tax dollars."

Bateman said, "I'm just thinking if we go with the simplest thing, we won't get so much pushback from the public."

Ruben asked Blankenship, who is a licensed home inspector, "when you come and inspect, do you have find out which standards to inspect to?"

Blankenship said, "No, we actually don't. For instance, they can go in and build in accordance with national plumbing code, NFBA, and all that. What we do is, we look at workmanship and safety issues that are relevant to their industry."

Blankenship said, "It is a general overall [inspection] of everybody, but it is not heavy into any one, and that's the good thing, it's light."

Ruben said, "Maybe we just want to say, you must have a licensed home inspector come through at a certain point in time during the build" and "when you have submitted his report to us, then we issue a certificate of occupancy." He said banks often make you get a home inspection anyway.

Bateman said, "I just wanted some kind of regulations and keep it as simple as possible." He said, that way, for those who say, "you have no rules," we can now say, "yes, we do," and for "the ones that say, don't restrict me, we can say we made it as simple as possible."

Blankenship said inspectors look at areas like foundations, drainage, and roofing, but it is often general standards. He said, "the ASHI standard is soft enough, it covers enough for safety and workmanship, so you would be fine."

Ruben said it would be good to contact the state agency that licenses home inspectors and "ask them if they would send somebody down to speak to us on this issue and maybe they will have better ideas."

Blankenship said, "If you are interested, I did speak to one of my instructors and he was willing to come talk to us."

Ruben asked Blankenship to contact the instructor about coming to next month's meeting to provide more explanation of ASHI standards.

Committee members present were Chairman Scott Schaffenacker, Vice Chairman Emily Davenport, Kevin Bateman, Dave Blankenship, Annette Welch, Board Chairman Chuck Ruben and Zoning Officer Will D'Andrea.

[Angela Reiners]