Panel discusses building codes

SEELEY LAKE - The Seeley Lake Community Council hosted a forum to discuss the building code program in Missoula County Jan. 14 in hopes of learning about the county inspection program and identifying places it could be made better.

The panelists included former Missoula County Commissioner Jean Curtiss, Jamie Erbacher with Missoula County Community & Planning Services (CAPS), Shannon Therriault with Missoula County Environmental Health, Missoula County Public Works Building Official Steve Hutchings, realtor Scott Kennedy, local builder Mark Williams and retired building inspector Doug Anderson.

Missoula County has one of the largest countywide inspection programs in the state. There is a total of seven counties with countywide inspection programs.

Curtiss was in office when the current building code inspection and enforcement program was developed and implemented.

Curtiss explained that in 2003 the Montana Legislature changed the laws regulating building code programs. Counties were then required to enforce codes in the entire county or none of it.

Up until that point Missoula County was able to contract with Missoula City to enforce building codes in the five-mile doughnut area around the city. The state inspected residential construction outside of the five-mile area for electrical and plumbing and enforced building codes on commercial projects.

Curtiss said the current program was implemented in May of 2006.

During the time the program was developed, Curtiss said the commissioners received a lot of comments from people who were not concerned about owners building their own houses and suffering the consequences of their own construction. However, there was concern that a large number of houses were being built for other people to use such as vacation or rental homes and multi family homes. The state program only kicked in if a multi family structure had more than four units.

Erbacher explained that CAPS mainly deals with land use issues and zoning compliance including floodplain and shoreline regulations and drainage issues. They also check conditions of the plat or deed to see if there are requirements such as for in-house sprinkler systems or wildland fire hazard reductions.

While zoning doesn’t generally exist in the area, some of the lakes including Placid, Inez and Lindbergh have zoning around them.

Therriault explained that the Environmental Health Division of the Missoula County-City Health Department gets involved in the building permits because most construction has an impact on a property’s septic system and/or well. Septic systems must be sized to accommodate the new construction or possible increase in use due to a remodel. Wells need to be set a certain distance from septic systems including proposed septic systems on neighboring properties. The Health Department also looks to make sure people are not building structures in the only place available for septic systems.

Therriault said the Health Department’s permitting process can be as short as a couple of days if you are proposing to use a parcel of property that went through environmental review when it was subdivided out. It can take several months to permit projects where environmental review hasn’t been done or if the proposed project doesn’t fit with the previously reviewed use.

Therriault recommends talking to the Health Department first before going through all the other permitting process or even making final plans to make sure the project will be approved. This will allow people to change the project to gain approval if needed without having to redo the rest.

Hutchings worked for Missoula City for 14 years before switching over to the county when the countywide program was started. While he was a city inspector he was surprised and sometimes appalled at the poor quality of construction happening out in the county. Ultimately he feels the inspection program should be statewide though he doesn’t agree with all the codes that he is bound by law to enforce.

Anderson spent 17 years as an inspector with Missoula City before finishing off his career as the county inspector for the Seeley Lake and Condon area. In his time in the area he saw a lot of existing work that should have never been allowed.

Williams has been a builder in Seeley Lake for years and was approached by Hutchings to help develop the county’s inspection program in the early 2000s. Williams agreed because he felt a level playing field was needed because there was a lot of subpar construction happening.

Kennedy explained that as a realtor he isn’t directly involved in most construction projects but he does hear a lot of complaints from his clients about the inspection process. Most complaints he hears about are the time delays, costs and over regulation.

Discussion & questions

Streamlining permitting: Williams wants to see the permitting process be better streamlined so projects are not held up for so long. Seeley Lake has a short building season and delays can cost a lot. A project like a garage can take longer to permit than to build. He would like to see a check list for simpler jobs that would allow for quicker review.

Hutchings explained that they already review projects through the different agencies simultaneously. Any missing details in the plans though have to be sent back to the builder for more information.

Therriault agreed saying that a truly simple project does go through the process fairly quickly now but the intricacies of most projects take longer to sort out.

The county has been trying to make the system more streamlined. Two years ago the county started accepting permits online through the Odyssey system. This allows people to apply for permits from home instead of coming into one of the county’s offices. With all the plans uploaded to the internet, all the review for the various permits can be done by the corresponding county agencies simultaneously.

Blower door test: An issue Williams raised is the new requirement to do blower door testing on houses. It costs $300 to do and he sees it as completely unnecessary.

When a house is fully constructed one of the final tests is to mount a blower over an exterior door and pump air either into or out of a house. The test measures how much air leaks out of a house. The house fails if there is too much leakage.

Hutchings explained that this is part of the energy code that he has mixed feelings about because it is not about building safer structures. The Department of Labor and Industry Building Codes Bureau is the only agency that can adopt and modify the codes. Once the state adopts the code, counties with building programs must enforce it in its entirety.

Hutchings said they used to be able to do a multi-point inspection instead of the blower door test but that has changed.

Another issue with the blower door testing is that if the house fails, it is usually something that wasn’t done right early in construction and can be really hard to fix.

Log homes are nearly impossible to seal tight enough to meet energy code.

Williams said houses are required to be built so tight now that they need an air exchanging system.

Hutchings agreed that when houses are built too tight, it creates a problem with moisture buildup that can turn into mold problems.

Why does it matter if someone builds a garage on a lot that eliminates the possibility of building a house on it later? Therriault said that some properties could do it. However when a parcel goes through environmental review and it is designed for a residence, it protects future owners to make sure they can put a house on it. Therriault has seen cases where the county has allowed someone to build in such a way that eliminates future uses and then the people get mad and sue the county later.

How can these codes be changed? Codes are updated every three years at the national level. A state building code advisory committee then makes recommendations on what to adopt or amend out.

Hutchings said nearly every page of the 900-page book has changes each time making it difficult to follow, especially for homeowners. Currently Montana is using 2012 code.

Hutchings felt that sometimes manufacturers change the code for their own benefit. He gave the example of the residential fire sprinkler systems that have made it into code.

Hutchings attended the hearings where the codes were being adopted that year and every day there were 700-800 people voting on various codes. On the day the sprinkler systems were voted on, 1,800 people showed up to vote. The National Fire Sprinkler Coalition “stacked the deck” according to Hutchings.

Three years later it was proposed to take the sprinkler systems out of the code and Hutchings watched them stack the deck a second time.

Montana amended the sprinkler systems out when it adopted the code otherwise every residence would need sprinklers regardless of where they were built. Hutchings estimates that sprinklers could add a minimum of $10,000 per house and go up from there when backup power and cisterns were needed to meet the code.

What can the county do to someone who ignores the permitting? The county works toward getting people into compliance but other measures can be taken including turning it over to the county attorney for possible prosecution, making deed restrictions and even forcing people to tear down or move structures.

Is there an added value to real estate when homes are built with permits over homes built without or in counties with no inspections? Kennedy said he does meet people that would rather purchase land outside of Missoula County with fewer building and subdivision restrictions.

Hutchings said building to code will have an inherently better quality than not following code but the code doesn’t necessarily require quality work. Code is a minimum building standard.

Is there a checklist for things needed to get a permit? Yes, on the county’s website: missoulacounty.us/government/public-works/public-works/building-division

How many inspectors cover the Seeley Lake area? One inspector is dedicated to the area from Bonner all the way to Condon.

There are three inspectors for the entire county plus Hutchings helps out when necessary. They try and inspect within 24 hours of being requested.

Hutchings can see where his inspectors are with GPS trackers so when an inspection is ordered he can quickly see if they can do it on the way back or to the next job.

In 2018 the building division issued 3,031 permits, performed 7,318 inspections and fielded 14,333 phone calls.

What codes are adding to the cost to build homes? Williams said an average house has $2,500 in permit costs but he sees the time delays as being the biggest added cost. Williams said he personally builds houses to the same standard using the same materials whether he is building in Missoula or a county with no building inspections.

Some places where builders cut corners aren’t safety issues such as installing less insulation. However other places, like not doing engineering, can be dangerous. Engineering is only required when a project falls outside of basic parameters such as having one side of the house nearly all windows, walls with studs longer than ten feet, log buildings, pole barns and unusually shaped buildings.

Hutchings said when the new electrical code was adopted it added at least a $1,000 to the cost of an average house just by requiring arc fault circuit breakers on most of the circuits instead of just bedrooms as well as requiring tamper resistant outlets.

Hutchings said he felt that plastic child protection plugs worked just fine without the added cost of the tamper resistant outlets. He felt arc fault breakers in bedrooms was okay but there are a lot of circuits that didn’t need them.

A member of the audience said they were frustrated because their fire alarm and lighting circuits shouldn’t have arc fault breakers. Anderson disagreed on the arc fault breakers saying that arcs could happen when someone drives a nail into a wire while hanging pictures later on.

As previously discussed blower door testing adds costs.

Can homeowners draw up their own plans? Yes, as long as they have enough details to show they meet codes and don’t have any unusual features that require engineering.