Owner Builder

The Devon project had a mistake right from the start, before I even had approvals. The drawings from the architect didn’t comply with the town’s lot coverage regulations.

In dealing with the mistake that was on the plans, measuring and knowing lot coverage is the architect’s responsibility. Before you do a drawing that is to be used for approvals, the architect is required to have a copy of the plot drawing (also called a plot plan). So, of course the architect had this. It is the architect’s job to make certain that the initial plans given by the designer (in the owner-builder case, that’s usually you) complies with any site regulations in regards to size, height, and so-forth. With the Devon home, he didn’t. So what did I do?

I had him go back and redo the drawings according to my instructions to make it smaller.

And he had the audacity to send me a bill for correcting his own mistake. He was never paid that extra bit. However, we were unable to recover the extra cost the surveyers charged us for having to approve the plans twice.

This kind of error was something that I’d never come across before. I learned a lot about that step in the due diligence process. And hopefully somebody else will learn from this, too.