Farm House remodeling/renovation project

[riptides]

But would not a better formula be the number of bathrooms?

I know I am not going to change the counties, but the logic of this seems skewed.

-Mike Z. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[goaliedad]

At one time we owned lake lot that was very close to "not buildable"- the county would allow us to build a 2 bedroom floor plan, but not a 3. didn't make any difference how large one bedroom was- our builder was going to simply give us one very large room, knowing that we would put up a wall after the fact. logical- no. government- yes. go figure.

 

[bmac]

<font color="blue"> But would not a better formula be the number of bathrooms? </font>

I agree that the number of bathrooms seems logical. However, there is generally a correlation between the number of bedrooms and the number of people who are living in the house. And, it seems to me that the number of people living in the house is a more accurate indicator of the load the family is putting on the septic system than the number of bathrooms into which they are generating the load. In other words, 7 people are going to gerate more waste than 3, whether they are doing it in 1 bathroom or 3.

Just my thoughts.

 

[JimR]

As mentioned above, it is the amount of bedrooms that decides the size of your septic. I have that same problem with my house. I use to have a 3 bedroom rtanch. I added a second story to the house with 3 bedrooms upstairs. The 3 bedrooms downstairs are now the TV room, Library and sitting room even though a full bedroom set is in that room. You can have 10 bathrooms in a house versus one and it doesn't make a bit of diferrence to the town or state laws.

 

[riptides]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( there is generally a correlation between the number of bedrooms and the number of people who are living in the house )</font> I think this is flawed logic in this day and age.
I know I am not going to change it, and we are all probably on the same page here, But I keep thinking what about sharing rooms?

It is wierd.

-Mike Z. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[DUMBDOG]

Call it a sitting room again. You just have to learn is that before you start a project such as this, you learn what their rules are and bend your rules to match theirs until the project is done. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[EddieWalker]

Depending on where you live and how strict the inspectors are, will dictate what you can get away with. In California I know of severa 3 bedroom homes with several offices.

If you have a closet in the room, it's a bedroom. It doesn't matter how bad the inspector wants to get you to say it's a bedroom, it's the closet that makes the distiction.

One good trick is to put the closet door in the hall, frame a header inside the "office" wall and change it over after you move in.

Eddie

 

[TwinWillows]

Apparently this counting closets as rooms practice goes way back. I recall touring some old, I think pre civil war, mansions in MS & recall hearing that the absence of closets & the many wardrobes was due to the way a particular tax was calculated based on the # of rooms.. So they did away with the closet "rooms" & went to wardrobes.

I like the "hidden" header idea - nifty way to get around the challenge & still get what you want.

 

[bebster]

Around here they count bedrooms and require 10,000 square feet of land per bedroom, and a septic sized to fit that number of bedrooms. The rule of thumb is that if a room is habitable and can be closed off it is considered a bedroom. But if it doesn't have a doorway (or potential doorway) narrower than 5 feet, then it's not a bedroom. Makes sense to me as a general rule, but no rule is perfect.

Inspectors don't want to count people since they can change over time - they prefer to look at plans and make measurements which are more constant.

 

[DUMBDOG]

All of these rules are quite worthless if the house was housing emigrant workers where they pack 20 to 30 people in a house.