It Will Come To You, This Love of the Land

Okay, I'm not Irish, and it isn't quite Tara, but this little 0.57 acre lot is likely the closest we'll ever get to living on a plantation.



As some of you have read on our Facebook posts, my wife and I recently made an offer on a residential lot in Brownsburg -- and after a couple of back-and-forths, the offer was accepted. We have 60 days to determine if the site is suitable for our home-building desires. Since it is zoned residential and located in a platted subdivision, "site suitability" primarily revolves around water/sewer utilities or determining feasibility of well and septic.

In case this blog wasn't erratically eclectic enough, I will post our progress and trials and errors on here. Starting with this process of determining suitability, and assuming this leads to final closure on the deal, continuing with logging the process around building our "dream home" on this property.



Checking for septic essentially involves two steps -- both of which will cost us money on a property that could potentially be found unsuitable. The first step is getting health department approval for septic system in general -- this involves at least a couple of different soil tests (that we have to pay an engineer to perform). If anything in those tests are "iffy", the health department could require additional tests before making a determination. Then, we would need engineering work to determine the size and type of septic system we would need and whether or how it could physically fit on the lot and how big of a house we would then have room for.

So, ideally, we would prefer to get connected to municipal water and sewer utilities. While the approval process for municipal utilities shouldn't cost us anything (the actually connection will cost us plenty, if we get approved), the approval/denial process may take up to several weeks (depending on our timing and town countil agendas). In our original offer, we had specified 120 days for determining suitability, which would not only give us enough time to fully pursue utilities, but if that process fails to give satisfactory results, we would still have had plenty of time to perform the tests for septic/well. Unfortunately, the current owner did not want to leave the property off the market that long -- which we can fully understand, but the eventual compromise of 60 days cuts our options short. We will pretty much need to work down both routes at the same time, paying for the tests, even though we may potentially get utilities.



Easement: Good News, Bad News. There is a 45 foot deep easement running the entire length of the back of the property. This is one of the main reasons why we are unsure if a septic system will even fit on the lot -- once you subtract the 30-40 foot setback, 45 foot easement, and room for a house, that doesn't leave a huge amount of space for a sprawling septic system -- especially since any part of the septic system needs to be at least 50 feet away from the well. The good news is that this easement increases the likelyhood that we can get town utilities -- the easement runs along the backs of the adjacent properties as well, so it may make the extension of utility lines "easier".

I have spoken with both the Town Planning Director and Town Manager this week, and both seem optimistic that utility connectivity will be feasible, so we're keeping our fingers crossed, but there's still plenty of research to do before we know for sure.