Termite party

[Dave Bingham]

Hey guys!

I have friend that is renovating a house he bought. He just discovered this last week that the outside walls are infested. His contractor told him that they could erect a temporary wall, knock down the bad material and rebuild it. This is something that will have to be done to all the outside walls.

Is this something anyone on here has done? Does it work?

The other issue is to get an engineering study will take around 3 months and another 2-3 for the permits. Should he go forward with the project without waiting and the rebuilt walls are up to code what sort of penalty can the county assess if they find out he has gone forward without permitting the work?

We were discussing this and I think it would be odd that they would make him tear it down if it were up to code. They may hit them with a stiff fine but if it's good, why would they have him tear it down? He recalled a story where an old neighbor of his had done something w/o pulling the permit and it "looked up to code" from a layman's perspective anyway and that individual had to tear it down and rebuild.

So we were wondering, has this happened frequently in your markets, where work if it meets code but was not permitted is ordered to be demolished?

Are there any other options he has to expedite the process, cross t's and dot i's, and still get it done in a reasonable time frame?