Where to Put It?

As we learned more from Chris Tavernier about permitting requirements and local siting rules, we started getting worried.  From our 3 camping trips up to this point we knew exactly where we wanted to put our house on the lot.  We also at the time wanted to leave room for a future expansion.  The Coastal Zone Management (CZM) part of the DPNR has some pretty serious setback requirements for new builds in the USVI.  For our lot that meant on the front (ocean side) the setback was 25 feet from the property line.  On the back side (facing the St Thomas Airport) the setback was 15 feet, and from the neighboring lot 10 feet.  Our lot is triangular, and as we did the math we were kind of forced to put the house in a certain spot.  Luckily it was within 10 feet or so of where we wanted it anyway, but it wasn’t looking good for building another pod on the compound later.  Buttercup is an engineer with great talents at using the CAD program Microstation.  So with some satellite pictures we were able to visualize what we wanted.

As we wanted a very large wraparound deck, and I wanted a shipping container on the lot as a garage we had to make some choices.  Ultimately we decided on going with only one house so the actual location of the house shifted a little to the upper right of the picture above to keep the deck inside the setbacks.  The shipping container location was to be next to the property line with our neighbor, along with our driveway.

Orientation

The most important part was to figure out how to face the house in order to get the views we wanted.  For our 10 sided house we wanted four of the sides to be large French door sized openings, 3 facing the ocean, one facing the St Thomas Airport.  Normally on a 10 sided house Deltec wants at least 4 of these panels to be solid “shear walls”.  With some engineering money and extra reinforcement we were able to get the large openings in the design.  So we started working on which direction to face the house so that Buck Island would be framed in one opening, St John in another, St Croix in the last and still keep the deck within the lot setback.  After quite a bit of Microstation work we were able to do it.

Spending the Money

From our previous time in the Caribbean we had learned about “island time”.  Cool when you’re on vacay, not so good with a project like this.  We were ready to send Deltec a deposit and order the building, but when for delivery?  My worst nightmare was to have the building show up and not have a foundation to put it on.  While Chris was working hard on the permit I had heard some real horror stories about projects that had gone sideways on the timeline while waiting for the DPNR.  Fortunately Deltec has sales from time to time.  They have slow times of the year on their assembly line, and will discount houses that are built during these times.  Just at the time that we were worrying about the timeline they had such a sale.  A little paperwork and a deposit down we had our delivery date for January 2018, or a little less than 3 years from then, just to be safe.  Little did I know how close we would push the edges of that!

Waiting on the CZM

 

Chris had a package ready for the DPNR within about 2 months of starting in the Fall of 2015.  We had gone through a few changes as we were trying to get everything perfect and we were now ready to Rock and Roll!  The final package was fairly impressive, about 30 pages of drawings and environmental mitigation plans like silt fencing, etc.  Along with the DPNR fees and the work Chris had done, we were about $6k into the permit thing.  The waiting started around Thanksgiving, and ended a little after Easter.  We had a CZM permit! Now Chris had to take the CZM permit to the same office and same people and get the building permit.  Why it all can’t be done at the same time is a mystery known only to God himself.  The building permit was quicker at least, about a month and a half from start to finish.  So here were are in May of 2016 and ready to go!

 

Sticker Shock

Our final design had a foundation that would be about 10 feet off the ground on the Ocean side, and 5 feet on the backside.  It was about 30 feet in diameter, with a rectangular 12 foot long by 8 foot wide bathroom wing.  The house would sit on top of it, but below about 1/3 of the area would be devoted to a 11 thousand gallon cistern, the other 2/3 into an equipment room and a hurricane proof bunker/garage.  I added up the concrete required for this and came up with around 80 cubic yards.  In Central Texas I figured I could build this for maybe at most $20k.  So I tripled the cost and thought that would be close.  Boy was I wrong!  Most building estimates in the USVI for a finished house are around $500-700 sq ft.  A good estimate for cast concrete work around $1100-1500/yard depending on how busy everyone is.  Another thing is that because we had to barge over the concrete from St Thomas, on site the concrete would run about $250/yard.  Central Texas price is about $55 delivered, so it took a little bit of getting used to.  I contacted Rolando and told him we were ready to go.  He was very eager to get started as he had a little break in the big grocery store project he was then working on.  He had run into a huge patch of “Blue Bitch” while excavating the large cistern for the grocery store.  There was not a big enough hammer excavator on St Thomas to efficiently handle it. He was going to have to what for a bigger one to get barged over from Puerto Rico.  After some back and forth on pricing I gave up and told him to get started.  In our case I was willing to pay more for a reliable contractor, especially after I had watched the disaster nearby for two years running.  Another opportunity came up in that our Water Island mechanic/golfcart rental/EMT/Fire Chief Lady Rachel was doing one of her periodic golf cart buys to replenish her fleet.  Since we were going to soon have a secure place to park the cart when we were off island, we got in on her buy.  This saved a lot of logistical trouble for us, Rachel is the best!  If you are visiting Water Island she will rent you a golf cart for a very reasonable rate.  If you end up wrecking the cart she will also be the one to patch you up as one of the Island’s EMTs.  http://waterislandgolfcartrental.com/