Before too long it dawned upon us that April would be arriving soon ready to move a house and we still had not received the go ahead from the council. We had a call from them enquiring about the waste treatment report accompanying our application. In the report we had stated that we would like a waterless composting toilet and a grey water system similar to a normal septic system. This was fine. They just wanted to see the spot where the septic application area (trenches) was going. Since the report was prepared we have had over 820mm of rain falling in just 2 months. All of sudden we discovered a spring right where the application areas was to be. The council man noticed this swallowing his boots as I pointed out the area in question. He said we would need to choose another area. The report would need an amendment done by the mob who prepared it. Fine. I rang the guy and he came back out to choose another spot.
We decided we would pump the grey water over to the existing application area we use now for the shed. We were happy with this because it will be cheaper and not close to the house. He went back to write the report and send it on both to the council and us at the same time. We politely stressed the need for a little haste with all this. We should have dropped the politely because he didn’t apply the haste. He sat on the report for two weeks despite two reminders. This made it impossible for us to receive a formal approval from the council before our deadline. We were starting to worry. The planning consultant we commissioned to smooth this kind of thing over was no help. Not sure what we paid him for now, perhaps the ink in his pen as he filled out our application.
We were concerned for a few reasons. Firstly the movers were booked in for the second week of April. They are very busy people. If we did not take this booking we would have to wait about another month. They required council approval to start work on the house a few days before the move. Secondly we thought the house had to be moved from the block by early April or, as you may remember dear reader, we would be hit with a further $10 000.
Turns out we didn’t need to worry. We had layers of cushioning step up under pressure. Firstly the house now did not have to be off the block until the end of the year. Developers are slow like that. We rang the council and discovered that they had the required amended report and everything was set to go. It would take a few weeks to be formally approved but they pretty much gave us verbal approval. We passed this on to the movers. That was good enough for them. Full steam ahead, no…full noxious carbon monoxide ahead, no…behind. Either way, let’s go.
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