Two Years to Get a Building Permit???
Well, it wasn't quite two years...but almost.
The idea of building on Little Cayman had been lurking in the back of my mind ever since we first bought the property, but it finally came to the forefront of consciousness in the summer of 1996, just after WRTC '96. I had spent nearly the entire previous 12 months trying to pull together all the pieces for WRTC, and frankly I was exhausted from that undertaking. Even though the week of WRTC itself was an exhilarating experience for me as well as for all the participants, it had been a supremely frustrating organizing experience and after it was over I wanted to get away from everything.
With the decision to build, though, the next question was "How?" Even though I had completed numerous homeowner projects on my home in California, I had never built a house from scratch. Even if I had that experience behind me, I knew that building on Little Cayman posed many special problems. Thus I figured the only way to get started was by going down there and asking lots of questions.
After numerous email exchanges and telephone calls, I secured a rental apartment for the month of October, 1996. My plan was to spend a month on the island and just go probe everybody I could find about how they had managed to build there. I would also make contact with all the relevant government agencies and learn how to work with them. (As I write this, I have to laugh at this naivete. We all know that the basic nature of government is to change the rules on you the minute you make sense of the old rules. Silly me!)
On my way to Little Cayman, I spent several days in Grand Cayman visiting various agencies to check the rules. Some interesting highlights:
Immigration said "No problem" in response to everything. The story then was that if you wanted to obtain permanent residency status (the approximate equivalent of a U.S. "Green Card"), all that was required was to file a simple application form and pay a fee of $500. (By the time I showed up with my seven containers of building materials 2 years later, the Caymanians had changed that $500 fee to $18,000 in one swift vote of the Legislative Assembly. That's $18K for me and $18K for my wife.)
The Engineering Department said "No problem" in response to everything. It looked like a lot of paperwork, but still I couldn't see any problems. They did mention, however, that building permits for Little Cayman were handled by the Sister Islands Administration office on Cayman Brac. Should this have been a red flag?
Importing a vehicle? "No problem." Just pay 33% on the Blue Book value in duty, suffer a safety inspection, produce proof of insurance, and pay, pay, pay.
When I got to Little Cayman, it was a blast. I spent part of each day clearing my lot with a machete, pedaled my bike around the island visiting every construction site I could find, went diving every now and then, and played a bit on the radio. Mostly I just talked with people, trying to learn how it was done. The most important lessons I heard were:
Do not use any wood for any purpose which is not chemically pressure treated. The termites are voracious, and they will quickly destroy anything which has not been treated for them. Included in this prohibition are things like molding, kitchen cabinets, interior doors, etc.
Don't use any metal materials except anodized aluminum and stainless steel. This includes joist hangers, plumbing fixtures, nails with exposed heads, door knobs, door hinges, etc. (By the way, ordinary HD galvanized nails sell for approximately $.22 per pound, in bulk. Stainless steel nails run almost $5.00 per pound. Get the picture?)
If at all possible, use concrete. Use it for everything you possibly can. By the way, concrete goes for $250 per cubic yard on Little Cayman. Back in high-cost-of-living California, the going price is about $80/cu. yd. One fellow even had me convinced for a while that I wanted to build the whole house out of concrete, excepting the roof. For a long time, I was seriously contemplating trying to cast the complete house in place. Duuhhh.
Midway through my month's stay, I went over to Cayman Brac to meet with the Planning Director. He was an extremely helpful fellow, and the conversation was reassuring. The Planning Director was a transplanted Canadian, and everybody who had worked with him assured me that Dale would bend over backwards to help me.
The process of getting a permit sounded simple enough. I needed to submit all of my plans and drawings in triplicate to Dale, and he would forward them to the Development Control Board (DCB). Dale gave me a copy of all the regulations, and I could see no problem in meeting the setback requirements and design criteria. As long as I followed those constraints, he assured me, there would be no problem winning DCB approval. Given DCB approval, the only other things I needed in order to get a building permit were the Plumbing Permit and the Electrical Permit. The Plumbing Permit was easy, he said. Just send plans to the Plumbing Department on Grand Cayman, pay them a fee, and they would send him the approval. The Electrical Permit was a little tougher. The island electricians had unionized...then made appropriate contributions to the right candidates' reelection campaign funds. Sound familiar? By no coincidence at all, a law was passed requiring that all wiring be performed by a licensed (i.e. unionized) electrician. In fact, application for your electrical permit could only be made by a licensed CI electrician.
For the rest of the month, I drew house plans. Over and over and over, and always with a simple ruler and pencil. I thought I knew what I wanted when I first started this trip, but the month of October was one gigantic learning experience for me. What started out as a simple concept was growing quickly in scale. My brother the architect was trying to convince me to do a Frank Lloyd Wright design. I just wanted a simple place to sleep and eat, but he insisted I wanted elegance. My landlord at the time was a realtor, so she convinced me to add things (for potential resale value) that I would never have added on my own. Things like a second bathroom. The project was becoming more complex by the minute.
When I came home at the end of the month, I worked furiously at polishing my designs and getting them into presentable format for the Development Control Board. Two weeks later I was ready, so after a busy afternoon at Kinko's copying center I put it all in the mail for the Sister Islands Administration Planning Department. Then I commenced waiting.
I waited and waited and waited. Finally, two months later, the grand day arrived that I received a letter from said Planning Department. However, it wasn't a building permit. It wasn't notice of DCB approval, nor even of DCB disapproval. They were returning my check because I had sent them too much money in my application fee. I had used $1USD = $.80CI in computing the application fee; they informed me that since I had paid by check I should have used $1USD = $.82CI. Why couldn't they have just kept the extra and processed my application? Why couldn't they have processed my application and refunded me the excess payment? Don't ask. Now I understand the way these things work. Back then I didn't. All I could do was write a new, smaller check and send it back to them. And then I waited some more. A LOT more.
After a few months, I began telephoning to find why the delay. The only problem was that Dale was never in the office. Phone calls to Cayman Brac run $1.60 per minute, and I spent a lot of time and money trying to catch him at the right moment. After about a month of this, I got the story. Dale had an illness in the family and had returned temporarily to Canada. In the meantime, the government could not fill his position since he was on leave of absence. There was nobody else to take Dale's place. Ergo, everything sat on hold until Dale should return. In fact, that was the state of things for the next 6 months.
Late in 1997, the Planning Department on Grand Cayman appointed one of its people to work one day every other week on Cayman Brac trying to reduce the backlog of pending permit applications. We now had 10% of a person trying to do what had been a very full-time job. The first thing this person noticed was that my house permit application also included an application to erect two amateur radio towers, one at 85' and one at 65'. Well! That would require some serious thought, and of course everybody even remotely involved would be given the opportunity to review my plans and make comments.
One headache was that there had been discussion about building a new airport on Little Cayman. The only questions left to be answered were whether they would build a new airport, where they would build it, and when they would build it. The Civil Aviation Board refused to make any comment on my application until these questions could be answered. Of course, these questions had been on the table for the previous ten years. Matter of fact, they are still on the table. Never mind. The Civil Aviation Board wanted answers to these key questions before they would act. That was the state of things for another six months or so. I don't know what happened to change that, but they finally sent a letter to the Planning Department on Little Cayman saying they were not going to comment on my application. They wouldn't approve it, nor would they disapprove it. They just wouldn't comment.
After much arguing with the Planning Director, I persuaded him not to let this stop him. I was on the southwestern tip of the island, and the prevailing winds are from the east. In other words, I could not possibly be in the approach path to a new airport no matter where they chose to put it. Thankfully, he bought this argument.
The next point raised was that my towers might be unsightly to the neighbors, and that there could be an objection from an aesthetic standpoint. What neighbors??? There wasn't another building within 800' of me. Didn't matter. The Planning Director asked for more money so he could send notices to everybody who owned land around me and invite them to comment. I sent the money, but also bought a plane ticket to Little Cayman. I figured I needed to go down there and start buying beers for everybody in sight.
I arrived on the island about the first of June, 1998, and picked up where I had left off before. It was more clearing land, burning brush, talking with other homeowners, etc. But most importantly, I made contact with everyone on the distribution list for my plans to make sure they would not file any objections. That worked. To a person, they all responded to the Planning Director (who by this time had been assigned permanently to the position) that they had no objection.
I thought I had it made at this point, but when I saw the Planning Director after the deadline for comment he sprang a new one on me. "Now we know the Civil Aviation Department is not going to file an objection," he said. "We also know none of your neighbors have any objection. But how do I know your radio activities won't cause any interference to aircraft operations in the vicinity of your towers?"
What makes this concern almost laughable is that there is NO control tower on Little Cayman. All air traffic control is performed by the tower on Cayman Brac. Didn't matter. He wanted proof I wouldn't interfere with aircraft radio communications. It was at that point that I fell on my knees before Janet Munro, the Director of Telecommunications on Grand Cayman. I called and begged her to send a stern letter saying that she was in charge of ALL radio communications in the Cayman Islands, that the government of the Cayman Islands had strict laws regulating all such activities, and that she was prepared to enforce the law to the fullest extent possible. Bless her heart, she did just that.
Janet's letter turned out to be the last hurdle I had to jump...almost. Just to be safe, I persuaded the Planning Director to let me appear before the Development Control Board in person to sell my plans. I did, and it went through like a breeze. Naturally, I stressed emergency communications...the fact that I was generator powered and could be on the air in short time following any natural disaster...etc. They asked a few polite questions, then voted approval.
That got me past Step 1 in the permit process. I had DCB Approval. Now all I needed was the Plumbing Permit and the Electrical Permit. That took a couple of months more, and the story is best told in person rather than in writing, but I got it all done by 17 August 1999. That's the date stamped on my official building permit. You know, the one that has provision for the two towers on it...
So what was all the fuss about? Here's a computer-generated isometric view of the floor plan. This is taken from the beach side of the house. On the left, toward the beach, is the ham shack. The room behind it is the guest bedroom. Next to the guest bedroom is the guest bathroom. The living/dining area occupies the center 3/4 of the house, along the beach, and that's a kitchen to the rear of it through the large opening. To the right of the kitchen, in this view, is the storage pantry. That's where I want to stockpile all the canned food I can ship down there. The master bedroom is on the far right, on the beach side, and that's a bathroom in the right rear corner. The cistern (25,000 gallons worth) is underneath the house, and in the left rear corner there is a garage under the house. The entire structure is elevated an average of 8' above ground level.
The house itself measures 52' x 24'; the porch which runs the entire length of the house in the rear is 52' x 8'. The roof is a simple gable roof. I'd love to do a hip roof, but I'll freely admit to being afraid of that for my first-ever roof framing attempt.
FYI, all of my drawings were eventually done with Broderbund's "3D Home Architect". That is what was used to generate the above drawing. This $50 software package turned out to be a lifesaver. I would highly recommend it to anyone contemplating even a simple home remodeling project.