Woes with the American Fork Building Inspector

You may not have noticed the update I added to the A New Age of Froyo post.  Anyway, the new location hasn’t opened yet.  We hoped it would open today, but it didn’t.  We hoped it would open tomorrow, but it won’t.  We hoped it would open on Thursday, but that’s a no-can-do either.  At this point, we’re planning on Friday. :?

You may ask, “Why all the delays?”  It’s been one thing after another. :roll:

The movers were supposed to show up on Thursday to move our stuff from the old store to the new store.  They didn’t show up.  They came on Friday instead.

The company that’s doing the stainless steel caps around the area the machines fit into and the stainless steel for the chair rail had a mishap of their own.  Their machine broke last week.  We were supposed to get the stainless steel last Thursday, but they weren’t able to get us anything until today. The caps for the area around the machines are being installed and are almost done.  The rest of the stainless steel will be coming and installed tomorrow.  (The health inspection can’t happen until the caps are installed, even though it’s considered finish work, because the caps are near the machines.)

The word “signs” has become a swear word in our house.  We aren’t going to have our outside signs until later this month or possibly September.  We can deal with that.  But, what we can’t deal with is having no signs inside.  The sign people didn’t show up to verify the dimensions so we’re in the process of looking for another sign company because we’re fed up with the the current one.  We have a couple of companies in mind; they wanted the job in the first place so they should be able to get us the inside signs in time to open on Friday.

We were about $8000 short on building costs because of all the delays.  Luckily, this one has been resolved and ended up being the least stressful thing to deal with.

Our building inspector has been a pain in the butt from the beginning of the process.  He acts like he’s God’s gift to building inspectors and has all these stupid rules that make no difference to whether the building’s sound.  Our contractor has told us that he’s never had to deal with these “rules,” even when building in American Fork.

Anyway, the inspector did our final inspection yesterday and we failed it! 8O That’s not even the most frustrating part.  We didn’t fail it because we weren’t up to code; we failed it because of stupid reasons that had nothing to do with the inspector’s actual job! :x

  1. He said our tables and chairs needed to be set up before he could pass us.  That’s like telling someone they can’t get the okay on their house because their couches aren’t in the living room yet.
  2. He said we needed an American Fork business license, which is true.  However, we can’t get one until our building inspection gives us the go ahead to practice business in our space.
  3. He said we needed to have our health inspection before he could pass us.  The health department won’t even come by until our building inspection has passed.
  4. And, last but not least, he said our counter is an inch and a half too high for American Fork’s standards.  American Fork requires your counter to be no higher than 34 inches so that people in a wheelchair can write a check with ease.  That seems like a sound reason to not pass the inspection, right?  Here’s the catch.  The building inspector approved the blueprints that had the dimensions on them.  He never told us that the counter was only supposed to be 34 inches high; he only said that we had to meet ADA (American Disability Association) standards.  Guess what the ADA’s standard for the top counter height is?  36 inches.  We assumed, which was presumptuous of us, that if we built our counter 35.5 inches high, the height would be fine.  After all, our blueprints were approved, right?  Yeah, I know our reasoning was flawed. :roll:

Needless to say, Corey called the boss today to complain.  Now, the only thing we have to comply with out of the above reasons is the counter height.  We’ll be dealing with that tomorrow.

About Jenni Elyse

I enjoy reading, listening to music, watching movies and TV, playing any type of game (especially anything related to Zelda and Mario), aimlessly surfing the Internet, crocheting, knitting, playing the piano, and hanging out with my husband, cats, and friends. I hope you enjoy reading my posts as much as I enjoy writing them. If you want to get to know me better, check out the About Me page. I also blog at Getting Healthy.

7 thoughts on “Woes with the American Fork Building Inspector

  1. ARRRGH

    So, what is this guys PROBLEM?!?? That last one clearly falls onto his shoulders, and talk about a guy on a power trip! Terrible terrible terrible. WTG complaining, I would bust some heads too!!

  2. Sorry ya’ll are having such issues; that dude sounds like a putz. Gweg says to ‘kick ‘im in nads—then we’ll see who gets a pass.’ :)

  3. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? Dude, it is seriously screwed up. Seriously. Sorry it’s been such a mess! I’m with Erin…I need FROYO!

  4. NOOOOOO! Stupid people! Let me know as soon as you have good news…I can’t take the disappointment much longer…:)

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