fea·si·ble (/ˈfēzəb(ə)l/): possible to do easily or conveniently.
Yeah...none of this is easy or convenient. Why do they call it a "Feasibility Study" then?!
Not only were appliances, windows, and nearly all building materials taking months to obtain, so were some architects and subcontractors. When we reached out to some of these people, we were told that they were many months out of being able to take our project on. But wait…weren’t we in a pandemic? We were being told to stay home as much as possible, wear masks, and keep our distance when we were out. Why were they all so busy? Turns out since most everyone was at home, a lot of those people decided to build or renovate their homes. It has been an unprecedented time in the City of Denver to build just about anything.
We talked to a few different architects and draftsmen and we went with one who we thought we would work well with, who wasn’t outrageously priced, but also who was actually available! It was a similar story for many of the subcontractors. We would hear that they weren’t taking new clients, or that it would be 8-10 months before they could take us on. Some never replied to our inquiries. That would become a theme throughout the whole process.
While we were searching for all of these necessary pieces, there were still things that needed to be done to determine if our existing structure and the ground around and below it could even hold the new load. Enter a soils engineer. If you ever need one, we went with Hollingsworth Associates (https://haigeotech.com/). They were very responsive and made pretty quick work of that process. And I got to dig a hole under the crappy concrete floor in our basement.
Luckily our little 1928 Bungalow house and the soil it was built on is worthy of carrying the load of a new second story without any new foundation work. Sweet!! Big relief since that would have added thousands to the cost of the project.
What else needed to be done to determine our “feasibility” for this project? Glad you asked!
Site survey. We used Aegis Surveying (https://www.facebook.com/aegissurveying/) and they were great to work with!
Asbestos and lead testing. It’s required for the permitting process! Definitely recommend Boulder Environmental (https://www.bbb.org/us/co/boulder/profile/asbestos-testing/boulder-environmental-1296-12054033). They were very thorough and we ended up needing them at a couple points in addition to the initial testing, which revealed we had asbestos…lots of asbestos. More on that later.
Sewer scope. The City of Denver wants to know what condition your sewer is in before these big remodel projects. You will have to replace it if it is in poor condition. Ours?! As with our asbestos situation, the story necessitates its own blog post, but you've seen those already!
Digging holes, measuring footings, and giving the soils engineer some places to take a sample.
We got to dig a hole in our basement slab. Luckily that concrete crumbled easily!
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