750 for residential lot, 2500+ commercial.
If the think the price is bad it's a good thing they don't know how big of a joke the entire thing is to begin with.
Logic? No. How about you price them at $75 a month for a year.?ÿ
Good idea, but they would have to wait 12 months before I was paid in full. ?ÿIn case the results turned out to be ??bad news.?
I have done enough stupid things in my life to make me an expert on identifying stupidity.?ÿ Choosing to live, whether in an existing house or by building a new one, in a known flood plain for what you hope to be many years is just plain stupid if there is any other choice available.
But, we are free people who can make our own choices.?ÿ We are allowed to be stupid.?ÿ If I can make money off of stupid people doing stupid things, I will do so, but I will not encourage them in their planning.
Had a repeat client ask me to meet him at his office, which is out on one of his many farms, far off the road and on the banks of a stream.?ÿ He was considering building a new house several hundred feet from the office on the same creek bank.?ÿ It appeared from online research that the BFE was probably two to three feet higher than the elevation where his office was located and probably five to six feet higher than the elevation where he had indicated he wanted to build his house.?ÿ While meeting with him in the office I asked if he had ever had water in the office.?ÿ He reported that had happened several times.?ÿ They had large sliding glass doors on both sides and would open them up before evacuating so the water could flow on through unimpeded.
The fellow is brilliant in business matters.?ÿ He is probably worth upwards of $100 million.?ÿ But, when it comes to emotional/personal choices he is not too bright.?ÿ He could easily fund building an all new home every time the current one gets flooded.
I??m in the same boat as Just a Surveyor on price here in Athens, Ga.
Elevation certifications seem to come in waves. ?ÿMost of the ones we complete end up with the house usually a few feet above the flood plain. Did one this past week where the flood plain just touched in a ditch on the edge of the property. The basement was 10 feet above the flood plain.
In the last year we revisited a neighborhood where the new fema maps lowered the flood elevation about 15 feet effectively removing 5 houses from the flood plain.
Our client told his neighbors and we sent information as well. We got one call. Of course, another Surveyor may have underbid us.
Also, I??ve just about quit doing elevation certificates where there is no published BFE.
Choosing to live, whether in an existing house or by building a new one, in a known flood plain for what you hope to be many years is just plain stupid if there is any other choice available.
You wouldn't believe what developers can do with a swamp in Florida. ?????ÿ
A small percentage of my clients have to worry about flooding.
I simply do not do them because there is no way the equipment required to do them would get paid for with what is being charged to do them plus the frequency they are being ordered.
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I simply do not do them because there is no way the equipment required to do them would get paid for with what is being charged to do them plus the frequency they are being ordered.
What equipment??ÿ Does it require a digital level??ÿ Automatic levels are cheap as gear goes.
The relationship between flood insurance rating and actual risk varies widely. The mandate for FEMA is to establish a repeatable rating with a reasonable relationship to risk. The country cannot afford the work required to do both much better than we do. I contend we (as a whole) are already subsidizing irresponsible building more than we should. If we pushed the cost to those who are creating it, nobody would need flood insurance. Our riparian areas would also enjoy greater health..
There are very few reliable BM here.
While many are listed, they have not been preserved and have been obliterated by forest production and highway maintenance.
The many cross country level runs were done along those small gauge rail systems that were replaced by vehicles and all the rails and ties have been pulled out with perhaps two crossing structures in place.
The most available elevations are those typical ground elevations shown on USGS topo maps.
For the most part, there are very few people that have challenged building in overflow areas and have had to close shop and dry out until the structures were approved for occupation.
I got a guy that has a couple of Trimble R10s that I call upon when there is a project that elevations are required.
Had a job last Summer with no FEMA provided BFE. We can check with the State Division of Water Resources and get a BFA that FEMA generally accepts as OK to consider to be the BFE until better data comes along. My experience has shown the BFA's are very conservative figures, meaning higher than what a FEMA BFE might be. In this one case I was told they were still working on this specific area and would provide me no number to use. I ended up scaling off the current FEMA map and chose a number that I thought would be close. Roughly six months later I received an email from DWR with their newly-derived BFA. My letter to the bank had stated a distance from the apparent edge of the flood plain to the planned location of the new structure and a general number of feet higher than the assumed flood plain. I did not state that we had carried in a known elevation from a benchmark three miles distant using GPS gear, only the rough differential being uphill. That had satisfied the bank. The number we were provided six months later was within two tenths of my assumed number that I never shared with anyone.
As you pointed out, this was far more work than should be necessary. The invoice to the client was probably triple what it should have been. I don't have to worry about ever doing work for that young man in the future.
John Stossel frequently relates the story of his Cape Hateras beach house that was damaged by hurricanes and rebuilt with FEMA money 3 or 4 times. Freely admitting that he never would have bought the place if he couldn't get insurance, and would not have been able to get insurance if not for FEMA.
An OPUS derived elevation is allowed these days.
I would not buy GPS just to do elevation certificates, but once I have it I'll be glad to use it. You don't have to make your fully costed rate every minute you work to make money. You have to limit the time you spend making nothing.
Naturally, the more you can make that fully costed rate the better.
Yes, that is correct about OPUS derived elevations.
I am not going to hire my GPS guy and pay him for his time and effort just to fill out a Flood Certification when I can work on another project and have more profit.
I let the GPS guy get the job and run with it and we are both better off.
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