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A fence job in Galveston after Hurricane Ike taught me to double-check my post depth in flood zones.
I lost a whole line of cedar posts in a 2010 storm surge because I set them at the standard 2 feet, not knowing the local code required 3 feet for coastal areas, so what's the craziest local rule you've had to follow on a job?
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james_ramirez7mo ago
Had a client in an old historic district once. The town made us match the original 19th century mortar color and sand mix for a brick repair. We had to send samples to a lab to get it right. The whole job got held up for two weeks over the shade of gray. Cost them a fortune.
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loganbaker7mo ago
Yeah, that's the kind of thing that makes historic districts a real pain, @james_ramirez. People don't realize how strict those rules can get. It's not just the color, sometimes they want the exact same type of sand from a local pit that closed a hundred years ago. You end up hunting for some special supplier who charges ten times the normal price. The whole process can turn a simple fix into a museum restoration project, and the homeowner is just stuck paying for it all.
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ryan_price6mo ago
Man, that's brutal. I mean, local codes can get so weirdly specific sometimes. It's like they forget people actually have to build the stuff.
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