It's amazing that this is already Part 9 of this series! Sitting down to write all of this out shows how much work it took to build our place, and has been great fun to relive each stage. In this part, we'll talk about the hurdles, trials, and troubles we traversed to get our Certificate of Occupancy (CO). Links to Parts 1 - 8 are at the end.

What is a Certificate of Occupancy?

A document issued by your local government, the county in our case, that proves the dwelling has passed inspections and is deemed safe to live in. Without it, you are not legally allowed to live in a dwelling (again, in our county).

Official Requirements

Our county's Final Inspection Checklist was our guide and instructed us what we had to do. Here is what they required for our manufactured home:

From this list, we created our own to-do list to stay on track and mark off as we completed them.

Electrical Work

We had to hire a license electrician to connect the home's breaker box to the meter base. We also had them wire up our well pump system and check all the outlets in the home for any wiring issues. None were found, but they noted a few outlet boxes were loose and one or two outlets looked worn out. I told them I would handle them since I was going to re-do most all of the outlets in the home from the old 1980s outlets to new, tamper resistant outlets.

Once everything was squared away with the wiring, I made a "suicide cord" and connected our generator to the home to provide temporary power. This was vital for us to get the work done. It was getting later in the year and daylight was running thin. Add to this, the fact that I was doing all the work after my day job and I needed all the light I could get!

I am not recommending or condoning the use of a suicide cord. Use at your own risk if you are as dumb as I, and make one!

Plumbing Drain Lines

Our home's drain lines were made from black ABS plastic pipe (standard for mobile homes for the strength of the pipe and strength when moving). The main drain line was 3" coming from the home. Our county allowed anyone to connect the drain lines from the home to the septic tank. After talking with a friend who is a licensed plumber, I had my game plan. I used 4" PVC Schedule 40 pipe to run from the home to the septic tank hookup. I added a clean-out right at the home to comply with plumbing codes, then ran the pipe at a 1/4-inch-per-foot slope to the septic connection.

During this time, we had yet to purchase the many loads of gravel for our driveway, so I was using a homemade tractor of my father in-law's to shuttle items up to the house. I'm sure it looked funny, but it sure beat having to tote these items by hand! His tractor used to be a garden tractor, but over the years he had put a scrape blade on the front, big tires, and a few winches. It was heavy, slow, and pulled anything we could connect to it right up the hill like it was nothing! I stuck to driving up and down on the grass.

Plumbing Supply Lines

With the drain lines completed, we could test out our water supply lines for the first time... and holy crap.

NOT GOOD!

We had leaks everywhere it seemed!

A Tee connection had disconnected under the floor of the bedroom. I had to cut open the underbelly of the house and replace it.

After that, there was another joint that sprung a leak under the front bathroom. Then two at the laundry hookups! One at the supply line, then another at the shutoff valves for the washer. It seemed that hauling this baby 50 miles down the highway did good to stress and break a lot of joints.

Finally, all the water supply line leaks had been replaced and fixed, so we could move on to testing the drain system for leaks. I purchased a pipe plug from amazon and began filling the system. A few minutes into the fill, both toilets were spilling water out from under them. The wax seals on both of them were shot and had to be replaced.

With the plumbing fiasco behind us, we could insulate the water supply lines and finish this part of our list.

Porch Construction

I built our front and back porches for the home. Each porch is 4 feet wide and 6 feet long. I used an online stair tread calculator to guide me through designing and cutting my stair stringers. The porches are set into the ground below the frost line and on top of concrete blocks. They're built with the intention of being replaced for much larger ones later.

There was a little gray area with the county on whether one, two or any handrails would be required. However, I wanted them for the safety of my family, so I built two handrails onto each porch. I also made sure to keep the stairs as wide as possible to make carrying items up/down the stairs easy.

Final Inspection

After nearly 5 months of work on this whole project, we were ready to call for our Final Inspection from the county! I was at work they day of the inspection, and my wife barely missed them. They left a note though...

FAIL!!!

On the Reason for Failure section, they noted two things that we had not run across on any of our research:

Expose both grounding rod tops and the connecting wire.

Expose the one way check valve for the incoming water line from the well.

These were quickly fixed and I called back, fully expecting to have to pay a repeat inspection fee. They let us slide by! He said since we completed the items so quickly (the same day), they would swing by the following day and finish the inspection.

The next day we received the news... PASS!!!

Hooray! We were officially cleared to live in the home! Time to move, right?

NO!

We still had projects to do in the home before we moved in.

"Wait, what?!"

We had projects that we wanted done, but didn't want to put off our CO for. Those are coming up in the next update... Part 10!

Stay Tuned!

Links to previous $20k Homestead posts

/@greenacrehome/the-usd20k-homestead-part-1-land-money-and-math) /@greenacrehome/the-usd20k-homestead-part-2-the-home /@greenacrehome/the-usd20k-homestead-part-3-permits-permits-permits /@greenacrehome/the-usd20k-homestead-part-4-grading-the-land /@greenacrehome/the-usd20k-homestead-part-5-moving-the-house /@greenacrehome/the-usd20k-homestead-part-6-well-drilling /@greenacrehome/the-usd20k-homestead-part-7-septic-system /@greenacrehome/the-usd20k-homestead-part-8-the-grid

Did you like this post? Want to see more?

Smash that upvote and leave me a comment so I know!

The $20k Homestead - Part 9 - Fight for the CO