Marc Alan Goodman’s Building Strange Weather Blog: Plumbing Inspections aka More Delays

Latest in the “Building Strange Weather Blog” series by producer/engineer and studio owner Marc Alan Goodman. Click to start at Step 1: Finding A New Home; #2: Design; #3: Waiting For Permits (Part 1) and #4: (Part 2); and #5: Stops & Starts, #6: Demolition, #7: The Structural Work, #8 The Joys of Home Ownership, #9 Rain, Rain, Rain, and #10 A Control Room Is Born.

If you’ve been following this blog you may be wondering why there hasn’t been an entry in about four months. I promise you I am no less confused about the issue.

Last time we spoke Tony and his crew were up from North Carolina framing out our control room. We had to tear out the HVAC that had previously been installed and redo it, but this time the crew did a great job and it looks awesome. Shortly after they left we got ready to call for a plumbing inspection. The city needs to make sure that all of the new gas and waste pipes for the building are up to code before we’re allowed to seal up the walls. However this has caused a bit of a problem.

The studio plumbing is finally roughed in, waiting for an inspection that seems like it will never come

When our plumber went to finalize his work for the inspection, he realized that there was a mistake in the riser diagram.

When you call for an inspection you need plans that are stamped by the NY Department of Buildings. They’re supposed to fully review the documents before they stamp them, but occasionally things slip by, just like they slipped by us. The riser diagram is essentially a table of contents for the plans. It’s on the top of the first page, and is a quick overview of all the work that is being done. Apparently that’s as far as the inspector will usually look. Since ours had a mistake we had to go back and file it again.

Then came the trouble. Due to the holidays, communication slowed down significantly, and it took us almost all the way until Christmas to get the necessary changes fully sorted out. The whole thing is complicated by the fact that we essentially have three separate jobs, one for the ground floor studio, one for the apartment upstairs, and one pertaining to the boilers. The plans for the first floor need to show the work from the second floor as “existing” rather than “new” on the riser diagram, and vice versa, and it’s unclear how the DoB wants the boilers to play in. This has caused endless confusion for my expediter who I personally believe may not be paying very good attention. In early January we filed the new paperwork and sat on our hands waiting for the city to get back to us.

At the beginning of February the stamped documents came back to us, and my contractor realized that the new boilers weren’t listed on the first and second floor plumbing plans! Nick (the contractor) assured me that the inspector would most likely fail us, so we went back to the drawing board. This time I got myself, Nick and Hannah (the architect) in a room together to nail down all the details. I figured we could do it by email the first time and it bit me in the face, so this time I made sure to be on top of it. Everything got cleared up, and we were ready to submit a second set.

Once again the documents went to my expediter and we sat around for a month while they went who-knows-where. Last Tuesday I got an email saying that we had an appointment with the Department of Buildings to get the new sets approved. But when Tuesday came around and I asked about it I found out that the person in charge of reviewing our plans had just been hired and this was their first week. So the DoB needed to postpone.

One week later I’m still waiting to hear from my expediter about when our new appointment will be. Once it happens we should be able to call for the inspections and get this all over with. The biggest fork in the eye is that the inspector likely won’t even show up! When you call for a plumbing inspection in Brooklyn you set a date and time. If the inspector can make it he or she inspects, but if not you automatically pass. I’ve been told that they only show up about half of the time.

I can only imagine that if I had an additional couple dozen thousand dollars or so to spend on an expeditor we never would have had this problem. As far as I can tell the expeditor system is simply what replaced good old-fashioned bribery in this town. The more you pay your expeditor the faster you can get your job done, and if you don’t have one at all, and you’re going to the Department of Buildings hat-in-hand, don’t ever expect to work.

Marc Alan Goodman's Strange Weather is a recording studio currently located in East Williamsburg pending the new build-out in Williamsburg proper.

As for right now I’m just learning to be patient.

I look around at all the other construction in the neighborhood and plenty of places have been working just as long as I have, if not longer. So I’m keeping my head up. The only worry right now is scheduling. Once the inspection is over with we can close up the studio’s ceiling and frame the iso booths and lounge, which means bringing Tony and his crew back up from NC. However they’re working on a number of studios right now (Tony just informed me he’s headed to Dubai for two weeks to work on one of Wes’s new designs), and I’m hoping that won’t cause more down-time.

There is good news. Daniel Schlett’s been working his tail-bone off at the current studio, which is keeping us above water money-wise. We’ve worked with a ton of really great artists, and we’re busier than ever. If there’s one thing that makes me feel good about this whole project it’s the fact that if we keep booking more gigs at the rate we have been over the last two years we’ll be completely saturated by the time we move.

– Marc Alan Goodman
strangeweathersound [at] gmail dot com
http://strangeweatherbrooklyn.com

Marc Alan Goodman is a producer/engineer who’s worked with artists such as Jolie Holland, Marc Ribot Shudder to Think, Dub Trio, Normal Love, Alfonso Velez, Angel Deradoorian and Pink Skull.

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