April Passive Solar Home Project Update

Hi Solar Friend,

I know it’s been quite a while since I’ve updated my BLOG with our progress. Not much to tell until today…

We are still working on closing on the property so that we can begin putting in the utilities and upgrading the road for access. So, until today, there just wasn’t much to tell accept it’s a long waiting game in this recession and hard to find financing world.

We did get a new survey done before the snow fell heavy here, more than 4 feet this year. We thought we were all ready to go…

We knew that one of the neighbors didn’t like the survey as he thought that he owned about 3 feet more than he did. But, after we did the legal letter swapping, he knew that he had not a leg to stand on and we thought it was done with. The key word was thought!

We went out to take some photos now that the snow is gone and spring is working it’s magic. What we found made us very sad.

You see, not only did the original neighbor pull up the survey stakes on the west side, but the neighbor on the south side got into the act and used his tractor to plow right over the stake and the concrete filled vinyle fence post that marked it. See the photo:

Survey Stake Vandles

Now, we are fighting with 2 neighbors and they will both have a bill coming from the surveyor of approximately $1200 to redo the survey of the property.

(I look for that to go to small claims court in at least one of the two)

The only bright point is that since we haven’t closed and it’s still in the other guys name, the battle is technically with him and not with us. Hopefully that will be enough that once the property is marked again, fenced off and sold to us, they will not hold the grudge over our heads too.

Some people just don’t know how to act and it seems that even just 3 feet of land is something that brings out the worst in people.

Our lesson learned and our word to the wise…

If you are buying open land that has never been fenced off and has liberal boundries, then plan for some good old fashioned scuffling to happen over who owns what. Avoid it if you can, but if the property is really what you want, you are just going to have to do like they did in the old west and fight for what is yours.

Until next time,

Wes Waddell
www.BuildingSolarNews.info  BLOG

Tags: active, building, home, passive, property, solar