County approves building codes

Consistency and energy efficiency are key

The Board of County Commissioners formally adopted the 2009 International Building Codes on Tuesday, April 19. After much discussion at a previous public hearing on April 5, the county is implementing a $250 non-refundable permit application fee, adopting a new fee schedule and requiring insulation with an R-value of 49. Visual inspections will still be allowed to assess energy efficiency compliance, but the county plans to reassess the way it measures square footage in the near future.

Under the new permit fee schedule, the builder of a 2,000-square-foot home with a 576-square-foot garage valued at approximately $217,000 would pay $1,849.72. That’s an increase of almost $200 from $1,651.93. A 4,000-square-foot home valued at approximately $426,000 would see an increase of about $490, to approximately $3,312.
The table, created by the International Code Council (ICC), assumes that the proportionate cost of inspecting a large home is less than for a smaller home. Richard Karas, former chairman of the Gunnison County Planning Commission, believes the fees are excessively regressive. He addressed the commissioners at the April 5 hearing.
“A smaller home requires less heating, air conditioning, lighting, and the cost of wiring and piping and so forth is less,” Karas said. “I would argue there is some economy of scale as you go from small to large, but I don’t think it’s as great a scale as the current fee structure reflects.
In response to Karas’s concerns, commissioner Hap Channell calculated that the fee for a $250,000 home would equate to .83 percent of the home’s value, where it would be .43 percent for a $2,500,000 home. He posed the question to the board, should the scale be less regressive? Both commissioner Phil Chamberland and county manager Matthew Birnie suggested that the fee does not need to scale up or down according to home value the same way that a tax might.
“The bottom line is that field staff doesn’t have to go out to the home that much more for a larger house. So if the premise is to pay for the cost of work, then anecdotally, the size of the home would increase the fee some, but not exponentially,” Chamberland said.
Eric Jansen, a building official with the city of Gunnison, noted that the fee schedule tends to work in a builder’s favor. The home value calculated through the building codes is often lower than the value identified by the builders.
“The value typically comes up a lot less than the quote on the application, so right there, there’s already a break for the fee being planned on. There’s a cost break right off the bat by using national averages,” he said.
While the board ultimately agreed to proceed with the new fee schedule, methods for calculating the square footages used to determine the home’s value raised some concern. County staff currently measures from exterior walls to avoid complications created by variations in wall thickness. But newer building practices designed to increase a home’s energy efficiency use thicker walls. The board wondered, does ignoring wall thickness create a financial disincentive to use energy-efficient practices? The livable space might be smaller in a home with thicker walls, but the homeowner could pay higher permit fees based on a higher square footage.
“The city has a simple way of getting at wall thickness,” Channell said. “Anything additional beyond six inches is not included, and I would like to see for the purpose of evaluation that same language be included [in the 2009 building codes].”
But changing the calculation would have implications beyond the 2009 building codes, impacting the Land Use Resolution and linkage fees. County staff and commissioners were in agreement that a reevaluation should be handled as a separate item at a future meeting. In the meantime, however, the board opted to increase effectiveness of insulation in spite of staff recommendations to leave the current requirement, R-38, in place.
“Other jurisdictions are already using the 49 factor,” commissioner Paula Swenson said. “It would be better for us to be consistent, to delete that amendment and go on with R-49. I understand costs of building are going up… but to be consistent is the best way.”
The board also noted that better insulation improves energy efficiency of homes. Channell said that while it might take 20 years to recoup costs at current energy prices, those costs are likely to go up. Encouraging this type of energy efficiency shaped much of the board’s discussion, including the decision to retain the option of visual inspections to assess a home’s energy efficiency.
Both the Carbon Policy Task Force and the Planning Commission have recommended blower door tests as the most effective method for measuring a home’s efficiency. But as Andris Zobs, executive director of the Office for Resource Efficiency pointed out, “There’s lot of value to visual inspections. It provides an opportunity to look at the method in which air barriers are put together and the insulation at a point in the project when changes can still be made.”
The board agreed, and the Building codes were adopted April 19 with no further discussion.