Really picky building inspector!

[Black Forest]

I had an old barn on our property that I kinda wrecked with my excavator. I always seemed to be bumping into some part of the barn. I used my excavator to load round bales into the barn. It was much faster than using a tractor. The original barn was nearly three hundred years old and while the actual structural beams where still in great shape a lot of the supports for the roof where not in great shape. So I asked the local building inspector if I needed a permit to repair the barn. Germany is really anal about building any kind of building. It takes two years to get a building permit in most cases. So being the industrious guy I am I set about repairing the barn.
As you can see the barn is in pretty bad shape. In the next photo I show you the repair in progress. The old boards you see propped up has the electrical panel mounted on the other side. That is in the lower right corner of the barn in the first picture.

The last picture shows what is left of the old barn with the electrical panel and outlets still mounted to the old wall.

So the picky building inspector stopped by the other day and looked at my "repaired" barn. He wasn't impressed at all with me telling him it was still the old barn. You can see the old barn right here with me pointing to the electrical panel. I did tell him maybe I got a little carried away with the remodel. I showed him pictures of the old barn and he agreed it needed to go but I should have gotten a permit to build a NEW GOD DAMN BARN. I told him it is the same dimensions on the same stone foundation that I poured a new footer to encase the old stone one. Imagine him rolling his eyes at this statement. Then he asked me if this is how it gets done in Texas. I just smiled. He told me he would get back to me on the outcome!

What a fussy guy!

[Lew Hartswick]

Maybe you should have left a little bigger "piece" of the old barn attached to the entrance panel. :-)
...lew...

[vectorwarbirds]

They call that a California remodel where I come from😎

[mickeyf]

In these parts they spell it out. Greater than some percentage (which I don't remember) is no longer a "repair". But, I think I'd tend to agree with the inspector on this one. It looks like only a tiny fraction of a percentage of the old barn is still there.

[chipmaker4130]

BF, I think you were wonderfully creative! Any inspector worth his salt will piss and moan outwardly, smile inwardly and grant your classification of 'repair'. Well done!

For some people its all about the letter of the law, compliance and authority. The reality is that the underlying intent concerns safety and appearance and you've obviously covered those.

[reggie_obe]

Maybe leaving an exterior wall up until the new wall covered it would have satisfied him.
Barring that, maybe employ the manure spreader on his vehicle until he complies.

[MikeL46]

In CA they usually rebuild the back half first, then knock down the front half and rebuild that. The county is ok with that, but not with a a knock down and rebuild.

Maybe your mistake was in even asking a question first. Are going to reuse the old siding? At least make it look old.

Mike

[MikeWI]

I watched a boat builder on Youtube "repair" a boat, by using the original parts to replace every single piece of the boat. Somehow it's still considered to be the same boat!

[Paul Alciatore]

All I can say is I hope he doesn't make you tear it down before getting the permit and starting over.

I AM in Texas and I wouldn't try that here. Good luck with him.

As for that excavator, sounds like you earned the moniker "clumsy bastard". Do be more careful with it in the future.

PS: I lived and worked in a small Iowa town for some years with many farms nearby. The normal thing there was to let the old barns just rot until they fell over. I don't think they ever repaired them there or even applied a single drop of paint. A tax thing, I believe.

[Black Forest]

They won't give me too much grief over the barn. I won't even get a reprimand or fine. They will just tell me to TRY not to do it again. With everything we did to help out the community during the Corona pandemic I have earned a lot of Brownie points! I don't expect anything from them for what we did to help people but it won't hurt me either. Besides, it looks much better now. Note the big steel center post. The contractor looked at the old barn before we tore it down. When he was specking that center post he said to make it out of HEA I beam. Then he looked at me and said I better make that out of HEB to make it Bruce proof! I frowned at him even though I absolutely deserved it.

[Paul Alciatore]

Are you sure that new one is in the same place? Seems like there are a lot more trees in the first photo.

[chipmaker4130]

Are you sure that new one is in the same place? Seems like there are a lot more trees in the first photo.

Are you sure the photo is from the same angle?

[barracudajoe]

I've been told that here in Oregon no permit is required for an agricultural building. I didn't bother to get one for my tractor shed and no ones ever said anything. Yet! A friend of mine built a "hay barn" that had a 1 bdr apartment up stairs and it sure looked like a 3 car garage on the lower level. He stacked hay in one bay and that made it an ag building and the county couldn't do anything about it!

[gellfex]

They did something similar to a rowhouse across the street. Doubled the depth and raised each ceiling by at least 6", but left just enough original something at each stage to get by.

[Edwin Dirnbeck]

In the St louis area ,contractors building new subdivisions do whatever they want. The only time an inspector gets picky ,is when the poor home owner must fix things that never should have passed inspection. Concrete streets are built with NO REBAR.They usually last about 10 years ,and then the taxpayer {me } fixes them. Edwin Dirnbeck