Submitting for permits can be a very long process. After building my house I felt the permit process was actually the toughest part. Luckily I had a ton of help. I took at least two weeks off work just to get my plans submitted. The county made me jump through endless hoops. Just when I thought I was done, something else would come up. Anyone that has dealt with king county knows what I am talking about. Just don't give up and keep at it. It will eventually work out and soon enough you will be breaking ground. Most banks will want you to have building permits submitted before processing construction loan. This means that you will have to pay for some of the permit upfront. So be prepared to have some money saved for this process. You can get this money back and include it in your construction loan later. I am providing a link to the king county permit application form. This will give you everything you will need to submit for permits in King County. If you are not in king county look up your area and find permit application forms for single family residential buildings. This application link will include legal lot, obtaining a residential building permit and the process, energy residential form, flagging a site, bmp, health department approval, clearing and grading questionnaire, sewer availability, site plan, soil health, and water certificate. Its a good idea to take a look at this even if you are not in king county. Here is the link Single family residential building permit.
Now lets start on your septic permit process. If needed the septic design will have to be submitted with house plans, in order to be considered for building. The permit process for septic designs goes through the department of Health. You will have to pay a septic designer a feasibility cost and additional money for a series of inspections required. So not only are you paying the department of Health to review your design, but also paying the designer his fee for design and inspections. I had to pay my designer $2400 for the design and 864.00 to department of health. Before the designer can submit for the permits, he has to have a CAD (critical area design). I talked about this step in buying property and hopefully its something you have had done. Now not only do they want a CAD with this application, but they also want a certificate of water availability. This is a certificate from the water district showing that you have access to water. It shows the water main size your connected too, how far the nearest fire hydrant is, and rate of flow. This info is also very helpful in determining whether or not your house will need fire sprinklers. Don't forget about your runoff water from gutters and driveway. Yes you will be expected to have a professional design for drainage and runoff, even if you have acreage. This process made me completely understand why people get so frustrated building in King County. Make sure you read Drainage BMP Permit Process. It could save you a ton of money. Next you will need a rough site plan on where your house will be located on property and the size of residence. This will help the designer determine where the septic will be on property. Most likely the designer will want where the house sits flagged out, so he can make an accurate design. Now I moved where my drain field was going to be placed in order to save money on the system design. The lower part of my property was where I wanted my drain field. I found out that I would need a recirculating sand filter system if I wanted to put my drain field here. I changed the location of the drain field and saved about 8,000 dollars on the system. So work with your designer and ask questions to lower the cost of your system. Make sure the designer takes multiple perk hole sample spots and not just the location that is ideal for you.
Now this is also the time you will have to figure out how your going to heat your house. Are you going with an electric furnace, gas furnace, heat pump, air conditioner, etc? I decided this was an area that I was going to spend money and get a good system, because I planned on being in the house for a long time. If I was building a house to sell I would have not gone with such an expensive system. I had a heat pump installed with a backup gas furnace. This way if the power is out, I still can have heat with a smaller generator. In the summer I have air conditioning. The cost that I save on power is enormous compared to the cost I was paying at my old house with an electric furnace. Now its a good idea to figure this out. Not only are you ahead of schedule but most permit processes have a sheet you have to fill out called system heating size. This looks a little complicated at first but its actually very simple. Take it to one of your hvac contractors and have them fill it out for you.
Now that you have your septic design approved from department of health and you have everything included in Single Family residential application you can start the process of submitting for building permits.
This is where you will want to be constantly taking notes. Earlier I mentioned Steve Beck with a link to his site http://newneighborhoods.com/
Steve gave me the best advice I got from anyone for submitting for permits. He told me to get a daily planner with a calendar in it. Here is a link for one http://amzn.to/1TcH6mS. He told me to document everything I deal with through the county. This included phone calls or in person. I would document the name of the person, the time, date, and what they told me. He told me to constantly call them and ask where my permits were in the process. He said "one day turns into a week, 1 week turns into 1 month, and 1 month can quickly turn into a year. " Meaning that if you do not stay on top of the permit process, they can sit on it for a very long time. So I called and bugged the shit out of them for the entire process of my permits being processed. This came in very handy when a person from the county would tell me one thing and I would get different info from another. I would look in my daily planner, tell them who I talked with, the date and time, and pretty much call them on there bullshit. Pretty soon they new me and wanted to be done with my permits, so I would quit bugging them. I was always respectful and for the most part calm. Just know that once you turn your permits in, you must keep track of where they are in the process. If it looks like your permits are not moving along, get in contact with a supervisor. Introduce yourself politely and explain that you are sorry for the inconvenience. Explain that you are excited to start the process of building and ask for an estimated time the permits will be done. I found that "killing them with kindness" works better then being a dick. If you piss the wrong person off they can easily make your life hell. Always be polite and friendly to the people in charge of your permits.
Another thing to mention is I pulled all my other permits. This means going to King County Public Health and filling for Gas and Plumbing permit. For Gas you will need to know all your fixtures like furnace, range, water heater, bbq, and fireplace. Same for plumbing. You need to know the amount of fixtures throughout house. When you pull your own permits be careful to state you are doing the work. They have a form you must fill out stating that you personally are doing the work. The reason for this is so contractors cant just pull permits without license. This is of course only if you are going to do the work yourself. This does not mean you cant have help from others. I saved a lot of money not using company's. This being said, I also paid my help. Much lower overall costs. If you are planning on contracting out your plumbing to a company, then don't worry about pulling the permits. I also did this with my electrical. To pull the permits for electrical its through labor and industries. Same thing you state you are doing the work yourself. Make sure you pull the permit for your septic electrical also. Again if you are contracting out to a company, do not worry about pulling permits. This should be on them.