A New Street in Glen Rose, Texas

This new street is in our new subdivision, Bluebird Park. Our new street is concrete instead of asphalt. The concrete is thick and well laced with steel. The concrete men were there at 5:00 am and I was there to oversee the construction. We were placing concrete until the evening. The name of the street is Birdsong Court. To see a video of our new street, click here! Now we are doing mowing brush and tree trimming.

We will be building 10 homes there nestled near large Native Pecan Trees. There is a giant pecan tree at the end of the court, under which there will be a neighborhood park. In addition to this park there is about an acre and half that will not be developed and can be used for gardens or orchards.

We’ve added some more floor plans. Our original thinking was to build homes from 1050 square feet to 1400. Now I have plans for a little bigger, up to 1750 square feet. Also I’ve added a 2 story plan with the master bedroom downstairs, a computer nook and plenty of storage.

All of our homes will be built to be energy efficient. We’ve won awards for our energy smart homes and these homes will be built to the same standard as our award winning homes.

Our Model of our Model Home

Ronnie at R Godfrey Homes

We thought we might make a model home and we did. Normally when I say a Model home I mean something you can walk into. This time however, we made a gerbil sized model. It is 1/2"= 1 Foot. The idea behind this was to give folks a chance to see something instead of a sheet of paper, to give the floor plan a little more life.

We will display this dollhouse at Bill Vineyard's office at Paluxy Realty in Glen Rose. Give him a call if you wish to stop by to see it. 254 396 5580

Overlooked Fire Hazard!

Recently a neighbor of ours had a fire in their home. That is what prompted me to write this article. An often overlooked fire hazard is the build-up of lint in a dryer vent or exhaust. The dryer vent in most homes is a 4” tube, usually made of flexible material for the part between the dryer and the wall and rigid material inside the wall and up in the attic. As your clothes rotate in the heated dryer, small pieces of lint are blown into this tube. These can adhere to the sides of the tube and build up in thickness slowing down the drying process as well as creating a fire hazard.

 According to the U.S. Fire Administration for every 1,000 fires caused by lint build-up 1.8 lives are lost, over 30 people are injured and damages to the home average over $9,600 (see URL below for more information).

Not to be missed is the fact that the dryer will not work at its peak performance when the vent is clogged and will cause it to take longer to dry your clothes and drive up your utility bills. This was happening in our home with Suz telling me that something was wrong with our dryer. Our home is 6 years old and cleaning the vent didn’t occur to me until our neighbor’s fire. I bought a lint cleaning device, ran the powered brush up the vent and vacuumed out a bucket full of lint. Now we can dry clothes in half the time.

As a service to our community, I’m offering to clean vents of widows and single women at no cost. When I do this, for your comfort, I will bring another person with me, probably someone from our church. This takes about 30 minutes and as soon as I’m finished we will leave. There are no strings attached no cost, no sales pitch, and no obligation, just allow us to show God’s love to do this and expect nothing in return. You can contact me at 817 988 0149, email me at ronnie@RGodfreyHomes.com or call First Baptist at 254 897 2351.

The equipment that I use: http://www.linteater.com/ and the URL mentioned above.

http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v13i7.pdf

How to Water Your Foundation the Right Way

This is the second in series of videos created by R Michael Gray, a Texas Professional Structural Engineer whose specialty is slab-on-ground foundations for single family houses. While Mr. Gray talks about slab foundations in Houston, the same fundamentals apply to the DFW area. In this video, Mr. Gray demonstration how to construct an automatic foundation watering system with pieces of hardware found at your local home improvement center like Home Depot or Lowes for $50 or less. The video is a little over 10 minutes so watch it when you have the time. 

Automatic Foundation Watering System

Water and Your Foundation

Greeting!

With the hot dry summer upon us, taking care of your home's foundation should be one of your top priorities.  After all, for most people, their home is their biggest investment.  And not taking care of your foundation can cost you tens of thousands of dollars.

With that said, I am going to post a series of videos created by R Michael Gray, a Texas Professional Structural Engineer whose specialty is slab-on-ground foundations for single family houses. While Mr. Gray talks about slab foundations in Houston, the same fundamentals apply to the DFW area.

The first video speaks to the fundamentals of slab-on ground foundations. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me!


Now enjoy this 7 minute video: How Texas Slab Foundations Work

Bluebird Park - Final Plat Approved

Greetings!

Well, we have some good news, Glen Rose City Council approved the final plat for Bluebird Park on July 9th. This means that we can finally get down to developing the land and building houses. If this seemed like a long drawn out process, it was! It involved 2 reviews and approval by Planning and Zoning and 2 reviews and approval by City Council. This amounted to about 4 month's time!

So as my wife Suz always asks, what now? We are going to bring in fill dirt to the fill in the low spots, bring in the utilities, pay the surveyor to mark off & survey the land, and build the road. It will still be a while but we are getting closer.

Why Does It Cost So Much?!

Hi!
This is Suz Godfrey writing the blog today. I thought that I would write the blog since I am new in the land development business (Ronnie’s been doing it for years & years). I was simply amazed at the costs and studies involved to develop land and get approval from the City of Glen Rose. So here goes - hold onto your hats and calculators!

In an earlier blog, Ronnie wrote about getting the Preliminary Platt approved through Planning & Zoning (P&Z). Here is what we needed for the first of the four approvals (P&Z, City Council, P&Z, and City Council):

   1.      Engineering – this has to be done by a licensed engineer and costs about $2,500

 We asked a professional to design the following – he priced it at $8,000

   2.     A Streetscape
   3.     Conceptual Floor Plans -  gives a concept or idea of what the floor plans will be like

   4.    Plat with rooftops, trees, parks, etc
   5.     Deed Restrictions

 As a result Ronnie spent many, many hours learning how to create the streetscape and plat with rooftops. Ronnie already draws his own floor plans so that was not a big hurdle. And he has experience writing deed restrictions. I contributed by coloring in the plat with rooftops using Photoshop. This was also a learning experience for me since I needed to make it transparent enough to be able to see the rooftop lines on the plat.

 Then there was the $125 fee each time we had to appear before Planning & Zoning.

 Ok, so we got approved through P&Z and City Hall. Then we went back to P&Z on June 18th for their second approval (which we got – but don’t forget the $125 P&Z notification fee). On July 9th we are scheduled to go to City Council for their second and final approval. That will make 4 approvals in all!

For the July 9th City Council meeting we will need the following studies done by a licensed engineer for about $12,000.

 1.  Drainage Study - determines where the rainfall will go
 2.  Utility Layout – determines where the sewer line & water line need to be installed
 3.  Road Cross-section – specs on the road

 Let’s not forget the surveyor who initially surveyed the land and will do some of the preliminary work for the engineer reports at a cost of $3,000.

 So as of our final approval, we will have spent $15,250 and we haven’t even done any physical work to the land – like putting in the street! Don’t forget this number could have been $23,250 had we hired the professional to do our streetscape and floor plans!

 Ok, so once we actually put in the street, here is the breakdown of those costs:

 1.  Road work - $50,000 to put in the actual road which will only be about 200 feet long with a 100 foot long cul-de-sac
 2.  Dirt work - $2,000 to fill in some uneven spots in the land
 3.  Utilities –$20,000 to bring the water and sewer lines to each lot

 Putting in the road and utilities will cost about $72,000. So altogether the cost to develop the land that will have only 10 lots will cost $87,250! This does NOT include the price of the land or putting in sidewalks (which is done at the time the house is built). So maybe now you can understand why the price of lots costs and housing is so high! I know it was an enlightening experience for me!

Bluebird Park Update

Slowly but surely we have made progress getting approval for our new community - Bluebird Park.  The process to get a zoning change and community development approved in Glen Rose is a bit lengthy. First you need approval from the Planning & Zoning (P&Z) Committee, then City Council then back to P&Z and finally back to City Council.   So far we have gotten the first approval from P&Z and City Council. We are scheduled to go back to P & Z on June 18^th. . Each time we go to P&Z there is a $125 processing charge.

The property is getting cleared of tree branches and other unwanted articles left on the property by the previous owner.  Once we have final approval from the city of Glen Rose, hopefully on July 9^th, we will put in the utilities and the road.  We plan to start construction on houses in mid July. If you know anyone that might be interested in purchasing our energy efficient cottages, please tell them about our new community Bluebird Park.

Thank you for visiting!

Ronnie G.

Energy Star Builder

Bluebird Park

It has always been my fondest hope to put in an extremely affordable housing community in the city of Glen Rose. At last it looks like this may become a reality.

Many months ago we were able to purchase a small parcel land on Gunshot Road. This is the road right off of Highway 67. A Texaco station is on the corner. We are in the process of getting the property re-zoned to a planned development (PD) and readying the land to build new homes.

I am drawing the floor plans. The new houses will be from about 1000 square feet to 1400 square feet. We are hoping that the new houses will cost under $150,000 so that they will be affordable for firemen, police officers, and teachers and other people that serve our community. Naturally they will be energy efficient! Thereby keeping the utility bills low.

Below is the site plan. You can see that we plan to plant an orchard. Right now we are considering Pear trees, Pomegranate trees, and fig bushes. Nothing is definite or planted as yet. But there are about 13 native pecan trees in the open community area.

We invite you to go to our website to learn more. We will be posting the progress of the development both on here and on Facebook.

Here is a link to Bluebird Park.

And here is a link to our Bluebird Park Homes  Homes:

Thanks for visiting! Come again soon!