Nizzle

Seems like a common sense issue. The technical fact that the city owns the soil aside, would you really want your neighbor to have a 60ft exposed hole in their front yard? In a world where in certain areas you can be fined for not mowing your lawn or for having junker cars littering the place, I don't see this as a big stretch.

The idea that you can do what you want on your own property really only goes so far. Where do you draw the line? I think most would say that if you break the law, it doesn't matter whether you are doing so on your own property or not. It certainly doesn't (and shouldn't!) let you get away with murder. If there is a law against having 60ft holes dug by amateurs (and I'm sure there are, for obvious safety reasons), then there's no reason this should be exempt.

Have you ever tried to or thought about modifying your home? You don't just go and do it. The last place I lived in was a converted barn. It looked just like a home, and it was a home. However, the main room was very large and had a steepled roof and upstairs loft which was a bedroom. When this was a barn (long, long ago) that was where they stored hay, and the access to it was a ladder. The original owner who made it a house added a staircase. Well, one day an inspector came for reasons I am not sure of (as I only rented the place), and decided that the stairs were (a) done without getting a permit, and (b) not constructed according to code. Those stairs were destroyed and a ladder put back. Now, I found this to be extremely irritating, as you might imagine, but it demonstrates the simple principle that the city has a VERY strong influence on what you can an cannot do on your property.

If they come in and say my house has to be wheelchair accessible, I might gripe. But many of the codes exist to normalize construction procedures and standards for safety reasons. The precise spacing of nails, the type used, how many were used. These things are codified, and historically for good reason.

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Nizzle