The towns, and why the rules differ between them
This is the part of a basement job that is genuinely local. Not the product, the paperwork and the pipe.
Waterproofing advice is usually written as though a basement in Saginaw and a basement in Midland were the same problem with the same rules. They are not, and the difference is not marketing. It is ordinance text.
A footing drain that the City of Saginaw expressly permits to discharge into the sanitary sewer is the same connection the City of Midland is paying homeowners to remove. Saginaw Charter Township publishes a flat fee formula for its permits while the city next door does not publish one at all. Frankenmuth does not run its own building department, and instead shares a code authority with three other communities that also issues county soil erosion permits for two counties. Bridgeport's building counter is open for two and a half hours a day.
None of that shows up in a national cost calculator, and all of it affects what your job costs and how long it takes.
The pages below cover the six towns where the differences are sharpest. Beyond them the site also covers Essexville, Freeland and Tittabawassee Township, Bridgeport, Thomas Township, Carrollton, Buena Vista, St. Charles and Auburn, and the same questions apply: who inspects, where the water may go, and what the ground is doing.
If you already know which of the four jobs you are looking at, the town page will tell you who has to be asked about it.
- Bay City The clearest published permit rule in the region, and a perched water table.
- Frankenmuth A shared code authority for four communities, and a soil named after the town.
- Midland The Footing Drain Disconnection Program, and two floods that explain it.
- Saginaw Township A published permit formula, and a floodplain desk of its own.
- Saginaw Combined sewers, a 1958 footing drain rule and a 2002 downspout deadline.
- Zilwaukee The village with a clay soil series named after it, 35 to 60 percent clay.