Today here again that they agreed with the revised plan, so the president , your motion would be to deny the plan, issue the variance on the condition that it be can he rised to correct the plans and adopt the findings and would that be sufficient to address yes, it does. Okay. So that is the motion, then. On that motion, commissioner lazarus. Aye. President honda. Aye. Commissioner aye. And commissioner swig. No. The next item is item 8, item 7 has been continued. Item 8 is peal number 17151. Cheryl coan with Building Department approval. The property is at 76640th avenue, protesting the issuance on august 18, 2017 to carren bentley and Kristina Svensson of an alteration permit, a rooms down addition to existing residence, no new Square Footage added, all work is within existing building footprint, includes new family room, full bath, hallway, new doors and windows. Neck deck and stair in rear yard. Im a single mom. I sincerely want to thank this board and particularly the city of San Francisco for allowing me a voice in this extensive process, and im keenly sympathetic to the young familys need for more space, and im not here to deny the neighbors right to expand, and 95 percent of their contract is not being contested. Moving appliances off a wall and changing deck space is a good start. This short notice has left me scrambling to protect my foundation and the 5 foot, 100yearold concrete retaining wall which i believe to be vibration sensitive which i do not believe to be depicted correctly here. I have contacted geotech firms and have appointments to inspect my property. One firm i have coming has many Years Experience working in these older San Francisco homes and particularly even working on 40th avenue. They specialize in grouting to stablize foundation sand, and i have no idea about the cost yet or how im going to pay for it. What may be unique to this appeal is that there was a 2015 letter to an absentee land lower lord in the sale disclosure documents. When they first purchased, the owners were made aware of my very real concerns, and also, the very real, very intimate nature of the shared walls, particularly with the shared wall between their kitchen and my master bedroom. The architect almost 100 years ago to match uses of these attached home and their intimately shared walls. In this case since 1924, a relatively passively used breakfast nook shares a wall with my master bedroom. It is my belief that the permit focusing on rooms down is misleading as it doesnt affect this changed used of the home from a rarely used breakfast nook to an often used kitchen wall. It has the very real possibility of ruining the liveability of my bedroom. Having spoken to several sound engineers, soundproofing will help the current sound issues and sound waves, but it cant mitigate totally the pounding vibrations of foot traffic or the noise of a door slamming so close to the wall, and due to the 5 foot offset between the lots, foot traffic will literally be right at my head level when i lay in bed. I retire shortly and due to a medical condition, i often need to nap and me have. Sound walls cant mitigate the noise of people walking past. This change to active use is in pe perpetuity and there is no guarantees that any mitigating effects will work. I ask the board to take into consideration the 5 foot offset between lots permitting this deck before permitting this deck as its designed while offering to put in privacy screens is good, the giant wall deck just outside my bedroom on the Property Line does reduce my property privacy and peace of use. Common sense dictates that my home will be diminished forever. Would you want to buy the house with the quiet master bedroom and the good view, or the house that has foot traffic noise along the wall and a large wall outside. Mr. Bentley thanked me for the 2015 letter, saying it allowed him to purchase the home for a lower price and even assigned this letter of 200,000. They stated ne the need for a second story door as an emergency exit and two not having to go through this family room. Both these needs can be readily accomplished by using a different access point, perhaps using some of the savings they reaped. I ask the new design utilize a different design away from the shared wall of my master bedroom. Thank goodness i received a letter from the city. I have been racing to protect my home since i received it. I was indeed upset by the designers statement to me. Its legal, we have the permits, the deck is going up and theres nothing you can do and proceeded to blame city workers for not telling me earlier, which i feel is really the neighbors responsibility during the many months or year of planning. Weve been friendly neighbors. My family doesnt hold big parties. We dont play loud music, and just because one can do something, it doesnt necessarily mean one should do something. Therefore with that thought in mind, i respectfully ask this deck permit be denied and a new deck permit issue be permitted so that two families can living along the shared wall. These changes are in perpetuity. They open their property to future duplexing, and they absolutely do change and impact the future liveability of my home forever. Im not asking about the sun and moon here. I just found out about the project. Ive had to wrap my head around it. Ive had to learn a lot. I do have geotechescoming at my expense, and its taken me thousands of dollars to be here tonight. I have 30 seconds. Id like to show you a couple of pictures. This is my bed and this line is about where the foot traffic would be. Its not a big space, this hallway. This is the breakfast nook just on the other side of my bed, and this line right here represents where my head is in the bed, so putting a door here, even if its 3 feet away, the foot traffic is still inches from the shared wall. Thank you, and youll have time under rebuttal. Thank you. Thank you very much, city of San Francisco. We can hear from the permit holder now. Good evening, and welcome. Hi. My name is did enise menzi andm the owner and designer of the project in question. I am acting as agent for the Property Owners, carren bentley and kristina sfren son. If i had seen a letter prior to obtaining the Building Permit, i would have gladly met with miss cohen to review the plans with her and to explain how the instruct can integrity of her house not be compromised at all. Unfortunately, i was made aware of the letter where miss cohen stated her concerns about any remodelling project adjacent to her home the night after i received an irate phone call from her the day before she filed an appeal. During the phone conversation i listened patiently with her concerns, sympathized with her. I too live in a row house in the sunset, and totally understand the noise and privacy issues. You can hear everything through the adjacent walls. I also told her that the proposed deck was legal and approved by planning, and that i had several solutions to help mitigate the privacy and noise issues. She didnt want to hear anything i had to say. I called the next morning to arrange a meeting so we could discuss the project with kristina and carren and her. They went to her house that evening, and she didnt open the door nor did she return my call. She had filed her appeal that morning. When i originally started the project, our goal was to get a permit as soon as possible so they could start and complete construction before her baby was born. Initially, i went to submit for permit on july 31st with an 8 foot deck extension proposal. I was rerouted to in order to avoid this, the planner suggested that if i reduce the deck by 1 foot, the deck would maintain a 45 rear yard requirement and therefore be a permitted obstruction according to planning codes. So i went back to the drawing board, changed all the drawing purposely to avoid neighborhood notification so we could Start Construction as soon as possible. Again, had i known about miss cohens letter and concerns, i absolutely would have met with her to discuss before obtaining the permit. I had no intention of misleading miss cow an. I just followed the procedures to obtain an over the counter permit. We dont send out the notice. When i got the permit planning said that we had to wait ten days before starting construction, and she got the notice four days before the appeal was due and i think blamed me and carson and kristina, even though we had nothing to do with the mailing notice. Kristina and carsen always wanted a small desick, with ju enough room for egress and a grill. They do not plan on hanging out on the deck but rather than using it as a direct path from kitchen to yard without having to go around the garage on the north wall. Paragraph practice in no way does the proposed project affect the Structural Integrity of her property. In fact by structurally upgrading the adjacent wall in the project, the were actually increasing the Structural Integrity of not only the property in question, but her property, as well. Were putting the shear wall all along the bottom, and i have an exhibit, which i can show you how does this work . So heres the can i make it bigger . [ inaudible ] okay. I did an enlarged structural section showing where her wall is. Its not 5 feet, its about 3 feet below the project, and i showed the kitchen door and the Kitchen Cabinets along her bedroom wall, and then, the rooms down addition to the left, and her garage to the right. Unfortunately, were not doing any construction to the kitchen except for the rear wall, so were not planning on tearing out the kitchen to put sound insulation or sheetrock or shear that, however we are shearing the downstairs wall, putting r19 insulation in the wall along with halfinch shear wall plywood and half inch gyprock, which will reduce the noise that shes talking about. All of these houses rest on each other. Its illegal to build something thats dependent on an adjacent property. Altogether the loads of our construction is picked up by the existing footing. We also purposely chose not to change the footing because im very aware of the sound, the displacement of the sound when you touch the footings, so if if you can look at the bottom i dont know if you can see that, so. We can see it fine. Okay. So as you can see, were redoing the slab cause the existing slab is about 2 inches wrap proofing thick, and it has holes in it, and were putting new 4 inch reinforced concrete slab. Her house is 3 feet below, theres no way were not touching the footing. You can see in the structural drawings, which is in the exhibit that we sent to you with the brief, she can get seismic people these kinds of additions happen all the time. The extra weight of the wall is not going to be supported by her project at all. Oh. Okay, next, i want to talk about the Biggest Issue, which is the privacy issue, and i have here an elevation showing how her her bay window and the deck, which is 3 feet over from the Property Line, thats a 6 foot tall person whose eyes would be about 56, so in mitigating your time is up and youll have time in the rebuttal. Oh, i have so much more. Can you elaborate a little bit further on the shared wall . Is it a single wall between the two buildings . No. Youre showing a double wall on your drawing. Yeah, theyre double walls. Wheres the Property Line there . Can i show you the drawing again . Yeah. Right in the middle. Its a typical row house with two walls built right next to each other, but the Property Line wall, i denoted right up there. Its right in the middle and you have two two by six walls on their own footings, and theyre about 3 feet down because the wall is sloped. Okay. You know, as as kristina said in her brief, theres earthquakes all the time, and houses go like this. Were upgrading the property. Youve answered the question. Okay. Mr. Teague . Good evening, president honda, commissioners, cory teague for planning property staff. The property is located in the rh 2 zoning district. The subject permit was originally filed on july 31st and was approved by the Planning Department by a Senior Member of our pic staff over the counter on august 9th. The planner noted on the approval that the proposed deck and stairs were also exempt from neighborhood notification due to their limits height and projects. As such, it is the Planning Departments position it was properly approved. This appears to be more of an issue between neighbors and not a question of whether the Planning Departments approval was proper. Im available for my questions you may have. Did you see the connecting stairs for the rooms down . Did i see the connecting stair. Its about 1 foot away from the wall. This on the proposed ground floor plan . Mmhmm. And lets see here. And what was the what was the question about the location of the stairs . No questions, just observations. Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you for the observation. Thank you. Mr. Duffy . Commissioners, the Building Permit on peal was issued as a current approval. Its a new addition, added all within the existing building footprint, including existing bedroom, its a pretty typical project that we see in this neighborhood for rooms done, someone adding a rear deck. We dont typically have many problems with these type of projects. The the one thing i would add on the foundation detail, and the detail on the drawings a little different from the detail that the lady just presented. Can i use the overhead just to explain something that i would be overhead . Its flickering, gary. [ inaudible ] flickering, gary. Sorry. Let me do this a little bit. Sorry there we go. So so the this is the this is the property where we have the work going to take place. This is the adjacent property. Typically, the foundations, the bottoms of the foundations would match. The document that we were shown earlier, for some reason, that showed the other foundation of the neighbor. Im sorry, mr. Duffy, are you pointing to something, cause the area that youre showing im not seeing that. Oh, it keeps moving. Yeah, i thought the foundation was lower. Garys helping. Thank you. So weve got two foundations adjacent and yeah, youve got to hold it up for me. Its okay if you cant. So the bottom of the foundations typically match. I like the detail on this. They will need to take some care because its sand out there, and you know, i would im sure itll be fine. Theyve decided to put just a little curb here and a slab, which is i havent seen that before, but thiss good. When they do excavate here, this sand isnt going somewhere, but theyve got to be aware of it. You can grout it, you can freeze the sand. Now theres a way to do that. I know the appellant brought up structural concerns. Ive seen a lot worse than this, so im not worried about it, but they would be warned to tread carefully when they are excavating for the slab, and obviously, the building inspectors going to be involved in that process for the inspections. Apart from that, i didnt see anything else. We did have some active complaints a couple of years ago. They were subsequently closed. That was in 2015, in november. The complainant was the appellant as well, and it was about a structure built in the rear yard with the permits, and we found that the structure was just a greenhouse, and we closed the complaint. Inspector duffy, looking at the brief on exhibit 2, where theres a picture of the properties from the rear, the street looks like its slope down, so if that was the case, the Foundation Footings could not be matched up, so maybe the drawing is incorrect . Maybe possibly. Yeah, maybe maybe her drawing is more correct, because looking at the back, it looks like there is some sloping to the street, so there wouldnt be a concern because her footing would be above. Like the last interference with someo with the less interference with someones foundation, the the better. So the appellants foundation is below, so theyre not even getting close to her footing. Its part of the california civil code. Any time theyre going to do anything on their Property Line, they have to give their neighbors ten days so they can bring their geotech in to inspect that to see if its not going to affect the property, so thats another safeguard. Thank you. Thank you. Is there any Public Comment on this item . Seeing none, then we have rebuttal from the appellant. I think the family had a responsibility to talk to me at least. Since july, no one in any of this group talked to me. I understand that the construction will probably end up in the long run making my home safer, however, what im talking about is i want protection and the right to protection before this starts. Its not just a cute little even footings. I want to show you something. On my side, i also have this is this shows two equal footings, on my side, i have a standing concrete wall, and what im saying is i believe that to be a vibration sensitive structure, and i have concern that the vibration, when they do excavate even is going to cause damage, too, so i have a right to slow the process down by the appeal to have a geotech come out and say hey, to even take documentation of the before and after. The burden of proof if theres damage to my property falls to me, and its just not good enough for their paid people to say its not going to hurt your property, but once its done, i cant prove it. If its done kwhiel im at work and theres a big crack or somethings wrong with it, i have no proof because i wasnt prepared. Im asking to slow the process so i can do that. As far as the shared wall, until they open it up, i really dont know. I can hear them talking, i can hear them open anything up. Thats why i had a sound engineer. I had mitigate my wall with sound waves, but i cannot take care of this kind of pounding or door shutting, and literally, while the door might be 3 foot off from the Property Line, the doorway is right by my head and because of the offset, it falls right where your head lays. I cant move the bed around because of how the house is. Just to show you what shared walls are like, heres the other neighbor, if you notice these holes, when they put the walls in, the nails went right through. Im going to put soundproofing in on my side, im not asking them not to have a deck. You have 30 seconds. So that thats it. Im im asking for time to get my ducks in order.