Continued opportunities to increase patience

Then it was time to turn the plans in. We finally got everything together from the variuos parties involved, but then we needed to make sure that we were going to be able to get all of the utilities to the lot. This included bringing out a drain person to assess the status of the drain pipes there and the sewer that should have already been in existence.
The city engineer informed us that we would need to get a soil sample (huh?) from our lot to help us with the foundation plans. Of course, there's only one person in the area that does this type of evaluation. So, we happily paid $450 to have someone come out and tell us that we needed to dig the foundation down 1 foot further than normal because we live in an area that has a soil called "Dayton Silt Loam", which is a layer of sand above a layer of clay that shifts, expands and contracts with the seasons.
So, armed with the knowledge that we had to dig down 3-3 1/2 feet for the foundation, then place about 6 inches to a foot of crushed gravel on top of that, we discussed with our engineer the possible complications of this requirement. Having planned on doing a slab foundation, and having all of our engineered drawings done to that effect meant that we would be building a concrete monolith. We're talking huge cement block. We eventually decided to just do a crawl space, which saved us a little bit of money on the cement, but increased the labor cost on the preparation. (sigh).