Week 18

The UBuildIt guys and I met at the property last week to check out my driveway and building site ideas. I found that there's a better, flatter, area if I move the building site west and slightly north. It gets me a little close to the well circle (100' restricted area) but there is still a decent 75' buffer to the start of the circle. I'm looking for ways to reduce the excavation costs - they're estimated by UBuildIt to be $92K, which I think is steep. At this point we're trading off driveway costs - more driveway sqft, more cost - for excavation costs. In particular trying to limit the size and number of retaining walls.

UBuildIt brought a small hand level, like this one, to measure elevations. I'm not convinced it's very accurate. The elevations they were calling out didn't jive with my guesses. But they could be right. I need to do a good job of mapping the driveway and creating site topologies, so I've ordered an AmScope 32x Automatic Level Transit - this is what I ordered. I'll spend a few days at the site and verify the county's elevations and create a fairly accurate topo map of the building site. Later, I will hire a surveyor to do an official topo and to identify locations for driveway, building site and well.

To make sure the price estimates are not way out of line I'm going to get quotes from contractors on septic, water well, driveway and excavation. These are some major expense items, so if there are any savings this is where they'll be found.

The architect sent me revision 3 (R3) of the floor plans, and they look great. So we're moving forward with the next step - getting the exterior elevations and roof worked out. We've decided to postpone the spa and pool - it's over $100K savings alone! But, we will build the house with the pool room under the roof, but open to the outside so that later (2-3 years) we can add them without a major re-model of the house. We will not put in the outside walls, but instead we will add columns to support the roof - this way we can get a bobcat or backhoe in there to add the pool.

Here's the latest site layout. I think this is the final one until an official survey!