Since my purchase close in May, things have been proceeding pretty slowly, but this week I got one step closer towards building – my survey was delivered.
This is the detailed survey that maps out the rise of the land along with any significant features. Up until this point I was using the Los Angeles County GIS Viewer site as well as my observations to understand what the slope of the land was – both were not really accurate. Chris Nelson and Associates delivered a detailed topographic map PDF, as well as the CAD file, giving a very accurate view delineating existing site conditions and those features laid against the boundary information on public record.
I am pleasantly surprised by my land’s features, especially the large flat-ish spot (left image). The goal of keeping the house footprint small to help limit excavation just became a little easier with this level area. Back in an earlier post, I detailed how I wanted a garage at street level and a shop mid-level to provide a partial flat support for the house footprint. Getting those two levels up to the natural flat of the land will really give some good square footage for the foundation pad. Also of interest is the stairs and concrete pads over on the right, midway up the hill (right image). The stairs lead to the retaining wall of the property next door. My assumption is that this property was once part of the land south of it, and at one point the parcel was divided with some of the access left behind.
Now that I have the survey, I’ve given it over to GeoConcepts so they can map their geology data against it and complete the final report to move to the next milestone of starting to visualize the site plan and overall structure.