I find myself in this kind of situation when trying to determine my property buildout and the budget needed. My geology work from GeoConcepts is completed, but beyond the detailed survey provided, they also need a site plan – more accurate than the very rough idea I previously provided – to generate the final geology report. To get to that site plan, most home builders want the engineering for the complex foundation I’m looking to build, or at least looking for a General Contractor to give an estimate for that part of the work. Most GC’s I’ve spoken to say its too early for them to get involved as they would need a detailed site plan to really get engaged. Architectural firms I’ve talked with, would have to engage with a civil engineer to get to a viable design – but I really didn’t want to go the straight architecture route and treat this as a more traditional build, given the modular options I really like, and should offer me a faster and more inexpensive build (potentially).
I wish I had the time to be my own project manager and do the research into firms that can help with each piece needed, but I need to work to pay for this whole mess, so I really need a builder who can get me through everything needed. So this has brought me back to Stillwater Dwellings.
They offer these complete services and although I was starting to worry about their product just being too expensive for my budget (based on initial numbers for just the home and build out), I’ve started to realize there are no shortcuts in this process and given the complexities of my land, my imaginary budget has been too low (maybe). I concluded that I’m going to need to spend money to understand how much money I REALLY need.
Stillwater has a tiered pricing structure for their design phase mentioned in a prior post:
STANDARD – where you are essentially picking a specific model from their plans with no changes to the footprint of the home. 8K.
MODIFIED – you start with a specific model, but make some changes to the footprint. 14K.
CUSTOM – this allows significant changes to the footprint and when the overall project has a high degree of complexity. 25K.
I fall into the Custom category. Even though I like many of their plans, getting them to work on my property will require modification, plus the design and engineering work to figure out the foundation makes this a more complex build. With just a few questions back to Stillwater outstanding, it seems like design of the site will start to get rolling in September. This will give me a full site plan with the foundation, floor plans and elevations – mapped to the the topography and geology of the property. But most importantly, I’ll get an actual estimate to make all this become a reality.