As you’ve seen so far, there are many, many steps needed to achieve my home build. This also applies, more literally, in getting up to my front door – 75 steps actually, along with 10 landings. At least that was the initial design advanced by Andrew, the Senior Project Architect at Stillwater.
This is the part of the project I like the most, seeing what the team comes up with. Again, everyone has been great at keeping me involved, sharing work and soliciting my feedback. In this case, they’re looking at the challenge of making a pathway up to the main entrance of the house, conforming to the steep slope and following all the requirements and codes. Below is the first sketch from Stillwater (I love seeing work in progress), and with all the planters, landings and switchbacks, it looks to be a pretty stroll up to the house level with stops along the way at the garage roof and the shop level. My main comment back was does it need to be as complicated? Without fully understanding the intricacies of the slope or the building codes (outside of the accepted 7/11 – rise/run of a stair step), I’d like to see less landings and longer runs when possible.
GeoConcepts is still part of the team and they’re getting closer to taking the site plan and adjusting it to fit the unique geography and features they found through their analysis. The bottom two images above are the initial site plan mapped against the land along with indicating where retaining walls would be needed. This will continue to get refined as the site plan gets closer to being finished.
Meanwhile, Coast Engineering will look to have a slope analysis map of the property done. This map helps determine house square footage allowed for the property (stepper areas get less, flatter areas get more – that is all added up for a total allowed). It will also help determine how deep they will need to cut into the land as there is a 1000 cubic yard limit on material to be removed. Finally this map will be required for permits and the various associations that need to review the design. So another artifact is on the way, getting me another step or two closer…