After surviving all the paperwork and bureaucracy, you finally get to start the actual construction process, and its first phase consists of surveying and site preparation. During this phase, you and your contractor need to meet regularly to keep track of the progress and the schedule for all the subcontractors to complete their work in perfect synchronicity.
First of all, you need to know where everything goes and have a clean site to work with. Before you start, make sure you’re digging in the right place. This requires a specially trained professional (a surveyor) to use surveying equipment to mark the following:
- Lot lines: These are the property boundaries.
- Setbacks: These tell you where your building limits are relative to your neighbor’s property.
- Underground utility lines: If your property has any power lines and water pipes buried on it, identifying their location can keep you from hitting them.
After completing the job, the surveyor places a numbered tag on a permanent stake on the property. This tag has the surveyor’s registered license number and serves as a reference point for all future surveys. Often the survey is completed early in the design process, particularly if you’re dealing with a large rural lot where the boundaries aren’t clearly marked or if they’re required by the building department.
Site Preparation Steps Needed before Breaking Ground
Here are some suggestions for a few other things recommended to be done before breaking ground, although you and your contractor need to discuss their benefits and costs:
- Post prominent “Danger” signs (in red) throughout the building site. Doing so can help protect your liability in case someone unauthorized might trespass on the property.
- Arrange for a rental toilet for your workers.
- Decide whether or not to install an onsite storage shack for materials. Not only can you keep your materials and valuables dry in an onsite storage unit, but you can also lock up any valuables for security purposes.
- Consider adding an administrative office for your contractor. Adding an office can also be a very convenient place to store paperwork, tools, and refreshments as well as to provide comfort and first aid for workers when necessary.
- Discuss with your contractor about putting up a lockable chain-link fence. The fence can keep out kids and other intruders after hours. Installing a fence not only protects your site from theft and vandalism, but also prevents someone from coming onto the site and getting hurt.
Removing large trees requires a subcontractor with a bulldozer or tractor. The wood from the trees and stumps cut on your property is yours to keep, so talk to your contractor about putting it in a corner of the lot where you can cut it into firewood.
Depending on where you decide to build, your lot may also need to be cleared of brush and shrubs. Your contractor can arrange for the clearing. This removal can usually be done with a bulldozer at a reasonably low cost. Grading is scraping the land to move dirt from one place on the lot to another. Your contractor brings in a grading subcontractor to do the job. Tractors, bulldozers, and other heavy equipment often grade the land, although small grading projects are done by hand.
If your lot is on a slope or hill, it may require some serious grading to create a flat building pad. A building pad is the flat ground where your foundation will sit. An alternative includes building several retaining walls in succession to create multiple flat pads for the house and yard, which is called terracing. Furthermore, in severe situations, the contractor may build a retaining wall to prevent the land (and your house along with it) from slipping.
Depending on where you live and your contractor’s preferences, your retaining walls may be made from different products, including the following:
- Cement blocks filled with reinforced steel and concrete
- Large logs or railroad ties
- Keystone or boulders.
Drainage is a very important part of the build process. To create good drainage, parts of your property will be graded with a slight slope (away from your home), encouraging water to run off the property.
The next step is to clearly mark the building site. Using tape measures and the survey, your contractor marks the exact points for the edge of the house and garage. Depending on the type of foundation to be installed, your contractor may mark the perimeter with wooden stakes and boards called batter boards. The contractor then attaches string between the batter boards to represent the sides of the foundation and ensure straight lines and square angles. When the site preparation is complete and the foundation area is clearly marked, then the contractor can start lining up utility hookups and getting ready for excavation.