How the building site affects a Kit Home’s design

What this episode covers

Show Notes: How the building site affects a home’s design.   Foundation types and how they benefit a home.  Details to properly develop your site plan for your enjoyment and building permits.   What is a grading and drainage plan? Transcript: Interviewer: Hello everyone and welcome to the Panelized Prefab Kit Home Building Show. With me today as he is always is the President and Founder of Landmark Home and Land Company, the company which has been helping people build their new homes where they want exactly as they want across the nation and worldwide since 1993 and that would be Steve Tuma. Steve, how are you doing today? Steve Landmark: It’s another great day. Interviewer: Good. Steve Landmark: We have more projects and it’s kind of fun talking about these different details. You know, taking our experience from 25 years or more and trying to help people out, to give them ideas so that they can sort out planning their home. Interviewer: Right. You guys seem pretty busy. I mean it just seems like your building schedule is helping people design and build their homes. It takes up a lot of your time. So we’re glad you found time to be here. Steve Landmark: Well, we have fun doing it and I think that’s the key point is actually enjoying what you do and taking pride and helping our customers because it’s a – it’s kind of fun. You know, everyone’s project is different. Someone might say, well, it’s a 1500-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath home. But where it is or how it is or the type of people that are building it, it really makes it completely different. That’s what we’re able to do is take the time to make sure the house makes sense for the customer. Interviewer: Yeah. I thought today we might talk about something we’ve touched on in the past but we haven’t really gotten heavy into and that’s foundation type, the actual foundation of your new home and fitting it to the land, you go and buy a piece of land and not every bit of land is going to fit every house design. So if you don’t mind, let’s touch on that a little bit. Why is knowing the site important to home design? You know, sloped lands, city lots, big acreage. How well should you know your site before you design? Steve Landmark: Well, it’s kind of important because say if you’re on the side of the hill. That could affect your driveway. It could give you the ability to have a walk-out basement. It might give you a better view. It might restrict septic if you’re in a rural area. If you’re in a city lot, generally they’re limited in size. Sometimes 30 feet by 100, sometimes 50 by 100, sometimes 100 by 100. So the house you could fit on there within setbacks and how do you get everything on there. So just the slope of the land. It’s something to consider. Is it flat? Is it on the side of the hill? Is it off a cliff? How big of a space do you have to build on? Sometimes – you brought up acreage. Someone could have 20 acres but there are two or three better spots to build. You don’t want to build in drainage ditches. You want to build in places where the septic or water and sewer connections make sense and utility connections can make sense and sometimes it’s just something where people enjoy the view and they want to take advantage of a certain situation that the land offers naturally. So the reason it’s important is you want it to work properly. You don’t want to put a type of home into a piece of land that’s going to cost you more to build or just doesn’t make sense. Sometimes people don’t realize that there are restrictions on the slopes of dry waste to make sure it’s comfortable to drive in. Cars need a certain turn radius in order to be able to access driveways. Then there’s a lot of just regulatory things which we can help with. Like I mentioned the setbacks.