Hooray! Our pre-construction meeting is tomorrow. I just know the house is going to zoom together after this (fingers crossed).
They also regraded our lot, so the stakes are gone. The lot next to us is empty, and I'm very curious to see what that one will look like when it gets graded. Our home is a crawl, and the lot next to us is a basement, so I wonder how that will affect drainage and run-off. It seems like in our subdivision they make every backyard high in the middle and slope down on all sides. When you look in between houses, there is a small ditch in-between each one. I guess I expected it all to just be level and flat, so I was just curious if others have experienced this same thing. I would hope it would keep water out of the main part of your yard, but how does it affect the sides and back of your yard? Does everyone just have a moat around their house?
Any thoughts or experiences would be great to hear!
You will go over the Plat map at the pre-con meeting. This explains all the elevations of the grading and what to expect. The "ditches" you are referring to are swales. They are built in the plat by the developer as part of the communities water management system, and will be on the plat map. The swales are created(you have to maintain once you own the home) to divert water in certain directions, away from the houses. They are like water "channels" that allow your homes foundation to stay "dry". Specifically important when you have a basement. All subdivisions are required to have a water management system on record with the county, and is part of city and county code. THe swales are good things, and if you have a good water management system throughout the community, you wont have rivers or lakes in your yard. Although you may until the community is finished, as the water management system usually relies on the whole community.
ReplyDeleteWow! Really informative. Thanks, that makes a lot of sense now.
DeleteYour PM can show you where lights, switches and vents will be. We wanted to make sure our powder room and laundry room had a vent and outlet.
ReplyDeleteDo you get to choose which outlet light switches will be switched to?
DeleteJulie - Grading should be something you shouldn't think about right? Well unfortunetly there have been issues with many folks I chat with about it, I feel like the only reason I haven't had too many issues was during the building process I watched the water to see where it was standing and draining, there were times I asked the PM to move dirt to different places. When your PM explains run-off etc.. don't be afraid to challenge him with the "What if I see this, or that happens?" I felt better informed having him explain things to me rather than shake my head.
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