Land preparation

Whoa, I owe these guys one. They did a really good job at preparing the land using a bobcat and an excavator. Land preparation is important because if you don't do it right, it will affect the whole house structure. I do want to stand on solid, well prepared land and foundation.

The land is now cleared and ready for foundation work. One of my owner, the husband, loves grass. No he doesn't eat it, he just like the colour and finds patches of well mowed grass lawn pleasing to look at. He's already itching to plant grass on the bare, cleared land although fully aware he has to wait until my construction is almost finished. Patience boy...


In the last post I promised you an explanation why it has taken so long for them to start building me. Soon after buying the land, my owners started looking for builder, preferably one who has some experience building on sloped land. They found one that looked really good, have plenty of house designs to choose and modify from. They specialised in steel structured houses, which suits my owners fine as they don't really want to build a wooden house anyway (termite problem and what not). Brick house is a bit of a challenge on sloped land, so pole steel house seemed to be a good choice. Here's what my first design looked like. A massive 7 rooms, 3 bathrooms house.



It took almost 3 months for the City Council to evaluate the plan. At first they told my owners that the planned house (that's me!) was too close to the right hand side neighbor, so they asked them to get a statement from the neighbor that he is okay with the design. After gotten the neighbor's declaration and waited for another 2 months, my owners were told the design wasn't approved because it did not meet height restriction, a maximum of 8.5m from the ground.

Aaaargh!!!