They serve as adequate
measurements for determining your initial project costs and help you in
budgeting your project resources. All the prices you ultimately use should be
verified by your contractor. subcontractor, or architect using your final
building plans.
Site Preparation:
On many occasions
we have found that site preparation has been one of the most over looked
considerations of a buyer when shopping for land or home. It is easy to get
blinded by the beauty of a location or the potential magnificence of a homes
stature in a picturesque setting and forget to ask your realtor or dealer the
right questions. Asking the right questions right from the beginning can save
you piles of grief and mountains of money right from the start. Oh! And get
everything in writing! Remember that the costs involved in site preparation
can vary due to location and soil conditions.
Preparing the
home site can include several primary areas of concern. Grading, road, and
driveway construction. Septic system or sewer and power installation, and
water source. Water source can be either drilling a well or tying into city or
county culinary water lines. We like to include the obligation of retaining
all your building permits and licenses as a part of the cost of preparation.
It would do no one any good to plan a gorgeous home site just to have your
project shut down at an early stage due to a lack of a license and you or your
builder should be sure everything is in place.
Location grading and preparation
can be viewed, like most areas of construction, as being accomplished
depending on three degrees of difficulty. That is, a task can be simple,
moderate, or complex in its completion. A home that will be built on a
relatively flat piece of ground, as in a pasture or natural plateau, with
little tree or brush removal, and a slab type foundation will be less costly
than one with a rolling, sloping, area to grade with moderate tree and brush
removal and a half basement or raised foundation. Of course, we have the
complex and somewhat involved design that will be suited for a remote location
with radically sloped mountainous terrain, with many rocks and trees to move,
a lot of grading and a full basement.
Wolf Creek makes a practice of
recommending to all of its clients that when doing the site preparation phase
of the construction on their homes that they recycle as much of their natural
landscape as they can. That is, if you can possibly afford to have a
knowledgeable and licensed landscape company come in and dig up and wrap those
big old trees to be used later rather than dozing them to the ground, then
please do so. The same goes for any big old rocks, plants, and shrubbery that
is growing on site when you purchase it. Respect for the land and everything
that uses it will pay off big in the end. Trust us on this.
To place a simple slab type
foundation on a fairly flat piece of ground that is takes little grading, dirt
removal and tree extraction will run between $1200.00 to $2500.00 dollars to
prepare for the foundation and other preliminary ground work. A moderate site
with rolling slops, moderate tree and shrub removal, and the possible
elimination of established natural rock can run from $2800.00 dollars to
$4300.00 dollars. Conservatively. Complex sites can cost any where between
$4000.00 to $10,000 and more to prep.
If you need simple access to
your home site a private roadway or driveway will have to be figured in to
your site prep equation. Of course, the cost of such a road or drive can be
impacted by the distance from a main highway or road, the type of terrain is
has to cover, and finished road surface. Such as gravel or asphalt. The
average cost of an adequate gravel roadway can run between $1800.00 and
$2500.00 dollars per 100 feet of access. It is not uncommon to see an average
private road 200 to 800 feet in length including the parkway.
