After spending oodles of time with our architect working on a design, we had to start thinking about the structural requirements to support the floor plans were envisioning.  The largest piece of the puzzle when it came to structural engineering was the foundation, most especially since we lived on a cut and fill lot in the hills.  In our city, there are two zones of classification - A and B.  If you were in the A zone you were pretty much in the flat lands of our city.  If you were in the B zone you were on a hillside subject to all the great caveats for hillside living including: landslide, seismic concerns, drainage and or flooding.

It came as no surprise that were in the B zone.  And being in the B zone meant that it was mandatory to get a soils report for our property.

A soils engineer or “geotech” is yet another professional we had to hire and consult with to determine the what would be the proper foundation and associated drainage requirements necessary to support our new home.  The geotech performed the following during the early phases of our planning:

1. performed a floor level survey to establish a contour map of our the home - this identified settlement and any area where the foundation was sinking
2. drilled in 5 different areas with a portable rig to get a core sample of our soil - this also confirms how many feet of fill needed to be penetrated before hitting load bearing strata, i.e. “bedrock”
3. analyzed the core samples to write up a soils report describing the conditions of our lot
4. defined a set of requirements to describe the challenges that had to be overcome or taken into account by whatever foundation was engineered by the structural engineer

The above three items alone already costed us thousands of dollars, nearly $4K without even having broken any ground toward construction.  Hiring a geotech for us was also critical for us because we needed someone to address how to prevent further soils movement on our property that would affect the integrity of our foundation.