Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Questions about retaining walls 14Feb 27, 2018 12:05 pm IamSAM A 16x39 block with 3M fall calls for a custom/architect designed home and will imply a mega budget to absorb site costs. Gotcha, so its definitely not suitable for a project home? Re: Questions about retaining walls 15Feb 27, 2018 12:10 pm djblurr IamSAM A 16x39 block with 3M fall calls for a custom/architect designed home and will imply a mega budget to absorb site costs. Gotcha, so its definitely not suitable for a project home? Could work for a project home but you'd need to have then site prepped for them and not let them deal with it, definitely getting yourself into a massive headache from a financial and admin point of view. Re: Questions about retaining walls 16Feb 27, 2018 3:24 pm There are a number of project home companies which are specialising on sloped blocks, e.g. Montgomery Homes. Adjusting the house design to suite the block might be easier than forcing a standard design into the sloping block with retaining walls, stepdowns etc. Our block is sloping 3m over a length of 40m and just over 1m where the house is situated. That already cost us quiet a bit in adding a stepdown, bringing additional soil into the block and more cost to add retaining walls later (not included in the build cost!) etc. David Re: Questions about retaining walls 17Feb 27, 2018 3:35 pm djblurr Hi guys, I'm considering purchasing a block of land which has an approximate 3m fall from top to bottom of the block, sloping downwards from the back of the yard (approx 16x39 block). I'm looking to build with Porter Davis and they've given me some really rough site costs (20-35k) but obviously this is just speculation until I pay a deposit and they actually do a survey report. Am I the only person that has been concerned about getting accurate site costs prior to purchasing a block? While the estimate from the sales person is probably reasonable, by leaving it just as an "estimate" they could potentially turn around and say it's actually going to cost $100,000 or something ridiculous. You might be thinking, well yeah you would just lose your deposit though if you change your mind, but in actual fact I would be stuck purchasing an expensive block of land that no longer can be built on within my budget. So my question is, how can I get some assurances on site cost expectations before purchasing the block to minimise my risk? Additionally, I have no experience with retaining walls and am struggling to think about how this block would be structured. PD told me they would "cut and fill" which I believe might minimise some of the 3M fall, but down the sides of the property am I going to need massive retaining walls? And what about at the back of the property? The house design has a patio out the back, which I also to flow straight onto a pool as one. Does this mean I would need to put a big 3M retaining wall at the back of the property too? Appreciate any thoughts and insights you can provide! We have a 2m fall and PD charged $8000 for retaining wall on one side. We couldn’t proceed with the build without it as we could not get the permit. We tried to negotiate on price but they wouldn’t budge. Re: Questions about retaining walls 18Mar 02, 2018 5:39 pm We have a 3m fall over where we have positioned our house. It meant a 1.5 m cut and 1.5m fill we now have to do retaining walls on each side and just to do ourselves just in materials it’s going to cost about 15 k. And break our backs lol. Retaining walls are quite expensive. I’m not sure about the site costs side of it as we built a custom house and we already had the contour and site test so the builder quoted it all together. Building our first custom dream home. https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?share_ ... are_type=t Re: Questions about retaining walls 19Nov 26, 2020 4:12 pm Hiring an architect to suit the land with stepped house would be good investment rather than spending money for massive cut and fill for custom home. You can either design a stepping house or multistory using the natural slope or also use footings Re: Questions about retaining walls 20Nov 26, 2020 5:09 pm Either you pay for cut and fill or you invest into retaining walls throughout and deal with tons of staircases in your house... If you can achieve prominent house position with just cut and fill, e.g. having basement/garage on the ground level, then go for it. Otherwise, you might indeed be better off with split design. Not sure what council area you are in. Some LGA's allow zero lot retaining walls. This usually occurs in greenfield developments but not often in established areas. You… 1 8256 4 11221 Render your bathroom walls, two opinions versus the one, makes you wonder. 3 6066 |