Just on the heels of the good news that our appraisal came in where it needed to be, I received an email about an issue with our foundation walls from the engineers. It turns out, the way the house was placed on the lot was going to require a 15 foot foundation wall in one corner and some significant footers to hold it in place. We were told that they could engineer a solution, but that it would be costly to implement during construction.

We were given some recommendations to consider moving the house on the lot, which would require a setback variance from the county, removing the large rock outcropping on our property, or trying to rotate the house within the current building envelope to align better with the steep slope. After discussing the issue with the civil engineer, structural engineer, architect, and builder, we all came to the conclusion that the best path forward would be to try and rotate the house without encroaching into the required setbacks. It looks like we can get 10 to 15 degrees of rotation, which is just enough to situate the rear of the house with the slope. We may end up right up against the smaller portion of the rock outcropping or even having to chip away a small part of the outcropping, but the majority of it will remain intact and we won’t have to delay the project to wait for a setback variance that would be difficult to obtain.

We have the surveyor coming out next week to stake the new position of the house on the lot, so we’ll have a much better idea of what we are up against.