If you are in the market looking for a lot to build your custom home, here’s an important lesson in building a solid foundation. It can save you money and avoid costly surprises in the building process. There are two types of foundations in Florida for the construction of a home: stem wall footers and monolithic.
The existing grade (surface) and slope of the property determines the type of foundation. In Florida, most lots are flat or semi-flat. Monolithic would be the proper choice. Sloped or uneven terrain requires stem wall footers.
The difference between the two? Stem wall footers are buried two or three feet below the house to avoid erosion and to anchor the house deeper into the ground into harder soils.
In monolithic foundations, the footers are incorporated into the house slab and they don’t go as deep. Stem wall footers is the more expensive foundation of the two and takes longer to build because it’s a two-part process.
Here are three tips to avoid costly mistakes when selecting your lot:
Before purchasing the lot, consult your builder and have him walk the property.
Order a Topography Survey from your surveyor.
Call your county building department and get your finished floor elevation to determine the difference between the existing grade and the proposed finished floor elevation.
Together, these three key pieces of information will determine how much fill the lot requires to make it buildable (or in some instances how much fill needs to be removed). Fill is an important price consideration when deciding on a lot because it can add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of the lot. Just another money-saving Trade Secret and for much more, subscribe to our Trade Secrets blog and the Trade Secrets video series on you tube.
4 Responses
Great advice! Hopefully Jorge will be building our next home. That way we won’t have to worry about anything. 🙂
I did good. Thanks…….
The house I recently build is 135′ long by 70′ wide and have 175 bell bottom piers with a life time warranty. Thanks for the valuable information.
I can certainly see how this sort of information could be crucial to someone building a custom home. The considerations that go into this process would be staggering, for someone who has not been through it before. Thanks for teaching me something new!