Adding a New Discussion within the Forum section since the Comment section applies to the project in General. Below is a copy of Robert's post from yesterday.
Hello team,
Here are 5 options for the site. Major constraints are obviously the 10-30% slopes and the setbacks that only allow us to use less than 30% of the site. Looking forward to your guys' input.
Robert
My comments below:
- Option A - I don't think this option works since it places the garages in the location for the best views and the Kitchen / Great Room towards the Southern Views and into the neighbors
- Option B - Is my favorite and I do like rotating the house counter-clockwise more but the house will be further down the hill than the original house placement. This will increase cost and will create more steps down (in the landscape) to get to the house. The house would also require more steps in the house on the main level (the original scheme may require a few steps) to go from the garage down to the house. Robert mentioned that he was concerned with the ability to back up into a driveway and turn into the circular driveway and thus producing Option B. I think the original scheme closer to the street will work and will have a better street presence but this Option will have better views for the Courtyard.
- Option C - Is interesting but a personal preference call would need to be made if it is desirable to detach the garages or not. Robert is correct in that it will be easier to transition from the garage to the house in terms of steps (compared to Option B). In the original scheme the Garage would sit around the 838-840 (with the house potentially lower if needed). This produces about a 12-16% slope from the Street at 845 down to the garages. If we were to take this same slope with Option B-C with the garage location that would
- Option D+F - Like option A these options don't really take advantage as much of the Mount Diablo views. Having the garage detached on the north side or attached and facing the North side - would produce the longest (most expensive) driveway solution.
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Hopefully we can get some others to comment as well. - Thanks
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Replies
Hi guys, so Christine and I both are ok with the 8ft ceilings for the boys rooms and also the 2 sets of 1 foot each stairs in the gallery. Grandma will be utilizing the guest bedroom alot and so the gentle set of stairs will be fine but we shouldnt go any more than that. This 2 foot difference from the garages to the family room we think actually makes a cool custom look and town should appreciate it. Thanks, --jeff
Hi Robert - just replying per your comments above (thanks for adding them). Also we would like to meet with David for a preliminary meeting and it would be great if we can meet with him going over a preliminary Site Plan, Floor Plan, Roof Plan, Elevations and a Landscape Plan. It is just preliminary and we don't need to locate trees or shrubs or have everything fully defined - but just so we can give him an idea of what we are doing (so we can get his input).
FFE
The house is often governed by the driveway and cars as you know so I started with the street elevation of 445 then figured about a 15% slope (which is steep but not too steep) down to the garages. This puts the front of the garages at 836 elevation which is actually natural grade at that point. We won't actually "grade out a pad" like what would be done on a Production (track) House but we will use pier and grade beam with a sub-floor. What maybe confusing is how I am drawing the grade line on the other elevations (we will need to have raised patios / terraces that step down (but are raised up to meet the finish floor as needed = since you should be the one taking a first stab at the terraces - I didn't define them yet). This means there will obviously be no sub floor at the garage since it is at natural grade and will use a floating slab. The back of the garage will be about 5 feet off the ground (which may sound like a lot but really isn't). Typically we have 12" for the floor and I prefer a 24" crawl space (not 18" min) - so you typically want to be 36" in most places to grade. I intentionally designed the house "skinny" along the contours to minimize this cross slope across the house but it can't be eliminated. Figure that the door out of the backside of the garage would be a small platform (not a large patio) then with stairs going down to grade. Other parts of the house will have larger raised patio / terraces - but you'll need to break them into different levels to get them to come back down to natural grade and to account for the grade also dropping off towards the rear of the house. The patio's / terraces will also affect how the ground level is portrayed (mainly on the back side) - so I'll need to modify my elevations according to your design
Grades
== The problem is it has to work with the cars and the driveway. Pushing the house further down the hill doesn't help since you will then be fighting a grade that continues to drop off the further you move away from the street (steeper than the 15% that the driveway wants)
Driveway
=== Agreed at that why I have set it at 15%. I've done many project though with a 20% driveway however as well but it requires either groved concrete or heavy aggregate mix asphalt (which is actually what I did on my last house we did for ourselves).
As for breaking the house to help the transition - I did already create a difference of 2ft from the garage to the other end of the house (with the courtyard 12" lower). We can do more but I don't think it is needed more than that and it is more impactful to step the house than to step outside patios (since traffic will be mainly in the house - where they live - so they don't have too many stairs). This is also why I paralleled the topography.
As for Mt. Diablo it is almost due north (maybe a bit to the north east but only slightly) relative to the house) - so we are trying to get the great room to have that view (which is now how it is oriented). - Thanks again for the comments.
Hello all,
I took some time to review your comments and the current site plan. They were all very helpful. The reasoning behind all of the moves was to first minimize grading, to keep the bulk of the building on more level ground, ensuring comfortable vehicular circulation from the street level to the garage, and keeping mind of the comments made by the planning department on the previous go around.
Forgive me in advance this is going to get very technical.
FFE
Where the house sits now with the FFE at 335/ 334 and the soil line at 326 will likely be too much of a height difference. Grading out a pad to 830 will still require a 5+ ft retaining/stem wall that then drops down to 824ft, so roughly a 6 ft between the FFE and soil instead of 8'. Creating a terrace at the 824 elevation and keeping walls at or under 4 ft (as per the city's comments of keeping retaining walls 4' or lower) just for that area would by rough calculations require ~29.9 yd^3 of cut and 47.3 yd^3 of fill, and that's just for one terrace.
Grades
Siting the house at a lower FFE and lower down the hill allows for the a less severe transition of grade. The grades closest to the street and to the northern part of the property are 25-30%. It behooves me to take advantage of more gentle slopes on the south end of the site.
Driveway
Siting the driveway on a more gradual slope allows the driveway to have a slope that is less than 15% which is in many code books the maximum slope of a driveway. A slope over 15% is allowable but requires a specific finish to the surface. Right now where the house sits the slope is 16-18% and with a rough transition into the garage (think of an immediate slope outside the garage. Ideally there would be at least car's length of flattish surface and then a 3-4% upslope into the garage.
Simply put this is a complicated project, but 100% achievable. Believe me I'm not trying to break the floor plane up into different levels or separate the house into two pieces. I want the McDavits to get the layout they want, yet at the same time I have to respond to the physical conditions of the site and simultaneously avoiding creating one flat pad (it's not easy). We are running into similar issues from the past attempt except we are attempting to span a 61' level surface over a 14 foot change in elevation. It's better than when we had 75' over 18' of elevation change.
Simple moves to consider would be to raise the elevation of the courtyard and garage 2ft; and move the circular patio from the west side to the east side of the building creating a deck. I know it may be odd to step up into a garage from the house but that one move would allow us to have a 13% driveway given we move the house a couple feet north east to allow for a smoother transition.
Tim, can you draw a datum line that shows the direct line of to sight of Mt. Diablo? I have not been the site in a while, and I do not have my field notes up here in Nevada City. It would be helpful to know for future design considerations.
Hi Tim, so christine and I took a look last night and I was able to take a good look right now, absolutely beautiful!!! Christine is working a 12 hr shift today but I'll be able to discuss the changes you mentioned above with her tonight. For me, I think the small gallery steps will be fine (for the reasons you provided). The boys currently have 7' 9'' ceilings and they are totally fine so 8' will work great (always good to save money! ) and 9' on the master side is awesome.
Totally love the driveway! Love the guest parking area (which we will utilize for sure!) and it can also double as a basketball court area! Looks like plenty of space to turn around/maneuver (even for the odyssey) and the entry and exit makes it looks so grand and luxurious, great way to utilize the long curb space we have.
I see the window seat drawn in for Nate so thank u!
Site plan slight rotation works great and we have plenty of room for terraced backyard for grass and pool/spa area lined up perfectly off the kitchen,dining, and courtyard. Also, I was thinking we have a great opportunity for a secondary backyard area/play area directly west of the family room, we could have an area to fit our playset (image attached) maybe!
We will study and digest more over next few days but everything is looking amazing!! Thanks Tim!
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Hi - I just posted the other elevations but also the site plan has changed slightly. I did rotate the house slightly (not as much as Robert's option B - but I thought it was still a good idea as a slight rotation). To alleviate stepping the back patio's too much (which I think will still need to happen) - I did two sets of small steps in the gallery. It isn't 100% needed (since we parallel the topography) but I do think the Town of Danville will like it and it does help the driveway since the street is higher and it lessens the slope to the garage from the street. Note this also reduces the kids bedrooms from 9ft ceilings to 8ft ceilings which will actually save on cost and I think it will still be fine - with higher 9ft ceilings on the master side (*if this isn't acceptable then we could vault the ceilings - but again -just thinking to save cost where we can). The Driveway is now drawn in and Jim Diggins will still need to fine tune it plus I'd like Robert to take a stab at revising the driveway if he has another idea for it.
Hi Robert, we appreciate the ideas and options. We would echo alot of Tim's comments, the options where the house is flipped dont work because the kitchen, master, and family rooms should be on the more private side of the lot which have the best views (northwest side). Also, we really need to have the house on one level and not step it down to help us stay on budget. Also, separating the garages from the house is an interesting concept and potentially very cool looking but the boys rooms are above the garages and we just love the upstairs layout and wouldnt want to change that.
Also, the options where the driveway is on the most northwest part of the property cant work because of the town scenic easement, I believe the town would require this to be left alone as natural landscape. This town imposed scenic easement actually works to our advantage because it extends significantly into the open lot next to us (directly west) and restricts development in a big way on its northern and western sides. This is important because on the original site plan, Tim has the master balcony placed so that we can enjoy views of the sunset in the northwest direction and I believe the scenic easement will protect alot of this view in the future when inevitably someone will build there.
The amount of frontage of the house in the original site plan is desirable to us and we would like to maximize the backyard space as much as possible as a terraced/stepped down backyard although we would hopefully like to have some type of walkway around the house at the same level as the house.
Option B does present a good thought on rotating the house counterclockwise a bit to open up the garage area. However we dont want to move the house down the hill any more than it already is and we should maximize the angle that the master balcony looks at the sunset in relation to the scenic easement on the neighboring lot. One thought I had to decrease the slope of the driveway if needed was to increase the distance on the street level between the inlet and exit. The inlet could be in the driveway easement on the southwest aspect of the lot and the outlet could be say on the other side of the water meter on the more northwest part. Unless I'm not understanding the circular drive? Does the circular drive have one inlet and outlet?