New Custom ADU Project
This is our brand-new custom ADU project here in Escondido, California. We are looking at its front entry. This is a 1200-square-foot accessory dwelling unit (ADU) with about a 640-square-foot garage and a deck on top of the garage. So it’s going to be a very nice place.
This is a split-level pad that we’re building here. You can see the excavator climbing up on top of the raised level, which has a three-foot elevation change. The lower portion is going to be the garage, so they’ll be able to drive in, and the top level will be where all the living space is.
Digging the Property
You never know what you’ll get into when digging in the ground here. We do our best to mark out and find out what’s in the ground. However, you never know what kind of buried treasure you will find.
We saw an old bootleg leach line that came out of this existing metal building. Some mold iron pipes and other leach lines were slightly different than what the as-built showed us, but there was no problem there. We’re able to just rework that a bit and add it to the end of the system that’s going to service this house.
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Land Excavation and Grading
So, what we do is we over-excavate three feet down, and then they recompact it and build back up to our final elevation on this project. What was unforeseen was we had to remove more dirt than we anticipated. They had to go down five to six feet in most areas because the dirt was loose, and the soil quality wasn’t where they needed it. So they got down to a good hard bottom and then began working their way up from there.
It’s day three here on the grading. These smaller pads can take as long or longer, even as some of the larger ones we do, because you’re in such a tight area. It also takes longer when you run out of room to stack the dirt and shuffle equipment around.
It’s a little different animal than when you have a bunch of space to work with. But they got about another day and a half, and we’ll be wrapped up here. We’re going to start our foundation quickly after this. We got a suitable break in the weather and will be off to the races after that.
Continuing the Work
We will get all of our underground plumbing and foundation board in and get this thing framed, and it’ll look like a home’s being built here. This is an exciting day. It’s always exciting to break new ground on a project. We will keep the updates coming as this project moves forward. We’ll pour the slab here pretty soon and have some walls in the air, so there’ll be much to show for in the next couple of weeks.
If you need help building a custom home, ADU, or whole-house remodeling, request a project consultation with us. We have offices in Ramona, California, serving the San Diego County area, and Middleton, Idaho, serving the Boise Metro area. You can also explore our comprehensive collection of similar videos on our YouTube channel, The Real Property Show.
