Introduction
- This e-article is about a custom home design page of a home plan set – how to design a Site Plan
Comment: Please note that there are plenty of other e-articles hereunder that present other aspects of a custom home design plan, including, among others
Overview - http://searchwarp.com/swa307167.htm
Cover Sheet - http://searchwarp.com/swa308356.htm
Radon Mitigation Plan - http://searchwarp.com/swa297956.htm
Electrical Circuitry - http://searchwarp.com/swa219070.htm
Foundation Design (several), including Slab-on-Grade design - http://searchwarp.com/swa210956.htm
Home Plan Details (several), including a checklist - http://searchwarp.com/swa132855.htm
Home Lighting Design (several), including Lighting Design for Aging Eyes - http://searchwarp.com/swa124510.htm and http://searchwarp.com/swa124664.htm
Etc., etc., etc.
What is a Site Plan?
- Indispensable part of a plan set
- Defines fundamentally important facts about a property on which a custom home is to be built or remodeled, including among others
- custom home lay and what's in the way
- compass north
- setbacks
- rights of way
- easements
- significant topographical elements, e.g., rock outcroppings, pooling or running surface water or wetlands, etc.
- changes in elevation
Special considerations locally, e.g.
- Lines of sight to specific views, e.g., mountain tops
- Complexity of infill abutters' property lines
- historical
- civil
- cultural
When should you get a Site Plan?
- The earlier the better in a draw
- Credal certitude of design latitude, especially of a footprint, can be blown away by a land survey
Site Plan, Example
Comment: This is the full sheet of a Site Plan in a Before The Architect custom home plan set. Source of plat is the local surveyor, in .dxf. The footprint of the custom home, site walls, drive, etc. are surrounded by hardwoods individually identified by specie (inset Legend) and site (green) and trunk diameter (text beside green symbol), above by community roadbed, and to right by shared driveway. Text to the right involves extensive notes on driveway layout and a key to the sheet's symbols.
What sorts of things can get added to the map?
- Real property footprint(s) to Site Plan scale, as above
- Changes in elevation of the finish grade at real property corners relative to a base point – AG prefers L1 floor level
- Out buildings – temporary and permanent
Relative Elevations, Out Buildings, Site Wall in Plan View
- Major utility service entrances
Driveway Arc to Right Of Way in Plan View, Excluding Extensive Notes of Design and Construction, Including Utility Entrance
- Clearing area around footprint
Silt Fence, Clearing, Lighting in Plan View
- Septic tank and fields general location
Septic Tank and Field, Approximately, in Plan View
- Other, local requirements
Comment: A base point for Site Plan elevations at interior and exterior corners is anybody's guess. Just pick one and stick to it. Subsequently, contractors in the need to know relative elevations can adapt and do, so long as the base point target doesn't change.
This custom home designer usually relates every horizontal elevation marker to the main floor level roughed, and leaves others to adjust to their own individual preferences.
Truly, this aspect of home design can get crazy and crazier if you wander or get pushed off your reservation with, say, two or more sets of base points and elevations or base points that vary from one part of a structure or real property and another.
- Shall be executed after consultation with a landscape architect, regrettably almost always late in the build
Comment: This latter point, the introduction of a landscape architect into the planning phase and preparatory to siting the footprint, is so hard for builders to embrace, hard for home designers, too. With any complexity whatsoever to a site and its proposed real property and use, you can do a site plan the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is with a landscape architect in on it at the get-go.
Comment: A basic site plan – before the home designer goes to work on it – originates from surveyors, civil engineers, landscape architects, and the like. Almost always, there's a clunky Autocad-compatible file with which the home designer can work.
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