Well met with the GC today. Zoinks! Nothing good can happen from those meetings. Brought a proposed budget that I admit was 1.5 more than I was expecting. $941,520 for grading. Because all the dirt would need to be hauled away. And the walls being 20’ tall means you have to temporarily slope the hill to build the walls. Then haul dirt back in to backfill. Even so. Seems like a lot. Maybe just buy myself a semi trailer and an excavator and haul the dirt out to the ranch.
2 thoughts come to mind. 1) is to pull the garage out of the existing hillside more to reduce the amount of earth being disturbed. Give up some driveway space in front of the garage as I have driveway space in the front of the house for 10 cars. 2) We own an additional teardown house on the property next door to where the garage is. We had planned on building both at the same time but now I’m thinking demo the house and just pile all the dirt on that lot. Save hundreds of truck trips and dump fees.
Concrete costs are $1,720,211. That seems like a lot for concrete. Would prefab panels be a better option? They are calling for cast in place walls. I don’t know if you can do 20’ precast walls when they are holding back a hill. Not sure how to work around this cost. Kinda need walls. I mean. I’ll buy the beer and bourbon if y’all bring your hammers and we knock out some 20’ forms.
Going to pull the garage out of the hill a bit and see how that impacts numbers. Ohh. And maybe a pool on the top instead of just lawn. More to come.
While the pricing seems astronomical to most who will read this thread, the scope of the work appears to be in order given your location (California). I suspect in an area not potentially subject to sporadic and sudden seismic shift and potential landslide due to heavy rains (El Nino/La Nina does not help). The amount of additional site work is due to not only those factors, but the state, county, local rules and regulations that covers such construction. Not withstanding these minor, and not so minor factors, it really boils down to the massive amount of materials that need to be moved and brought in. For the basics, at least for excavation considerations, you need to calculate the volume of material (basic volume calculations of length x width x depth) that needs to be properly excavated. Figure $6.00-$15.00 per cubic yard for material removal (rocks, ledges, etc will raise the costs), another $250-$300/hr for equipment and operator. Now you have trucking costs, even if it is going next door, the costs for equipment, operator, insurance, prep for the dump area, runoff controls, etc will come in to play. I suspect if you bought the equipment yourself, and decided to take this one full time, you as a one man wrecking crew can get the job done in roughly 3-5 years, at least the proper excavation, site prep, and compaction of the raw dirt. So keep this in mind in your question to save 5%% on your up front site prep costs (you will not be as efficient as a competent contractor and crew) .Since I mentioned insurance, you need this for the property while under construction, this is to cover you in case someone gets hurt on your property, make certain you speak with your insurance broker on this.
Now, let's talk about concrete and site prep, again, knowing the general scope is a main factor, it is more on a commercial level than a residential level, with that in mind, coupled with the previous rules, regulations, etc, your costs are probably twice what a similar project would be outside of your risk zone. Prep and materials will be your highest costs, labor will be second, actual materials third. Additional, structural materials due to the seismic issues are a major cost factor given the size of the project, labor and equipment costs as well.
Finally, and this just crossed my mind, with the massive scale of the proposal, did you reach out to commercial contractors for additional quotes vs residential contractors, who may be in over their heads thinking they can make that jump to commercial.
Looking forward to more updates and site pictures once things get physically off the ground.
Bill S.
PS: My first bid for my small 30x50 garage project (which turned into a complete gut to the studs for the house while we were at it) was easily 150% higher than I expected. Getting the right builder in and coupling it with the additional rehab work on the house, brought the final costs down to 105% of what I had original thought in my mind.
