This weekend, we had a meeting at the Ripplebrook lot with one of the Victory Homes site managers and a survey company. We were meeting to do a 4-corner stake out on the lot. Basically, it’s taking the 4 main corners of the house and placing them on the lot where they would be and also the survey company will do a land survey of the elevations, etc to provide to Victory. Normally, this is done when you’ve selected (and possibly even put in an offer) on your lot, and you would be charged for this.

Victory has a good relationship with the developer of Ripplebrook, and so he was okay with us doing this stake out even though we haven’t made an official offer on the lot or anything yet. Also, Victory will do this for folks like us sometimes where the lot isn’t a “standard” lot (read that as not flat or maybe one with a gentle slope to the back). They will offer this service and cover the costs because it allows them to provide a better lot improvement price and make their overall pricing for the build much more accurate. This is one of the reasons that we went with Victory Homes/Allen Builders. They realize that if they spend this small cost upfront, it will mean a more accurate build cost estimate, fewer surprises, and a happier client, aka us, in the end.

Having the site manager from Victory (Dave) there was very helpful. The surveyors had actually already had the 4 corners marked by the time we got there for the meeting so we were able to jump right into it. As we walked how it was marked now, Dave had some very good ideas for the placement of the house on the lot. Normally, they tend to place houses closer to the front of lots to give people a larger back yard. Due to the way this lot slopes, and where things start to flatten out, he actually recommended that we move the house further back on to the lot, and pivot it to the side a bit around the front corner, and push it off center. We would still have a large back yard, and also end up with a nice front yard which could make for some nice landscaping opportunities if we moved forward on purchasing this lot.

So, after talking through his ideas and seeing that the actual lot extended more into a small wooded area than we originally thought it did, we all agreed moving the house would be the best idea. So, the surveyors did their magic again and moved the stakes around. Once the stakes were moved, it did feel better for sure on the lot. Points to Dave for all the ideas and thoughts we’d never have thought of. He took down a bunch of notes on the placement and site notes which he would turn back in to the designers to incorporate in to our plan. This will also allow them to make an actual site plan with the house in it’s place and then work on the lower level draft plan since some of the lower level layout decisions were going to be based on the lot itself.