When planning a new building, house, or addition allowing room for drainage can be a critical factor in the maintenance and resale value of your home. Talking with our Civil and Structural engineers the main cause of damage to properly designed foundations, and the ensuing damage to the rest of the homes structural system, is improper drainage.
While water is great for your lawn it is the enemy of anything stationary. With the propensity for expansive soils in many locales including Colorado and the freeze thaw cycle water against your foundation is a serious threat to the value of your valuable home.
Talking with one of the EV Studio Civil engineers at lunch the other day he showed me how he could quickly take the street elevation and the alley elevation and come up with the proper height of the foundation for the house. I asked him if this kind of design work was required for a permit and he said it was not and was one of the major problems he found in homes that had not had a Civil Engineer work on the project.
Considering this issue and how a simple calculation could basically save a homeowner from a mistake and thousands of dollars in complex grading work-arounds made me think about how fortunate EV Studio is to have so many different engineers under the same roof. This model of business gives our clients the advantage of a full team of experts without the complexity of hiring several different design team members.
