Walking the Site

Matt and I walked the site last week. The good news is that he was excited about the property and its possibilities with multiple house sites. The less than good news: the road and bridge is going to be a big and expensive sub-project (not that we didn't know it). It won't be insurmountable but we probably eliminated site B which is deeper into the property because the road would have to be 400-600 ft and a small bridge over the stream. Road appears to cost about $20-30 a linear ft and that's w/o utilities which can run another $20 a linear ft for under ground (its $1500 for a pole every 300 ft which looks more likely). In addition, our little idea to bring the road down to a lower part of the stream and cross there wouldn't really save us much money because of the road costs and also we'd really impact the central part of the property where the view is because the grading (10%) would land the road right in the middle.

So we're back to focusing on site A and the big bridge. The good news is that we plotted out a rough possible road and that would only have to be about 200 ft after the bridge on relatively flat ground. And there looks like a natural place for a parking area/roundabout. We're still trying to keep the bridge/road/utilities to $50k but Matt thinks we'll be tight. Since we've formally hired him now engineers are going to be sent out in the next couple of weeks to assess the bridge possibilities. We like the idea of a pre-fab bridge where we put into concrete piers and they lay a bridge on top with a crane. Those firms will also do some of the engineering work for you.

Oh yea, and we looked at the house site pretty close to where CP and I had wanted it. This way we also leverage the already approved septic areas and can work the house into the slope for some extra intrigue. That process also starts soon.