Silver Lake Steep Driveway Design

We got a call to see if we could design a driveway for a demo’d property in Silver Lake.

I took a look at the topo and decided to take a drive by for a look at the property in question.  I knew that getting a driveway to the top of the hill where the house pad would be located would be nearly impossible.  I came back and came up with a rough idea of what could be done.  Which was, not very much by the current Los Angeles City driveway standards.  We could get up the hill about 12 feet.  The house sits about 40 feet above the street.  This seems decent until you take into account that the driveway would have massive walls or some type of 1:1 slope cutout right into the hillside.  Not to mention the driveway needing to be wider so someone could open the car door if stuck for some reason.  Even after trying multiple paths to the top, I told the possible client that this wouldn’t work for what he wanted.

He mentioned that the alternative would be a funicular which currently costs about $120,000.  This alternative has its own set of problems, but appears to be the main solution to the amount of stairs needed to be climbed to get to the house.

So why all of the trouble to put this house at the top and not the bottom of the slope like most of the other houses on the street?  The house will have a straight perfect view of the Silver Lake Resevoir.

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