We were tasked with finding a clean driveway path so a car can drive up the driveway and turnaround in front of the house. The conditions are steep existing driveway and not much room to get a car up in front of the house. The existing turnaround is in the rear yard. A major goal is to minimize grading for the eventual grading plan.
At first it looks like there is a path to get some rough ideas where to place things, but then being able to turnaround and come back out the driveway to the street head on has some constraints. I needed to tweak my car path outline to try to rotate around to see where some placements can go. We have to dodge a couple of trees that are wanted to be kept by the owner. We also would be coming slightly below the existing grade of the house itself, and potentially undercutting out an existing slope next to the house.
The first design that gets close to one of these versions has a retaining wall on either side with just enough room to park a compact car, reverse and come back out. We are also looking to hug the contours at the same time to minimize the retaining wall heights. Minimizing changing the existing driveway grade is also a constraint. The problem here could be that the walls are too large and West starts to encroach a possible tree. We also need an full survey so we know where the trees really are and their canopies. This is more of a rough survey to begin on.
The next version, the parking spots were rotated to have a different path of travel for compact parking spots. A constraint here is how the wall extends from the existing house. We want to keep one of these wall tied into the existing so it doesn’t count as a retaining wall.
Steep hillside lots not only do we have to watch for trying to minimize earthwork, but we also need to minimize wall heights and the number of retaining walls. Cost to construction is also a factor as if you go above 50% then we have to modify the entire lot to current standards, which can be a deal breaker as the existing house would need to be retrofitted.