Sitework: Lowcountry Home Site
If the sound of the surf echoes your heartbeat, South Carolina’s lowcountry is the right region for you. With access to exquisite and diverse shorelines all along its eastern coast, there’s a reason the area has the word “low” in its moniker. While nearby ocean views draw us, the land lies fairly flat and sandy. That said, there can be great variation underground when it comes to choosing a home site.
Our clients featured in this post had already purchased land when they contacted us. We walked the property with them and without them (with permission) multiple times: after a heavy rain, after periods of no rain, various times of day, etc. This helped us better understand the site itself and answered questions such as:
Where might it hold water?
How - and where - does run-off flow?
What path does the sun take in summer across the land? How does it vary in the winter?
Situating a house on topography can be as mindless as kicking off an old shoe. However, we don’t recommend such a carefree attitude in the planning phase. If you have the benefit of laying a house purposefully into a landscape, we advocate for some advance work and analysis. It will greatly enhance the experience of living there later. Now is the time to think about things like:
Do I like the sun to wake me up through my bedroom windows in the morning, or do I want the first evening stars to wink at me while I finish my day and head to bed?
What view do I want to see while my hands are in the kitchen sink? What about at my desk? What about off the front porch?
How do I want my friends and relations to experience first seeing my home as they turn up the driveway? How do I want passing vehicles to see the house from the road - or do I want them to see it at all?
Sometimes the land itself dictates what location is best for the house. Perhaps the well can only be dug in a certain place, or there’s a pond, or something to do with the strata or geography. In that case, the site wins. But by and large, any pre-planning will pay off in some fashion.
Site work on a forested, South Carolina lowcountry home site begins.
Did you know construction involves site organics? “Organics” in a construction site are the soil’s consistency, or inconsistency, as it comes to firmness. The organics are the layers of sediment, leaves, tree roots, etc. that can form an uneven strata for foundations. Because of that, site work involves more than just cutting down and hauling off existing trees. The truth is, all the organics must be cut down, dug through, and carried off until the correct type of ground is uncovered for building on. Sometimes, alternate materials need to be trucked in to firm up the work area before foundation work can even begin.
Once firmer ground cover is brought in it gets “tamped down”, which involves heavy machinery and pounding it to a certain compaction rating. The site is then inspected and once it passes, you’re good to continue with your foundation footers, etc. Like the Bible said, you want to build on a rock. Well, here in the lowcountry, you definitely want your site to have passed the compaction rating test.
