Floor plan of a single-family house on a slope

Where? How much?
A slope remains a slope. Excavating or filling is usually more expensive than one thinks. The resulting walls need retaining walls and rainwater drainage often costs extra. To achieve an effect with 2 terraces (south and north), these are galactic masses. With a total budget of 650K for 3 children's rooms, an office, and so on, in my opinion, that's unthinkable. Besides, my focus definitely wouldn't be on the direct connection of the garage to the house, but on cost minimization in terrain modeling and the necessary rooms inside the house.

I would recommend deciding on one terrace, either south or north, and orienting the house accordingly. The north terrace offers the advantage of short distances (every square meter costs), shading in summer (precisely when you like to be outside), and shielding from the street by the house. After that, you can consider where the garage can be placed.

Exactly for this reason I approached you on this portal, to get other opinions. After all, it helps me with the decision and planning of our house. We are open to everything and grateful for every other approach!

and , that is a maximum of 8% slope. That can easily be leveled in the house area. Of course, all without retaining walls. But if you want to level the entire plot, then it gets really expensive. The OP does not want that anyway.

Correct. We want to level the garden in the house area. The rest must be graded or created on different levels.

You can also raise the house and garage a bit, then create a mass balance. But the driveway will then be about 15%.

The problem is the ground-level garage.

I have 3 steps to the garage which I can barely manage. Something like that would relax it extremely.

If the house and garage are set higher, that does not bother us. As mentioned, the connection of the garage to the house is a wish, but if it only causes problems, it can of course be changed to ease the situation. A steeper driveway that does not comply with the standard also does not bother us.

I think the OP is thinking of something like this:

[ATTACH alt="john5.jpg"]91520[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH alt="john4.jpg"]91521[/ATTACH]

You can see the volumes that would have to be moved and how endlessly long the walls would be. I don’t know how the regional prices are, but for 650K with the requirements for a house with 3 children’s rooms and an office - I see black for 650K. Even if you omit the upper excavation - still a big chunk.

WOW! Thanks for the illustration! I would not have expected something like that. But that’s what we imagined. If the problems outweigh, the garage will not be attached.

What do you think about placing the garage behind the house? This way, a lot of height could be overcome by a driveway, and the level access from the garage into the house would be behind the house. Additionally, the house can be set higher.

I’ll show you what the 3 steps mean.

Much less earthwork,

Mass balance is balanced,

Much flatter slopes.

Nice approach, thanks!

Barrier-free access is not easy. We had/have this problem too. Our driveway does not meet standards – it is too steep. From the garage you can enter the house directly barrier-free and also through the yard to the front door. The latter is not optimal and not exactly standard but it works and was implemented that way. Meanwhile, for wheelchair, rollator, and so on, the front door is used - even if the slope is not optimal, the way to the dining area is more direct.

I would not level the entire plot. Besides the immense costs, you also have the water problem during heavy rain. As 11ant already wrote, water always flows downward. If unlucky, also the neighbor’s slope.
Costs, heavy rain and the wish to have everything flat is the squaring of the circle. Not everything is flat at our property either and still, we invested a lot of money in retaining, filling, and excavation. Part of the plot can only be accessed from the upper floor or from the street above.

Do you happen to have planning documents of how you solved it exactly? Sounds similar to our situation as described above.

We do not want to level the entire plot either! We want to tier the garden in the north and thus create different levels. The water problem remains, of course, hence no basement (that would cause the house to flood even more easily!). We would solve the water problem with floor drains in the garden area.

Do you possibly have pictures of your situation? I would be very interested.

Slope position is not simple. Moving earth costs a lot of money. If you move an average of 1 cubic meter of earth over an area of 14 x 30m, you end up with 420m3 of earth. If everything goes very cheaply, you pay just under €50,000 for it. If the soil is somewhat difficult and you have to catch one thing or another, costs can quickly rise to €100,000 or significantly more. Depending on how flexible you are with your budget, I would quickly check the costs when designing ideas. Have the architect or a local company give you an estimated price for 1m3 of excavation and add 20%. Otherwise, the earthworks will devour you before the first wall is built.

Here visualized once more. You can see that no major problems arise.



If the garage is built higher, the driveway will become steeper and you may then have to put L stones at the boundary.

What do you think about putting the garage behind the house? This way, a considerable height can be overcome with a driveway, and the level access from the garage to the house takes place behind the house.

We don’t want to level the entire property! We want to tier the garden to the north and thus create different levels.

We would solve the water problem with floor drains in the garden area.

You are currently allocating a six-figure amount of your house costs for the outdoor facilities based on these statements.

A steeper driveway that does not conform to the standard doesn’t bother us either.

You have or are planning for three children and are planning a dangerous driveway. These are just two things I wanted to briefly point out. I am not that deeply involved in the planning here. But you should simply think about it.

What do you think about putting the garage behind the house?

It’s best to make a sketch. "Behind the house" can mean a lot.

What do you think about putting the garage behind the house?

nothing.

This way, a driveway could overcome quite a bit of height, the level access from the garage to the house would take place behind the house. Additionally, the house can be set higher.

Draw that into my latest section. Then don’t forget about approx. 5 m between house and garage. You surely want to use both garages.

Then you’ll see how deep you’re allowed to dig for the driveway and garage.

Or you make the house only 11-12 m wide as I suggested.

I’ve already thought quite a bit about why I’m planning the house only 12*9.

If the house is supposed to be in the middle of the plot, then in my opinion 1.45 m above the SE corner at the street is optimal.

You can now cut further back and fill at the front until you like it. Always keep in mind that no slopes become steeper than 1:2 and the mass balance works out.

Terracing as you showed will be expensive.

Water inlets are nonsense. At least here in DE not allowed. Rainwater mostly must not go into the sewer system. You solve that with good planning.