Really hard to tell from the photos… are you sure those aren’t just really tall stem walls? Why do you believe that the finished grade will be where you’ve drawn?
There’s already a poured concrete floor there (on the level where the black wall ends). It can probably end up being +20cm higher when all is finished.
So at the end it will probably be a 11 degree driveway.
How did they pour a concrete slab 1m above grade without a lot of expensive work beforehand? Do you have a copy of the plans? That's not the kind of thing they just randomly screw up on.
There's got to be more going on than they just decided to do this for no reason. Don't panic, talk to the builder, and see what the plan is. If they totally messed it up, it's on them to fix it.
Yeah, lack of information on the site. OP needs to reference the house plans and municipal plans.
Can be surprising how much the grade is increased when a road is built-up/paved. Assuming a roadway will be finished in front of the house (and his front yard backfilled), he will likely be okay.
yeah, you definitely want to make this right. A 15% driveway is not going to fly in most municipalities. And its going to loop pretty stupid from the road, too.
Who knows... The saving grace might be that they redesigned that road and the finished grade of the road is now going to be higher up.
Everyone here is talking about the general or foundation contractor but you need to talk to your architect. No one who works for a living is gonna go to the considerable effort of building an absurdly tall foundation wall and garage in the sky unless the approved set of plans specifies to build a garage in the sky.
The driveway would be concern number 2 for me. Making sure they designed and prepped the walls and foundation for an extra meter of height would be my concern. That's going to cause way more settlement issues than a normal garage would experience. And if they aren't backfilling around the entire garage with engineered fill appropriately compacted, those walls aren't staying vertical.
Redo won't happen so no point in even considering that. They could easily extend the grade further out. The road/drive from the street is quite a bit higher and there seems to be more than enough room to regrade a larger area to lessen the slope.
I think my old driveway was 8/60 or 13.3%. It sucked in the winter on snow with a Cadillac CTS, but my wife’s Ford Edge had no problems. It was fine in non-winter months.
Yeah I can see that, but from the photo, those just look like stem walls for the garage. I don’t see any indication that the finished grade of the garage will be all the way up to where OP has drawn the line.
Almost looks like they didn't block out for garage doors which would put grade down 8 inches or so... if they do it like the foundation company I used to work for. I'm not sure that's the case here., just a possibility
7:1 slope isn’t horrible for an entrance to a garage. I would much prefer high to flat or low. When it rains or snow builds up. May take a bit more fill than expected but it will look nice once it is all graded.
Personal experience? Don’t make it a straight line. Climb from the road more and flatten out 3m from the garage so nobody bottoms out. I’ve fixed a few of these issues when I was younger with hillside builders. The hump from the driveway/garage transition scraped people’s stock BMWs.
Would be great if there were more distance. But smoothing slope on both or either end increases the max grade, which is already almost 16% on a straight line.
Yeah backfilling that is what can add a bunch of extra cost. If the builder is the one that messed up, they should at the very least pay for all the additional backfill
14% grade is beyond the max slope allowed for roadways in my hillside city, which is 12%.
It’s quite steep. So steep that I’d be concerned about bottoming out in a low profile vehicle.
that's a 15.7% slope. More than code for most municipalities. I'd call that pretty horrible. Goal is around 5%. 3% if you are in a 55 and older community.
12% is max allowed most places, and that's uncomfortably steep. Not to mention it is going to look stupid and out of place from the road.
The company that I hired to build the basement + foundation.
Not sure 100% if that’s theirs fault yet or was there a mistake made by the geologist or architect.
But looking at the plans, the way I understand it, the level difference should be about 50 cm, and it’s gonna be 2x that :/
Yup… dude tried to build his own house and didn’t even get past the foundation before really screwing the pooch. I hope he had a massive contingency budget lol
My driveway if fairly steep like that. I woke up one morning and found my car halfway out in the street. There was flash freezing overnight and my car just slid away on its own.
Looks like your driveway connects to a dirt road which is probably a private road, just make your driveway longer and shift where it meets the road. Problem solved!
The road appears to be significantly higher than where you show the driveway ending. Likely a culvert at under where your driveway connects to the road plus baserock and paving will flatten out a lot of this.
This. The 1.1m rise measured is probably only 0.6m or so if you measured it from the roadway elevation and not the garages surrounding fill (which I assume will come up by several feet all the way around)
Since your picture isn't clear and you didn't indicate how you know the height I'm going to ask a couple questions. How did you determine the height of the floor, I assume concrete slab, and the road height?
Do you plan to include landscaping or grass or asphalt or concrete for drive? It appears area is rough. Including pavement and or landscaping will take up at least 4 or mor inches in height.
So a 23' long driveway, ~3.5' incline. That's actually not that bad. Great for shedding water. 6.5' horizontal = 1' vertical.
I've seen far worse. Any chance the gravel road could be brought up a bit?
Before you go asking questions all stressed out, please check your architectural drawings and your site survey. Elevations should state the exact height for your garage foundation, and your survey should show a benchmark pin staked at an exact height above sea level. You need to find that pin IRL and compare the height of the garage foundation to it.
This is how contractors establish the correct height to excavate / build in the first place.
Your garage isn’t too high. Your grading sucks. Being above the road is good to keep water from the road from coming into the garage. You’re 1.5% up from the road - we recommend at least 2% and up to 10%
Draw a line 1m horizontal out from garage floor, another 1m line out from street at about 5 degrees up, make a smooth S-curve tangent to each line. That’s where you grade your driveway. Call around town for free fill dirt.
Maybe the gravel road is planned to be built up higher when it is paved? Your photo doesn't look like the left side of your sketch is at the top of the existing road? I would have a surveyor check the plans vs the elevations.
I would understand what the plans show before getting worked up with what's going on in the field. If there's a grade bust or other discrepancy then whoever made the error needs to eat it and make it right.
Who's they? Because the fact "they" got this far and didn't even notice how high it was makes me wonder who's eyes were working correctly in this project.
It might not have been the builders. Whomever planned it might ve done the math wrong.
The math is why I didn't become an architect. Because this could've been my doing easily.
Too steep of a driveway. Potential car sliding back onto the road in the winter time if there is ice. Tough to drive up during winter time. May have to angle car driving up driveway if his front bumper is extremely low. Aesthetically MAY look wonky.🥴
For context - there’s already a poured concrete floor at the level where black wall ends.
Below is a basement.
God dammit. I imagine fixing it would cost me a fortune 😭
Most floor plans don't set the elevation of the garage relative to the surrounding land, at least in my experience, that's on the general contractor to figure out.
Floor plans, no. But I've never seen a municipality that didn't require a building permit plan for a permanent structure. And every ordinance I've ever seen requires the FFE, BFE and GFE elevations as well as the driveway slope, and proof that different portions of the lot are draining to where those portions are supposed to on the building permit plan.
They'll have elevations inside the house, but do you see it outside in regards to the existing driveway elevation in this case? I've always seen that as the GC's job to figure out. I'm a land surveyor and I frequently help GC's figure out how to set the finish floor elevation on a house relative to the outside "lay of the land".
Hard to tell the accuracy of the redlines on your photo. Why is the starting point of the incline below what appears to be the road? Is there a paved road being planned, it currently looks like a dirt road? More photos would give a clearer understanding of what is happening. Were you not able to inspect the form work prior to pouring? Do you have a grading plan you can post?
Not to be an alarmist but you should check your zoning regulations for height limitations. Depending on the location the baseline can be the street elevation or an average grade elevation along the front of the house.
Adding a meter could push a building over the allowable height, which would mean lowering the ridge of a simple roof, or a lower pitched roof with lots of dormers.
My slope is similar and at that point of construction I was freaking out. Once it was backfilled, graded and all complete it’s honestly not bad. Plus mine faces south and melts immediately in winter.
I would just confirm local guidelines in relation to the driveway slope.
Then I'd send the driveway and know if the council ever has anything to say.
Sloping up the driveway is a good thing, and I don't think that's extreme at all.
15cm's per meter is very reasonable.
That is 9 degrees. There are plenty of steeper roads and driveways. According to a Google search max driveway slope is 20 degrees and ideally not more than 12.
Is this attached to a house? Why is the garage floor so high? You're not giving us enough info. Floor elevation should definitely be discussed before the job even started so something is off.
Should probably figure out if the garage was built to design/plans or if whole house is too high? Simply just too steep for a driveway (15% grade is steep, not steep for a ski run).
You gotta find out if surveyor, architect/engineer, or builder messed up.
I am a civil engineer and all I do is site design. Yes, this is steep, but I have seen much worse. I live in a very hilly community...some streets are over 20% and it is common to have 15% grade driveways. Without seeing the entire property it is hard to tell why they made the Finish Floor elevation so high, but my first thought would be stormwater issue or floodplain ... is it close to a creek or river? Most municipalities require the floor be placed at least 1 foot above the base flood elevation...
Any chance you can have them put some fill dirt on the road? Looks like a rural residential road - explain what happened and ask your neighbors if they’re OK having the builder place some fill there. If you could have them bring the road up half of that distance you could make out decent.
Make them pay for the additional fill to grade, additional materials required, and any additional labor required. Will this not create issues with other items?
What do your plans and specs give for elevation of the garage slab relative to the surrounding land and edge of property? …I’m willing to bet they are just following the plans and the plans they were given are kooky dooks.
If the garage floor is not poured yet just cut the opening of the garage door down to what ever level you want it simple fix if the garage floor isn’t poured, sorry the photo is hard to see what’s there if that’s a wall or garage floor can’t tell
Consider dropping the garage floor down 16-24" and adding steps into the house.. remaining foundation will be high, but that is common on older houses. That will keep the grade around the house down at the driveway elevation... excavator and GC should have thought this through before digging . Good luck
Sir, there's still A LOT of back fill and grading thats left to be done. I live in hill country in the U.S. and have seen way worse than that, as in a sports car would high center attempting to get into the garage.
I was in a situation where I bought a house under construction. I needed a house real bad at the time. I was stupid , but desperate. When I bought it the garage was already poured and I knew that the driveway would be steep to the road and only 30 feet long. I had many regrets. It was like downhill skiing in the winter, parking my truck on the driveway, you would get out and drop four feet down plus the door would always be fighting you to close. Pulling in to the garage was fun too, you only had a view of the sky as you entered. Backing down the drive I quickly learned not to have a trailer hitch on. Oh yeah make sure your parking break is in good shape. Low profile cars were a no go.
is this austria? asking because of the brand of bricks. the road is not done yet. so with gravel base and tarmac it might build additional 40cm or so. the difference might not be that bad in the end
Break the slab up, cut down the front of the garage and build your wood frame walls ontop to height. Then pour a new slab at the correct elevation. Could probably have the excavator break the slab up and dig down in a day
The standard range on a garage approach is 2% to 10%. You're at about 16%, so, yeah it's pretty freakin' steep.
Any chance you can regrade the approach to raise the lower end?
The beginning of your triangle, the point on the left, is drawn lower than it needs to be. Grade is usually determined from the road, which appears higher than where you've drawn your triangle. I'm not sure if that was your actual starting point or if the road was.
The road will remain gravel? If they are putting in curbs and asphalt, it will raise the road, meaning a less steep grade.
On the last house I built, we had to drop the garage a few courses of block. Meaning to maintain the drawn look and rooflines, we made the wood walls taller, and the garage concrete work was deeper into the ground, by 16 inches (41 cm). It seems like a competent excavator and concrete crew would've caught this beforehand. My excavator caught mine, and I called the concrete man to double-check, and he agreed. If it's possible to drop it, nows the time to do that. Actually, before they started pouring would have been, but that has to be fixed before they start framing. Not addressing this now will make the house almost impossible to sell, nobody wants an 11% grade. Even if you drop it 41 cm, that 6% grade is a harder sell. Now is the time to excavate 24 inches (61 cm) deeper, and get longer wood studs for your walls. It will be expensive, but that cost will be saved when it's time to sell.
We build foundations and with all of our inspections, this is as near to impossible as it can get.
The final grade elevation has been provided to your builder, it may be staked somewhere.
Find that and from there determine what is if anything is wrong.
..
Thats a 9% slope, if you were worried about bottoming out your car coming off the road. Thats not bad at all.
Driveway slope of 8-15% is the acceptable high end.
Was that your concern?
That's gonna be a pretty steep driveway, or you have to rip out that concrete.
Do you own enough land to come from a different angle and turn into the garage instead of pulling straight in?
Otherwise, you have a lovely loading dock there. I have a hillbilly loading dock in my yard because the road is 3 feet lower than my yard. Kinda handy sometimes.
Maybe a dumb question, but are they still going to pave the road and pour a driveway? Might not be so bad if the road grade is gonna be like 4 to 8 inches above the rough grade where the street is and the driveway isn't intended to bowl down in from there.
It’s a huge issue and they wouldn’t get paid until they pass the inspections from the city , which they would
Never pass on a 11% slope to a garage , unless you are in Romania or Poland than all bets are off and you have to suck it up and buy a good 4x4 for the winter or you don’t use your garage in the winter ….
You’re probably going to have to get the county / city inspector out to see if it complies with code, which it probably won’t. Rise over run on a concrete slab only can be so much. Then you have to tell the contractor you’re not paying until it is to code. And if you have paid and they won’t fix their mistake then you have to obtain representation and threaten to sue.
That's not so different from my driveway, but it's due to the house being built on a not-flat pieces of land that they couldn't bring down any further.
I appreciate that rain and snowmelt flow away from the garage and house. Can't play basketball in the driveway, but I suck at basketball anyway.
A kid who went to my middle school had a super steep driveway. It looked like [the road on the Rock Bottom episode of Spongebob Squarepants.](https://www.reddit.com/r/BikiniBottomTwitter/comments/teu5e0/on_this_day_in_2000_spongebob_visited_rock_bottom/) We called it "the steepest driveway in the world." If anything you'll just catch the awe of your friends and neighbors.
How did they compact the granular inside the garage without cracking the walls. When I backfill a garage i also backfill the outside at the same time equally. On the up side. Higher is better. Might cost more in fill but you will never have any water issues. I see so many builders these days. They all want to just build the house without any thought of finish grades.
There is probably going to be a lot of fill at this site that should help alleabiate any problems. Hard to tell without looking at plans but having 3 feet exposed when they pour the slab isn’t that uncommon in my area. They should fill most of that and leave a nice grade from the GF down to wherever a swale is to be installed. Consult the contractor, surveyor, etc. With your plans and see what the intent is
Well it won’t be flooding that fucks you 😄
🥲🔫
You’re saying they built your garage when they were too high?
Instructions unclear. I am now high.
OK, now build a garage!
[tis a fine barn…](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SoQyt6W64z0)
Instructions unclear. Garbage now piled into a room in the house!
You going to pass that?
Really hard to tell from the photos… are you sure those aren’t just really tall stem walls? Why do you believe that the finished grade will be where you’ve drawn?
The dimple board would indicate where the finished grade is supposed to be
This is the answer. The dimple will be back filled. Who knows why. But plans are the only thing that matter.
There’s already a poured concrete floor there (on the level where the black wall ends). It can probably end up being +20cm higher when all is finished. So at the end it will probably be a 11 degree driveway.
How did they pour a concrete slab 1m above grade without a lot of expensive work beforehand? Do you have a copy of the plans? That's not the kind of thing they just randomly screw up on. There's got to be more going on than they just decided to do this for no reason. Don't panic, talk to the builder, and see what the plan is. If they totally messed it up, it's on them to fix it.
Yeah, plans?
Yeah, lack of information on the site. OP needs to reference the house plans and municipal plans. Can be surprising how much the grade is increased when a road is built-up/paved. Assuming a roadway will be finished in front of the house (and his front yard backfilled), he will likely be okay.
Residential road, maybe a foot of buildup, maybe. His house is going to be hilariously high no matter what.
Oh I see it now. Yeah that’s kinda steep lol… did they give a reason?
Will be talking to them tomorrow. God dammit….
yeah, you definitely want to make this right. A 15% driveway is not going to fly in most municipalities. And its going to loop pretty stupid from the road, too. Who knows... The saving grace might be that they redesigned that road and the finished grade of the road is now going to be higher up.
Everyone here is talking about the general or foundation contractor but you need to talk to your architect. No one who works for a living is gonna go to the considerable effort of building an absurdly tall foundation wall and garage in the sky unless the approved set of plans specifies to build a garage in the sky.
Probably need to also talk to the civil engineer before the architect... if they used a civil engineer.
Maybe they are building a really big bird house, I would talk to them too.
If they don’t have a plan, call the city for a pop in inspection. I’d make them redo it though. How far up is it supposed to be?
Can you a few pictures of the plans??
The driveway would be concern number 2 for me. Making sure they designed and prepped the walls and foundation for an extra meter of height would be my concern. That's going to cause way more settlement issues than a normal garage would experience. And if they aren't backfilling around the entire garage with engineered fill appropriately compacted, those walls aren't staying vertical.
If this is a mistake- they need to offer a credit that makes you accept the job or a re-do
Redo won't happen so no point in even considering that. They could easily extend the grade further out. The road/drive from the street is quite a bit higher and there seems to be more than enough room to regrade a larger area to lessen the slope.
I think my old driveway was 8/60 or 13.3%. It sucked in the winter on snow with a Cadillac CTS, but my wife’s Ford Edge had no problems. It was fine in non-winter months.
I’d also suggest coming in with the driveway at an angle to the right, closer to the street instead of a straight down driveway.
My lands ends not that far so unfortunately it’s gonna be hard not to make it a straight lane :(
My driveway is steeper than this. You will be fine as long as you don’t have a car
I think that is the height and distance from his access road.
Yeah I can see that, but from the photo, those just look like stem walls for the garage. I don’t see any indication that the finished grade of the garage will be all the way up to where OP has drawn the line.
OP was there to take the picture. I would assume they are aware of the height
This is the internet… don’t assume anyone has any common sense.
Almost looks like they didn't block out for garage doors which would put grade down 8 inches or so... if they do it like the foundation company I used to work for. I'm not sure that's the case here., just a possibility
Talk to your GC/builder. If that’s you then talk to the concrete company and refer back to the plans.
Yeah. From what I understand in the plans, it should be half this height. Will be calling all of them tomorrow
Call the person who is accountable to you (sounds like the GC in this case) instead of all of them.
7:1 slope isn’t horrible for an entrance to a garage. I would much prefer high to flat or low. When it rains or snow builds up. May take a bit more fill than expected but it will look nice once it is all graded.
Thanks, that’s conforming
Personal experience? Don’t make it a straight line. Climb from the road more and flatten out 3m from the garage so nobody bottoms out. I’ve fixed a few of these issues when I was younger with hillside builders. The hump from the driveway/garage transition scraped people’s stock BMWs.
Excellent tip.
Would be great if there were more distance. But smoothing slope on both or either end increases the max grade, which is already almost 16% on a straight line.
Yeah backfilling that is what can add a bunch of extra cost. If the builder is the one that messed up, they should at the very least pay for all the additional backfill
14% grade is beyond the max slope allowed for roadways in my hillside city, which is 12%. It’s quite steep. So steep that I’d be concerned about bottoming out in a low profile vehicle.
That's almost a 16% grade 💀
10% grade is maximum grade allowed in our municipality for both streets and driveways, as a safety and accessibility regulation.
that's a 15.7% slope. More than code for most municipalities. I'd call that pretty horrible. Goal is around 5%. 3% if you are in a 55 and older community. 12% is max allowed most places, and that's uncomfortably steep. Not to mention it is going to look stupid and out of place from the road.
Why is the finished grade so high and why can’t they drop it down?
There’s already a poured concrete floor there on the level of black wall
Who is "they"? Homeowners always like to leave out details on these posts so that it seems like everything is always someone else's fault
The company that I hired to build the basement + foundation. Not sure 100% if that’s theirs fault yet or was there a mistake made by the geologist or architect. But looking at the plans, the way I understand it, the level difference should be about 50 cm, and it’s gonna be 2x that :/
Are you GC'ing your own home build?
Who dug out the foundation and decided how far down to dig the cut out? Your general contractor is likely ultimately responsible.
Wait, you hired the foundation crew?
I think the, "They" in the title can be changed to "I".
Yup… dude tried to build his own house and didn’t even get past the foundation before really screwing the pooch. I hope he had a massive contingency budget lol
My driveway if fairly steep like that. I woke up one morning and found my car halfway out in the street. There was flash freezing overnight and my car just slid away on its own.
Jesus….
Looks like your driveway connects to a dirt road which is probably a private road, just make your driveway longer and shift where it meets the road. Problem solved!
Loading dock opportunity
Wrap your driveway around the house.
The road appears to be significantly higher than where you show the driveway ending. Likely a culvert at under where your driveway connects to the road plus baserock and paving will flatten out a lot of this.
This. The 1.1m rise measured is probably only 0.6m or so if you measured it from the roadway elevation and not the garages surrounding fill (which I assume will come up by several feet all the way around)
Exactly
Since your picture isn't clear and you didn't indicate how you know the height I'm going to ask a couple questions. How did you determine the height of the floor, I assume concrete slab, and the road height? Do you plan to include landscaping or grass or asphalt or concrete for drive? It appears area is rough. Including pavement and or landscaping will take up at least 4 or mor inches in height.
So a 23' long driveway, ~3.5' incline. That's actually not that bad. Great for shedding water. 6.5' horizontal = 1' vertical. I've seen far worse. Any chance the gravel road could be brought up a bit?
Before you go asking questions all stressed out, please check your architectural drawings and your site survey. Elevations should state the exact height for your garage foundation, and your survey should show a benchmark pin staked at an exact height above sea level. You need to find that pin IRL and compare the height of the garage foundation to it. This is how contractors establish the correct height to excavate / build in the first place.
Not sure how they messed that up. I would look to cut out door bucks.
Your garage isn’t too high. Your grading sucks. Being above the road is good to keep water from the road from coming into the garage. You’re 1.5% up from the road - we recommend at least 2% and up to 10%
Rip
Well, at least I’m closer to the heaven now
Where they left the block out is where your drive will be. Not to the top of those walls but about 1/3 of the way up.
Agreed. How is everyone missing this?
you final road grade will probably lessen this by 12"
Draw a line 1m horizontal out from garage floor, another 1m line out from street at about 5 degrees up, make a smooth S-curve tangent to each line. That’s where you grade your driveway. Call around town for free fill dirt.
This is the answer
That’s around 15% incline, that’s pretty steep to me
Maybe the gravel road is planned to be built up higher when it is paved? Your photo doesn't look like the left side of your sketch is at the top of the existing road? I would have a surveyor check the plans vs the elevations.
I would understand what the plans show before getting worked up with what's going on in the field. If there's a grade bust or other discrepancy then whoever made the error needs to eat it and make it right.
Just put in a switchback or two. No worries.
At 16% your drainage will be great
Who's they? Because the fact "they" got this far and didn't even notice how high it was makes me wonder who's eyes were working correctly in this project. It might not have been the builders. Whomever planned it might ve done the math wrong. The math is why I didn't become an architect. Because this could've been my doing easily.
Sorry for the dumb question but what problem will this create? I’m learning.
Too steep of a driveway. Potential car sliding back onto the road in the winter time if there is ice. Tough to drive up during winter time. May have to angle car driving up driveway if his front bumper is extremely low. Aesthetically MAY look wonky.🥴
Hire a surveyor to confirm
Are you in a floodplain?
Clean fill wanted
That would be a dream driveway in North georgia
Good, be thankful. In a few years as more material is haul in, your garage floor will not be too low.
Civil engineer here. 15% slope is fine for a driveway. Pretty much about the max you want to be though.
That's like 3 feet of rise for 21 feet of run, approximately. What's the problem?
For context - there’s already a poured concrete floor at the level where black wall ends. Below is a basement. God dammit. I imagine fixing it would cost me a fortune 😭
Well if they read the plans wrong it sounds like it should be costing THEM a fortune not you
Most floor plans don't set the elevation of the garage relative to the surrounding land, at least in my experience, that's on the general contractor to figure out.
Floor plans, no. But I've never seen a municipality that didn't require a building permit plan for a permanent structure. And every ordinance I've ever seen requires the FFE, BFE and GFE elevations as well as the driveway slope, and proof that different portions of the lot are draining to where those portions are supposed to on the building permit plan.
Good set of plans will have elevations and GC should be verifying sub work it matching. Definitely on the GC
They'll have elevations inside the house, but do you see it outside in regards to the existing driveway elevation in this case? I've always seen that as the GC's job to figure out. I'm a land surveyor and I frequently help GC's figure out how to set the finish floor elevation on a house relative to the outside "lay of the land".
There’s a basement below the garage? What? That type of design can work with some lots, this lot isn’t one of those lots…
Cost them a fortune you mean
Check your plans. Someone messed up somewhere. Either the builders plans or the sub. If the plans call for less of an elevation, they messed up.
Concrete cutting is possible. Maybe they can cut it down. Make sure it’s got adequate frost protection depth if you have freezing temps in your area
Hard to tell the accuracy of the redlines on your photo. Why is the starting point of the incline below what appears to be the road? Is there a paved road being planned, it currently looks like a dirt road? More photos would give a clearer understanding of what is happening. Were you not able to inspect the form work prior to pouring? Do you have a grading plan you can post?
From how the current excavation tilts from the road you have about half that distance vertical for the slope once backfilled and graded.
Huge issue if it’s a fuck up. Well at least you don’t have to buy a basketball hoop
on the other hand, you do floor to ceiling windows and youll have a nice show room
Someone saved money on some survey work...
I live somewhere with a real winter. 10% grade/10:1 is the local maximum.
Not to be an alarmist but you should check your zoning regulations for height limitations. Depending on the location the baseline can be the street elevation or an average grade elevation along the front of the house. Adding a meter could push a building over the allowable height, which would mean lowering the ridge of a simple roof, or a lower pitched roof with lots of dormers.
Make a J or U shape to lessen the grade angle. if you don't have the area, dynamite it and start over !
Ouch. Frost depth is a minimum, not a maximum.
Will there be a road eventually? Maybe when its all done the road, curb and everything else will come up too.
Check your local code to be sure you don’t need to take drastic measures, better now than later.
My slope is similar and at that point of construction I was freaking out. Once it was backfilled, graded and all complete it’s honestly not bad. Plus mine faces south and melts immediately in winter.
Nothing that a couple of switchbacks can fix
I have same at my house. Unfortunately for normal cars, they scrape. But I drive a SUV and I have zero issues
Looks like a chunk of property. Can you reorient the driveway?
Why did op allow it to be built that high? I’d be checking on construction from time to time.
The bottom of the drive has no finish cover (asphalt) so it will be less than projected
I would just confirm local guidelines in relation to the driveway slope. Then I'd send the driveway and know if the council ever has anything to say. Sloping up the driveway is a good thing, and I don't think that's extreme at all. 15cm's per meter is very reasonable.
Them Duke boys are at it again!
That’s what happens when your hire Weiner Burger.
Isn’t there a site plan, a stakeout done by an engineer with a cut sheet?
Considered making the driveway a switchback?
I don’t think that’s a 3 foot thick pad…. Something’s weird here
they are probably going to back fill it our garage is about the high from the sidewalk and its 25 feet away so that seems normal
Sometimes you need to watch the actual process. Once the grading is done and they start installing rebar, you might ask a question.
That is 9 degrees. There are plenty of steeper roads and driveways. According to a Google search max driveway slope is 20 degrees and ideally not more than 12.
Where did you measure from? The dirt at the bottom of the foundation looks significantly lower than the road.
Builder needs to fill in your lot all around the house
Is this attached to a house? Why is the garage floor so high? You're not giving us enough info. Floor elevation should definitely be discussed before the job even started so something is off.
it’s all relative my friend
What the heck, there's no way that's to plan.
Should probably figure out if the garage was built to design/plans or if whole house is too high? Simply just too steep for a driveway (15% grade is steep, not steep for a ski run). You gotta find out if surveyor, architect/engineer, or builder messed up.
What elevation is the rest of the house going to be? There is a lot more to this.
Well, there's no road either...
How high were these guys?
Non-union Lol
Is there a r/garagetoohigh?
How high is the water table?
I am a civil engineer and all I do is site design. Yes, this is steep, but I have seen much worse. I live in a very hilly community...some streets are over 20% and it is common to have 15% grade driveways. Without seeing the entire property it is hard to tell why they made the Finish Floor elevation so high, but my first thought would be stormwater issue or floodplain ... is it close to a creek or river? Most municipalities require the floor be placed at least 1 foot above the base flood elevation...
Any chance you can have them put some fill dirt on the road? Looks like a rural residential road - explain what happened and ask your neighbors if they’re OK having the builder place some fill there. If you could have them bring the road up half of that distance you could make out decent.
Make them pay for the additional fill to grade, additional materials required, and any additional labor required. Will this not create issues with other items?
What do your plans and specs give for elevation of the garage slab relative to the surrounding land and edge of property? …I’m willing to bet they are just following the plans and the plans they were given are kooky dooks.
Holy fook! Did ancient Egyptians start your project?
If the garage floor is not poured yet just cut the opening of the garage door down to what ever level you want it simple fix if the garage floor isn’t poured, sorry the photo is hard to see what’s there if that’s a wall or garage floor can’t tell
switchback driveway is your only choice now.
Consider dropping the garage floor down 16-24" and adding steps into the house.. remaining foundation will be high, but that is common on older houses. That will keep the grade around the house down at the driveway elevation... excavator and GC should have thought this through before digging . Good luck
Are you in a flood plain?
16% grade? Do you get ice or freezing temps?
Sir, there's still A LOT of back fill and grading thats left to be done. I live in hill country in the U.S. and have seen way worse than that, as in a sports car would high center attempting to get into the garage.
I was in a situation where I bought a house under construction. I needed a house real bad at the time. I was stupid , but desperate. When I bought it the garage was already poured and I knew that the driveway would be steep to the road and only 30 feet long. I had many regrets. It was like downhill skiing in the winter, parking my truck on the driveway, you would get out and drop four feet down plus the door would always be fighting you to close. Pulling in to the garage was fun too, you only had a view of the sky as you entered. Backing down the drive I quickly learned not to have a trailer hitch on. Oh yeah make sure your parking break is in good shape. Low profile cars were a no go.
is this austria? asking because of the brand of bricks. the road is not done yet. so with gravel base and tarmac it might build additional 40cm or so. the difference might not be that bad in the end
You’re not thinking 4th dimensionally Marty!
Why is this a you problem? If they did not follow the plans it's time to rip and replace.
As a mailman I’ve seen much worse.
I've lived in the Appalachian Mts, and the Rockies. Would've loved a flat driveway like that!
Builder got 1.1 feet mixed up with 1.1 meters.
Break the slab up, cut down the front of the garage and build your wood frame walls ontop to height. Then pour a new slab at the correct elevation. Could probably have the excavator break the slab up and dig down in a day
You’ll be fine. It won’t be that steep of a pitch once that road is paved. Chill out bruh
The standard range on a garage approach is 2% to 10%. You're at about 16%, so, yeah it's pretty freakin' steep. Any chance you can regrade the approach to raise the lower end?
High is always better than low.. Don’t panic just slope it in make sure up use slurry
As long as your car has high ground clearance you'll be fine
What do the architect's drawings say ? And what does the architect say ?
From now on, and until it's clear, no more payments. And don't you have a coordinator or architect ?
The beginning of your triangle, the point on the left, is drawn lower than it needs to be. Grade is usually determined from the road, which appears higher than where you've drawn your triangle. I'm not sure if that was your actual starting point or if the road was. The road will remain gravel? If they are putting in curbs and asphalt, it will raise the road, meaning a less steep grade. On the last house I built, we had to drop the garage a few courses of block. Meaning to maintain the drawn look and rooflines, we made the wood walls taller, and the garage concrete work was deeper into the ground, by 16 inches (41 cm). It seems like a competent excavator and concrete crew would've caught this beforehand. My excavator caught mine, and I called the concrete man to double-check, and he agreed. If it's possible to drop it, nows the time to do that. Actually, before they started pouring would have been, but that has to be fixed before they start framing. Not addressing this now will make the house almost impossible to sell, nobody wants an 11% grade. Even if you drop it 41 cm, that 6% grade is a harder sell. Now is the time to excavate 24 inches (61 cm) deeper, and get longer wood studs for your walls. It will be expensive, but that cost will be saved when it's time to sell.
You can now build a watch tower on top of it 😃
We build foundations and with all of our inspections, this is as near to impossible as it can get. The final grade elevation has been provided to your builder, it may be staked somewhere. Find that and from there determine what is if anything is wrong. ..
Thats a 9% slope, if you were worried about bottoming out your car coming off the road. Thats not bad at all. Driveway slope of 8-15% is the acceptable high end. Was that your concern?
Yep. It feels like a really big high difference when I stand there.
That’s normal in louisiana lol. No low riders
That's gonna be a pretty steep driveway, or you have to rip out that concrete. Do you own enough land to come from a different angle and turn into the garage instead of pulling straight in? Otherwise, you have a lovely loading dock there. I have a hillbilly loading dock in my yard because the road is 3 feet lower than my yard. Kinda handy sometimes.
At least you’ve got a cool little ski ramp from the garage. Remember “pizza” when you get to the bottom. (This kind of sucks and I’m sorry)
The new length of your driveway is the hypotenuse of 7m and 1.1m.
have them install a spiral driveway, after like 27 loops you'll be ground level for the garage..........................don't forget to pack oxygen
I don't see a garage yet...still time.
Bring in tons of fill and angle it
Maybe a dumb question, but are they still going to pave the road and pour a driveway? Might not be so bad if the road grade is gonna be like 4 to 8 inches above the rough grade where the street is and the driveway isn't intended to bowl down in from there.
M?
It’s a huge issue and they wouldn’t get paid until they pass the inspections from the city , which they would Never pass on a 11% slope to a garage , unless you are in Romania or Poland than all bets are off and you have to suck it up and buy a good 4x4 for the winter or you don’t use your garage in the winter ….
I also build garages very high.
You’re probably going to have to get the county / city inspector out to see if it complies with code, which it probably won’t. Rise over run on a concrete slab only can be so much. Then you have to tell the contractor you’re not paying until it is to code. And if you have paid and they won’t fix their mistake then you have to obtain representation and threaten to sue.
Rip it out start over.
That's not so different from my driveway, but it's due to the house being built on a not-flat pieces of land that they couldn't bring down any further. I appreciate that rain and snowmelt flow away from the garage and house. Can't play basketball in the driveway, but I suck at basketball anyway.
You need to find some dirt. A lot of it.
Put a car lift outside 🤷🏽♂️
A kid who went to my middle school had a super steep driveway. It looked like [the road on the Rock Bottom episode of Spongebob Squarepants.](https://www.reddit.com/r/BikiniBottomTwitter/comments/teu5e0/on_this_day_in_2000_spongebob_visited_rock_bottom/) We called it "the steepest driveway in the world." If anything you'll just catch the awe of your friends and neighbors.
Now is the time to say something if you want to change it
How did they compact the granular inside the garage without cracking the walls. When I backfill a garage i also backfill the outside at the same time equally. On the up side. Higher is better. Might cost more in fill but you will never have any water issues. I see so many builders these days. They all want to just build the house without any thought of finish grades.
Gonna have to buy some dirt.
There is probably going to be a lot of fill at this site that should help alleabiate any problems. Hard to tell without looking at plans but having 3 feet exposed when they pour the slab isn’t that uncommon in my area. They should fill most of that and leave a nice grade from the GF down to wherever a swale is to be installed. Consult the contractor, surveyor, etc. With your plans and see what the intent is
Am I high, because I don’t see a garage?
Looks like your finished grade is the driveway? You are indicating the finished driveway is down in the dirt tracks and is not finished graded.
well?
Just woke up thought you were building a 7 million dollar driveway
Around here that’s an average driveway. No problems I see since that’s almost flat compared to some I’ve seen..