Can you build on a steep block in Brisbane?
Yes, and a fall is usually an advantage rather than a problem. Slope gives you level changes, better views, natural airflow under the house and a home that looks like it belongs on the site. What a slope will not tolerate is a flat land house plan pushed onto it, because that is where the retaining walls, the excavation and the budget blowouts come from.
Cut and fill, or design to the contour?
There are two ways to deal with a fall. You can reshape the land to suit a plan, which means excavation, retaining and carting spoil off site. Or you can design the house to step with the ground, which usually means far less earthworks and a better result. We do the second wherever the block allows it, because your money is better spent on the house than on moving dirt.
What actually drives the cost on a sloping block
- How much fall there is across the building envelope, not across the whole block.
- Soil classification and the footing design that follows, including whether you need piers.
- Retaining, and whether it is structural or landscape. The two are priced very differently.
- Access. Whether a concrete truck and a crane can get to where they need to be.
- Stormwater, and where the water goes once the ground is reshaped.
Why you want the designer and the builder to be the same company
On a sloping block the design and the engineering are the same conversation. When an architect draws and a separate builder prices, the slope is where the two disagree and where the variations start. We draw it and we build it, so the person making the design decision is the person who has to stand behind the price.
Written by Jay Mostyn, founder and director of Luxury Lifestyle Homes. Jay is a qualified carpenter QBCC licence number 15156763 with 20+ years building custom homes across Brisbane and the Moreton Bay region.