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Building a Home Garages/Workshops Design Dilemma

Does the house plan specify the finished slab height?

last year

Does the house plan specify the finished slab height with respect to the kerb height and does the plan specify whether the driveway should slope towards the kerb or towards the garage?
My builder poured the slab which is much lower than the height of the kerb which means the driveway now will have to slope towards the garage. The street has got a slight slope and is not a big problem as both the neighbouring lots has the driveway sloping towards the kerb.
Looks like after the land was cut, the slab was poured directly on the ground without filling in the cut with soil to achieve the desired slab height.
As the slab sits lower than both the adjacent properties, I suspect there will be water accumulating in my lot as there is no natural slope to drain the water. Also, I thing there might be soil erosion from the adjacent properties as my lot sits lower in the middle and the adjacent properties sit higher than my slab.
Just need your inputs on this and how should I take this matter forward and the potential issues I might face.

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Comments (16)

dreamer
last year
Please post your house site plans.
Sam Sam thanked dreamer
Sam Sam
Original Author
last year
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Sam Sam
Original Author
last year
dreamer
last year
Maybe some photos of the areas in question.
Sam Sam
Original Author
last year
Kate
last year
It looks like there is a drainage easement along the rear of your property and the water should drain to their. There should be at rains around the outside of your slab to divert the water around the house. That is normal. Footpaths should be draining to the kerb not into your property. If that is not the case ask council to address that you may need a flood hump. So talk all of these issues though with your local council”s drainage engineer. They can guide you more than we can. Hope the build goes well
Kate
last year
Correction “at drains” should be “ag drains”
bigreader
last year
Somewhere in your paperwork there will be details on the slab, and cut and fill details. The use of the existing crossover means you may need to consider a drain between your yet to be poured drive and the crossover. Time to talk to your builder. https://www.google.com/imgres?q=french driveway drain australia&imgurl=https://allproof.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/Domestic-Channel-3-680x380-1.jpg&imgrefurl=https://allproof.com.au/product/domestic-channel-strip-drain/&docid=PH9z3RDYQ3wdBM&tbnid=BS5ifsSigLgiSM&vet=12ahUKEwjJne3KofuMAxXjcGwGHVHQOToQM3oECFoQAA..i&w=680&h=380&hcb=2&ved=2ahUKEwjJne3KofuMAxXjcGwGHVHQOToQM3oECFoQAA
PRO
Paul Di Stefano Design
last year
Yes usually we would always specify FFL relative to site....not sure what's happened here but needs some attention to drainage solution and potentially external retaining to perimeter of "buried" aspect of building closer to the street.......unless there was a reason such as keeping within a height restriction limit it doesn't make sense why it would be set so low - but it looks like your block slopes to the rear so possibly they set level to balance excessive footings build up to rear?? Hard to know
dreamer
last year
If not in your contract, I would suggest it is your responsibility to install retaining walls where required. When the home is completed the down pipes installed along the side of home would drain into a soak well. The same soak well should collect the run off from rain. So with retaining walls and down pipes, and soak wells, the water should disburse correctly. The front of the garage there is showing a pvc pipe. I would say this is ready for a linear drain to be installed in front of the garage door to collect any run off of water from the driveway. I would think there would be more paperwork showing all of this.
dreamer
last year
This is an example of a site plan showing all the surveyors notes, proposed residence and FFL levels (bold letters in middle of the plan and middle of garage). You should have a plan from surveyors similar to this. Unless you do thing’s completely different on the east coast.
dreamer
last year
Not sure how you build in the east. Here in WA with our double brick construction, the garage floor is not part of the first concrete pour for the house. The garage concrete is poured last, once the entire home is completed externally. So….in the photos shown, does this include the garage floor in the concrete already poured??
dreamer
last year
And I assume there are boundary fencing between properties and the back of block. Is it the subdivision developer’s responsibility to install these? Or is your responsibility. Any retaining of land could be done at the same time.
PRO
Paul Di Stefano Design
last year
Check the engineering documentation as this may ( and should have!) FFL's specified.

Regardless of what the existing is a slab won't be just poured to whatever level the ground is - usually the levels are carefully set and established prior too...sometimes they're adjusted/tweaked on the fly but either way is what it is now and needs to be managed. I'd be concerned about potential runoff/flooding from the driveway so potentially upspec/oversizing of culvert drain to garage door threshold required or at least get a 2nd opinion from a civil engineer to ensure drainage solution in place to appropriately protect the building and manage runoff and stormwater scenario
bigreader
last year
Dreamer, on this side of Oz the garage is poured at the same time generally with a small step down but occasionally with steps. So the OPs pic includes the slab.
dreamer
last year
Thanks bigreader, we never stop learning.

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