Be There or Pay the Price!
The first lot we cleared went perfect. We were there when it was marked off and when the excavation crew arrived.
With that good fortune behind us, we felt we could trust our Architect to take care of the second lot while we attended a wedding. Well it was New Years Weekend and the Architect decided to go away so he delegated it to the builder.
When we returned, we heard from the builder that everything went smoothly. Then we went to the property and I almost died. The original idea was to scrape off about 2-3 feet for the back of the house and support the front with piers allowing parking under the house. We had in mind a smaller 1,500 sf house at the highest level for the view on a small lot.
Well the Tico way of preparing for a house is dig a big hole at the garage level and fill it with a house. The excavators removed over 10 feet of dirt, made the lot twice as big as we wanted and basically left us with a disaster.
We have since designed a house that will take advantage of the lot but it will be about 240 m2 instead of 130 m2. It will have to be a two story when we wanted a one story. (You can’t simply fill the hole and start over again.)
So rule number one - If it is important, you need to be there otherwise you may end up with a hole like this:
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