You have not said how steep your hill is. You can have very steep hills that do not erode without adding man made structures. The key is to keep every inch of the ground well covered with plants. Usually you will only see bare erosion spots if water is rushing down a specific point. You mentioned the down spouts, but it is not likely that they would cause the whole hill to erode. You might think about grading the flat back yard a bit so that all the water flows down to one point. Then at this one point, create a rock slide using larger rocks so that the water does not move the rocks. In effect you create a water fall but add enough large rocks so that it prevents erosion. the rocks don't have to be too big, just big enough and irregular enough so that they are stable. I have a slope on my property that is very steep - probably drops 10 ft for every 5 ft. It is made up of rock and soil covered with grass/weeds/golden rod. No errosion at all.

Hi guys: My name is Karen, and I work for Bechtol Engineering in Deland (between Daytona and Orlando). Among other things, we test soils before and during phases of construction; and one of the biggies is buried organic debris underlying new houses: As the organics decompose, a "void" space the size and shape of the original organic mass is created, the subsoils sink to fill it, and all hell breaks loose in the overlying structure - cracked and flooded foundations, cracked exterior walls, etc... It's especially common in relatively newly created subdivisions with man-made canals and ponds - the trees and scrub that used to stand in place of all those building pads and water features have to go somewhere, and greedy contractors may look for ways to avoid the high cost of trucking that stuff out and paying landfill fees. If it's under your house, you can do things (very, very expensive things!) to shore up the foundation; but I know you guys were talking more about your yards. Your best bet would be to call a geotechnical engineering firm near you and have someone come out to do borings. If you need deep borings requiring a truck-mounted drill rig it's very expensive, but if all you need is a guy with a hand auger (typically good enough to get down about 7 feet) it's not. The borings will probably be able to show you where the buried debris is located, and roughly map its vertical and horizontal boundaries for you. If there's no structure overlying the organic deposits, you can just supplement the lowest area inside the boundaries with any cheap fill dirt - make sure you specify that this dirt is just for growing grass & trees, and not to be used for structural subgrade: it'll be half the price, because it won't need to be particularly clean or well-graded.

If you wish to consider buying this filled lot and building upon it you must do things the right way meaning you can't take short cuts in evaluations. There are some steps to the process. 1. Have your attorney prepare an option-to-purchase agreement for the property that gives you enough time to: 2.)Engage a professional for design of a preliminary floor plan(4-8 weeks). 3)Schedule a surveyor to stake the home's footprint (2 weeks). 4.)Engage a licensed professional geotechnical engineer to drill for soil borings and provide you with a report on how to construct the foundations (2-4 weeks) based upon your floor plan. 5.) Obtain an estimate from your builder (definitely needs to be a good builder with experience in these matters) for the extra cost of foundation and slab work in the home. There are some things you need to make sure are included in the scope of the engineer's report. Any qualified engineer will provide recommendations about soils under footing areas. However, make sure they also address soil conditions under the basement and garage floor slabs as well as under the concrete drive area. I have seen these areas go unaddressed in reports, have no remedial action taken during initial construction, and be a problem with ground settlement years after construction is complete. In my experience, one always negotiates for a reduction in the price of the property in these situations. The cost of these professionals can easily be in the range of $7,500. To this you add the additional cost of construction from your builder, and you arrive at a bottom line offer for the lot. Not knowing these extra costs precludes one from specifying an upfront offer for the lot cost in the agreement. The agreement simply gives you the exclusive right to purchase the property within a specified time period. The option-to-purchase agreement is recommended if you are indeed responsible for all of the professional service costs. If you are responsible for all these costs you want the exclusive right to purchase the lot within the allotted time specified in your agreement. That said, I have seen developers, or the land seller, pay for the geotechnical engineering and survey work. In this case you might skip the attorney and purchase agreement and just perform the preliminary design.

Well....today they were SUPPOSED to begin by taking out a "non-weightbearing" wall between the kitchen and dining area of our condo. The GC isn't here, but the worker who was supposed to start by removing the wall and cabinets has determined that it IS weight-bearing. (Since it is a 20+ year old condo building, the plans are not available.) So.... now we are having to re-figure everything, including our angled cabinets (at least uppers and probably lowers, too) at the entrance to the kitchen. UGGGGG..... Electrician is "on hold" (and not happy about it) and we now will need a beam and supports which will change whole the look...and size... of the custom cabinets that are already built and ready to go in tomorrw! Trying to stay calm.... Deep breath.....