As I’ve already mentioned, we have been paying big time for building on a hillside. My brother asked if we got the lot cheap because it was on a hillside. Almost all lots with great views are on hillsides, unless you can snag a flat waterfront lot. So the answer is no.
The other price we pay, apparently, for that great view is “fill”. I confess that I don’t understand how we can dig a big hole in the ground, put the piles of dirt outside the hole, fill up the hole with 47 cubic meters of concrete and then wood, and still have to bring in 100 truckloads of various kinds of dirt to put back into the hole and around the house to make it livable. Is the house going to slide down the hill if we don’t add all that dirt?
We are changing the landscape so that we have flat areas around the house to drive on. How ironic. Those flat areas necessitate a steep hill on the rest of the lot. We’re just transferring the steepness to another part of the lot. Will the yard, then, be usable? At a later date, we will have to carve some switchbacks into the bottom of the lot so that it might be.
And, what about the pollution generated by those excavators and trucks we’re using to bring in this fill? Green dilemma #4. Ouch.
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