DIY Network

Horse-Country Home: Location and Foundation From "Be Your Own Contractor: Vacation Homes" episode DBCV-106

Francesca de la Flor's vacation home near Temecula, California.

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In this episode of DIY's Be Your Own Contractor: Vacation Homes, we meet Francesca de la Flor and learn about the vacation home she near Temecula, California.

In this segment, Francesca discusses the location where she chose to build her vacation home and the process of building the foundation.

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Figure A

Days of Wine and Horses

Francesca's house and land is in the heart of the southern California's Temecula Valley (figure A), just outside the small but expanding city of Temecula. The city is about 20 miles inland from the Pacific coast, 60 miles north of San Diego and about 100 miles south of Francesca's home in Pasadena.

Figure B

Her choice to build in this area was based on a number of the region's appealing aspects. In addition to being surrounded by beautiful wine vineyards, the area is known as California's horse country (figure B). Francesca loves horses and longed to have a small ranch in this area where most of the great thoroughbred farms of California are located. Though she doesn't yet have her horses on site, eventually they will be stabled on the property. Francesca's overall plan includes a barn for housing the horses as well as fenced pastures. Part of her plan was also the terracing and landscaping the site, creating a lush garden around the house itself.

	Figure C

The Temecula Valley is filled with scenic vineyards (figure C) and is becoming known as "Napa Valley South." Though the area is booming, Francesca's house is far enough away from town that growth and sprawl is not yet much in evidence.

Her parents originally cleared the land and built a house on the property, but that first structure was unfortunately destroyed by wildfire. The fact that a house had once been there, however, was later beneficial to Francesca in building her new home since utilities had already been installed on the property -- including wells, water-holding tanks and pressure tanks. A portion of the land had also been graded and a road had been cut in. "It was clearly a site that was ready for construction," she says.

With her limited budget, Francesca would not have been able to afford the expense involved in preparing the site were it not for the work that had already been done. "To put it in perspective," she says, "it cost my parents $52,000 to bring electricity in one mile. The total budget for my house was $45,000 -- house and furnishings -- so [without the earlier installations] I could never have built."

	Figure D
	Figure E

Foundation Factors

Because the ground in this area is so hard, jackhammers had to be used to cut into the ground for building the foundation, which did impact expenses significantly. In hindsight, that was the only major unexpected expense with the construction of the house.

Since this is a home in California, code requires some specific building standards because of the possibility of earthquakes. The amount of steel used in the foundation (figures D and E) is greater than what is required in other areas. Francesca educated herself on local building-code requirements and hired a structural engineer to make sure that the house was being built properly for this area.

"You need a structural engineer," she says "to really define how you're going to build the foundation. And all of that is part of the planning process, and it's part of the inspection process."

In the segment that follows, Francesca talks tile -- the tile roof and the tile floor.

RESOURCES :

Investing in a Vacation Home for Pleasure and Profit
Author: James H. Boykin
Order this book from Amazon.com
Publisher: South-Western Educational Pub (2005)
ISBN: 0324314116

How a Second Home Can Be Your Best Investment: New, Tax-Free Methods for Using a Vacation Home for Recreation, Retirement and Investment
Authors: Tom Kelly, John Tuccillo
Order this book from Amazon.com
Publisher: McGraw-Hill (2004)
ISBN: 0071429700