ADU Surveys in Orinda, CA

Orinda's plan-set checklist starts with a demand most site plans can't meet without a surveyor: all property lines shown and dimensioned with metes and bounds, along with every road, right-of-way, and easement labeled with its nature, trees 6 inches and larger with driplines and species, impervious surfaces with square footages, and creeks with their required setbacks shown in plan and section. On slopes — which is most of Orinda — the requirements compound: properties with average slopes greater than 20 percent need existing and proposed topographic contours for all land within 20 feet of proposed improvements plus cross-sections across the full property, and grading beyond 50 cubic yards triggers a grading plan at 2-foot contour intervals with cut/fill quantities and any geologic or hazardous soil conditions mapped. The drainage-plan section goes further still, requiring topographic contours "based on a topographic survey" and noting that preparation by a licensed surveyor may be required — triggered by as little as 500 square feet of new impervious surface, which an ADU with its paths and parking reaches easily.

Orinda's terrain earns the paperwork. Winding roads, deep wooded lots, shared driveways, and slopes that turn a backyard ADU into a foundation and drainage project are the norm from Orinda Village to the Glorietta and Sleepy Hollow hills, and cross-lot drainage — prohibited under the city's rules — is exactly what careless grading produces here. Our laser-scanned survey resolves boundary, 2-foot contours, trees, walls, and creek top-of-bank in one visit, with the metes-and-bounds base and impervious-area quantities the checklist wants on the sheet.

Orinda contracts building services to Contra Costa County, so the county's slope-based geotechnical triggers apply at building permit too. Deliverables are a stamped base map and layered DWG through the County Recorder in Martinez; for pure terrain work see our Orinda topographic surveys.