ADU Surveys in Richmond, CA

Richmond's ADU checklist asks for a site plan at 1/8-inch scale or better showing property boundaries with dimensions, the footprints and setbacks of every structure, deck, and patio, roof slopes and directions, driveways and curb cuts, fences with heights, and — notably — easements and waterways. The city stops short of a standing survey requirement, but reserves the right to require additional materials depending on project complexity, and Richmond's geography supplies plenty of complexity: the city spans WWII-era shipyard-worker neighborhoods on the flats, older parcels in North & East and the Iron Triangle with century-old lot lines, and genuinely steep terrain in the Richmond hills, El Sobrante-facing slopes, and Point Richmond. Creek and channel corridors — Wildcat, San Pablo, Baxter — thread through the city, which is where that "waterways" line on the checklist earns its place.

Richmond also offers free pre-approved ADU plans, one of the better deals in the county — but the city's own guidance notes that users still need site-specific foundation details prepared for their lot. That is the recurring Richmond pattern: the standardized parts of an ADU are cheap here, and the site-specific parts — where the property lines actually run, how the lot drains, what the slope does under the proposed footprint — are what remain. Our laser-scanned site survey resolves all three in one visit: boundary from monument evidence and record research, dense elevations for drainage and foundation design, and structures, fences, and easements mapped onto a single stamped base sheet your designer or the pre-approved plan's engineer can work from directly.

Richmond parcels record through the Contra Costa County Recorder in Martinez. For hillside projects that need full contour work, see our Richmond topographic surveys; for line-only questions, boundary determination.