ADU Surveys in San Pablo, CA

San Pablo streamlined its ADU process in mid-2026 — applications now go straight to the Building Division without separate planning approval — but the site-plan standard underneath is exacting. The city's residential site plan handout requires applicants to "accurately and clearly specify metes, bounds, and other legal site lines (such as easements)," with setback lines for all structures, dimensions between structures, utility laterals plotted, and drainage engineered on paper: 5 percent fall away from the building for the first 10 feet and 2 percent positive drainage to the street. And the handout answers the survey question in its own underlined words: if property lines and structure locations are not known, a professional survey of the site may be required. On San Pablo's compact early-20th-century lots — hemmed in on every side by Richmond and layered with a century of fences, additions, and shared driveways — "not known" describes most parcels honestly.

East of Interstate 80, the requirements step up: the city requires a geotechnical report for all development — construction, grading, even tree removal — on that side of the freeway, reflecting the soil conditions and the Hayward fault's proximity along the hills. That makes the east-side ADU a three-document project from day one: surveyed site plan, soils report, and building plans that reconcile the two. San Pablo ADUs also collect outside-agency stamps before plan check — fire district for any new construction, West County Wastewater for any added fixtures, and the school district, whose fees apply to ADUs. Our laser-scanned site survey anchors the sequence: boundary resolved to metes-and-bounds standard from county records, structures and laterals mapped, drainage grades measured against the 5-and-2-percent standard, and staked corners that support the surveyor form verification inspectors frequently require before the foundation pour.

Records run through the Contra Costa County Recorder in Martinez. Deliverables are a stamped base map, layered DWG, and staked corners; for drainage- and slope-led questions see our San Pablo topographic surveys.