As-Built Surveys in Orinda, CA

Orinda literally gave its name to the geology that shapes remodels here: the Orinda Formation, a weak siltstone and claystone unit that hosts slow-moving landslides throughout the East Bay hills. Much of the town's housing was built in mid-century subdivisions on cut-slope lots carved into that material, and decades of gradual movement leave their signature inside the house — hairline-out-of-level floors, walls leaning a fraction of a degree, additions that no longer meet the original structure cleanly. When owners of these homes hire an architect to remodel or expand, the original tract drawings (if they survive at all) describe a building that no longer quite exists. Our as-built surveys close that gap by documenting the true, current geometry before design begins.

We scan the entire home — interior rooms, crawl-space perimeter, facades, rooflines — with a Trimble terrestrial laser scanner in one visit. That matters on Orinda's semi-rural large lots and winding roads, where coordinating repeat site access for a conventional measure-up wastes everyone's time. The point cloud captures millions of points at survey-grade accuracy, so a room that has racked out of square is recorded as it actually is, not forced back into a drafted rectangle. Deliverables follow your team's workflow: dimensioned CAD floor plans, building sections, and exterior elevations for permit sets, or a Revit model at LOD 200 or 300 for architects designing the addition directly in BIM. Retrofit engineers evaluating foundations on creep-prone ground get floor-level data precise enough to quantify how much the structure has actually moved.

We also deliver the registered point cloud in E57 or RCP format, letting your consultants pull any dimension later without scheduling another trip up the hill. As-built drawings themselves are design documents rather than recorded instruments, but where our work touches boundary evidence — tying the building footprint to property lines for a setback exhibit, for example — California B&P Code §8771 governs, and any required Corner Record or Record of Survey is filed with the Contra Costa County Surveyor and Recorder in Martinez.