As-Built Surveys in Rodeo, CA

Rodeo's downtown grid was laid out in the 1890s near the San Pablo Bay shoreline, and many of the cottages on those blocks are as old as the streets themselves. For buildings of that vintage, there are simply no drawings to find: construction predated modern permit archives, and a century of repairs, porch enclosures, and rear additions has been layered onto the original frames. When an owner or architect wants to renovate one of these cottages — or a buyer needs to understand what a listing actually contains — an as-built survey is the only honest starting point. We scan the building inside and out with a Trimble terrestrial laser scanner, capturing millions of survey-grade points in one visit, and deliver dimensioned floor plans, sections, and elevations in DWG, Revit models at LOD 200 or 300, and the point cloud in E57 or RCP.

Century-old balloon and platform framing behaves in ways hand measurement cannot honestly record. Floors sag toward chimneys, walls lean, window heads step, and no two rooms share a ceiling height. The scanner documents every one of those conditions as measured geometry, which is precisely what a structural engineer scoping a retrofit needs — real deflections and real out-of-plumb, not nominal dimensions. Because Rodeo is unincorporated, renovation permits run through Contra Costa County, and the recorded maps for these old townsite lots sit with the County Recorder and County Surveyor in Martinez. Portions of the Rodeo shoreline margin fall within state zones mapped under the Seismic Hazards Mapping Act, which can add geotechnical review to a substantial renovation; accurate existing-conditions drawings keep that process moving rather than stalling it. Where the project needs terrain as well as building, our laser scanning captures both in the same mobilization.

The result is a cottage documented as it truly stands — a reliable base for design, engineering, and county submittal alike.