Custom home builder serving Coarsegold, California

Proving out the land before you commit to it

In Coarsegold the parcel is the project. Two listings a mile apart can be tens of thousands of dollars apart in site work before a single stick of framing goes up, and almost none of that difference is visible from the road. Four things decide it: water, waste, access, and slope.

Water means whether a well already exists and produces, or whether one has to be sited and permitted with Madera County Environmental Health, which is the county's permitting agency for well construction. Waste means whether the ground will pass a percolation test so a septic system can be engineered and sized. Access means whether a driveway can reach a buildable pad on a grade that a concrete truck and a lumber delivery can manage. Slope means how much cut and fill the pad needs and where the winter water goes once you have moved it.

We would rather walk that with you before you are committed than explain it afterwards, and Nick holds DRE #02054090 as well as the contractor license, so the building read and the real estate read arrive in the same visit.

A house drawn around the parcel, not dropped onto it

On a large foothill parcel the site really does decide the house. Where the pad goes, which direction the living space and the glass face, how the driveway approaches and where a vehicle turns around, where the well and the septic field sit relative to each other and to the house, and how far the utilities have to run. Start with a floor plan and you spend the rest of the project bending the ground to it.

So we start on the land. The first visit is on the parcel rather than in an office, and the plan comes out of what we find there. At this elevation the temperature swing is wider than it is on the valley floor, and the tree cover is genuine, so shading, glazing, and how the heating and cooling equipment is sized get a foothill answer rather than a Madera one.

Coarsegold, Yosemite Lakes, and the ground between

Coarsegold and the Yosemite Lakes area sit close together on Highway 41 but are not the same building situation. A parcel out on open ranch and oak ground answers only to Madera County. A parcel inside a subdivision with its own owners association carries that community's rules on top of the county's, which can reach siting, driveways, exterior materials, and colors.

Either way, this is a CAL FIRE State Responsibility Area, so fire hazard severity zoning applies and the wildfire exposure requirements in the California Building Code shape the exterior of the house: roof assembly, vents, wall covering, glazing, and decking, along with the defensible space around the finished structure. We confirm which set of rules your parcel carries and design to all of them from the start.

• Madera County Building Division for plan check and inspections
• County Environmental Health for the well and the septic permit
• Any owners association architectural rules that apply to the parcel
• CAL FIRE State Responsibility Area wildfire construction and defensible space

What we build up here

Ground up custom homes on foothill and ranch parcels, modular homes where a faster route to a finished house suits the budget, remodels and additions on existing foothill homes, swimming pools, and small multi-unit residential work.

Every project is run under CSLB #1095957, licensed, bonded, and insured, with the owners of the company on the job. Our BuildZoom score is 92, in the top 32 percent of more than 336,000 licensed California contractors, and our BBB rating is A+.