Long-winded piling foundation questions... (how much, house, to buy)
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Unfortunately we currently live in north Texas where the blistering summers are just as bad (worse) than any winter or rainy summer in Southeast Alaska. Many tout the wonderfully low cost of living in Texas but the downside is that you live in a concrete jungle where you have to run your air conditioning full blast for 3 or 4 months out of the year, have an expensive sprinkler system with associated high water bill to keep your yard alive, pay fairly high property taxes, fight traffic to get around, and the views from 99% of the residences suck. There's nothing to look at here!
Having been in the Juneau area numerous times, because we have relatives in the area, we decided several years ago that we wanted to end up living in Juneau because, despite the cost of living, the quality of life seems far and above that of the north Texas area. There's scenery all around you and no traffic to mess with. We've gone so far as to buy a residential lot on North Douglas island in hopes of building there in the not-too-far-distant future.
We're getting to the point where it's time to do some advance planning for our move and one of the things on our list is to figure out what kind of house we can afford to build. We don't want a huge house, it's just the two of us and we don't want to maintain a McMansion. But because of the lot we own (on the wetlands which are somewhat marshy), we know it will have to be built on a piling foundation, which leads us to our questions...
Does anybody have any idea how much a piling foundation costs as compared to other types of foundations (slab, pier & beam, etc.). Any good web links to information on piling foundations? We've searched the web quite a bit but it seems a lot of Juneau businesses haven't discovered the internet yet. Any recommendations of local firms that do piling work (PM us with any specific info since this can be seen as advertising)? How long does it take to install a typical piling foundation? Any other recommendations as to architects or custom builders would be welcome too.
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