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Fill or Backfill?
Would you, or better yet FEMA, consider the below addition to be built on fill when applying for a LOMA? The original house is built on a basement (natural grade) and then later an addition was added on to the back, built on a crawl space, as seen below. I typically don’t look at backfill against the foundation as fill, but this example seems to stretch normal backfill.
I can call FEMA, but I usually have to call 2 or 3 times to take an average on the responses from the agents and end up even more confussed.
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4 Replies
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Mr. D.
Every thing that is on what was previously natural ground is fill.
The only backfill is probably within 2 feet or less of the foundation. Depends on how wide they trenched before they built the foundation for the addition. Or if they trenched at all. I have seen where there was a slight fill, then the foundation was built, then there was more fill around the foundation.
B-)
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I believe this one was built on fill as you described, but what I struggle to understand is where the line is. For example any house that has a basement foundation has some sort of fill against the foundation from backfill. Does this mean that homes with basement foundations are considered to have fill and won’t qualify for a MT-EZ LOMA?
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I’m not sure that I would agree with the statement that its house is built on fill. It looks to me like the small amount of fill dirt around the foundation is probably from the excavation.
It is my understanding that inn asking about fill,FEMA is trying to determine if the structure is built on non-native material brought on site to raise the structure out of the flood plain. If you place fill in the flood way then the flood plain will rise, just like adding dirt to a bucket of water. As a side note, I recently worked on a large auto-rack project where the design called for adding fill to bring the new facility out of the flood plain. They were required to balance that fill value by removing a like volume from the flood way.
Back fill does not change the net volume of the flood way and is not really fill.
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Backfill, You Put Back In A Hole To Grade
Above grade is “Fill”.
Paul in PA
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