I have had quite a few of these. The put a raised planter around the house to change the lag.
Where would you shoot the LAG on this one? The planter or a raised patio runs around the whole house?
Thanks
From a FEMA publication:
Lowest Adjacent Grade--The lowest point of the ground level immediately next to a building.
And as all government directives usually go; you could take it to mean two different things:
1. Lowest Adjacent Grade--The lowest point of the ground level immediately next to a building.
2. Lowest Adjacent Grade--The lowest point of the ground level immediately next to a building.
I did attend a FEMA function some time back and the speaker assured us that the LAG was meant to be a natural ground condition, indicative of the conditions prior to construction.
If that is what they wanted, that is what they should have said...remember to included photos with your EC...:-|
ps - It looks like that residence has an occupiable space below ground level..which diagram are you using?
Thanks for your input.
The BFE is still going to be on the building wall.
The sticky thing here is they have an old outdated certificate from 2010 that has the BFE 0.5' lower than it is....
The floor of the crawlspace above the natural ground, by an couple of tenths. So, maybe #8...
Item C2.h says "ground, sidewalk or patio immediately next to building" unless in Zone AO then use "natural ground".....
The incredibly stupid thing about that wall and similar attempts to get around the rules is that they have created a really big bathtub that will still be full long after the water recedes. Mother Nature has no memory. What has been written down in the local weather records has no influence whatsoever on what may happen next.
In 2007 we had major flooding. In our county seat town the flood level was two feet above BFE. In the county seat town one county to the west the flood level was eight feet above BFE.
Our courthouse had water 10 inches deep over the basement floor for far too long. This should not have happened. What happened was that a check valve failed in a drain line running from the basement floor to the nearest stream about two blocks distant. That's one of those categories of failure you never think about until it actually happens. This brilliant plan for draining the basement had been in place for 45 years at the time and there had never been a problem. Because there had never been a problem everyone treated that work space normally with computers, records, boxes of everything imaginable, maps, you-name-it setting directly on the floor. By pure luck, all of the survey records had been moved to the main floor less than a year prior to the flood, except for a rack of aerial photos dating to the 1930's that I used rather frequently.
Your other issue is the FEMA definition of fill...
I would "hold the grass" as being the LAG. I found FEMA form 467-1 to be a helpful source of information. You can download the PDF from them. B-)
As long as the wall is detached, it would be the fill between the wall and the foundation.
LOMR-F unless you can prove the material was placed before the area was mapped as flood plain...
