Do you always need an architect or engineer involved?

[rebobinar]

Hi,
We're building our first home. We have a general contractor who is making the project plan and doing a lot of the work and my husband and myself are also doing a lot of it. We have piece of property with a slope and are doing a daylight basement - we also have the geotech reports done and we're using stock plans.

I thought that's all I needed and my contractor feels pretty comfortable, but an architect told me that because the house would be on a slope I'd need to spend about $20,000 to get a house custom designed to sit on the slope and that I'd need an engineer to figure out where to put the retaining wall for another $9,000. The contractor pretty much said "Nah". But I'm a little worried, now. Does anyone know if you really should have an engineer involved if you are building on a slope? (Not terribly steep, but a definate slope). If I do- I'll look into it - I just don't want to find out 1/2 way through excavation that I really needed an engineer. ;)

Thanks! Robin

[Rich]

In my opinion it's almost always a good idea to have an engineer look at anything out of the ordinary. Some will say no - others will say yes. It all comes down to what you and your builder feel comfortable with. If you're contractor isn't giving you a warm and fuzzy feeling about it - then go talk to an engineer. They won't charge you anything to have a quick look at it or give you an estimate to design the foundation. It never hurts to know.
As far as architects.. unless your building department requires a stamped set of drawings from an architect then you really don't need one for a stock set of plans.

[mjpliv]

What Rich said!

[Anonymous]

always better to have both eng and arch as mistakes are usually more costly to rectify then fees paid.