We Make It Easy to Get House Plans in Scarborough, Maine

What a site plan sheet actually shows

A site plan is your lot drawn from above, to scale, with the building placed on it. That sounds trivial. It is the sheet that answers every question a town asks about where.

The property lines come first, with dimensions, and the sheet is useless without them. Everything else on the drawing is measured from those lines.

The building footprint is placed and dimensioned to each line. Not described, dimensioned. A reviewer reads the distance from the corner of your building to the boundary directly off the sheet.

A north arrow and a stated scale. Both sound like formalities and both are checked. A drawing without a scale cannot be measured by anybody but its author.

Driveways, parking and any paving get drawn, because in many towns the hard surfaces count toward what you are allowed to cover.

Well and septic locations, if you are not on municipal services. Their positions relate to each other, to the building and to the lines, and getting the layout wrong is expensive to discover late. That side of it belongs with your soils tester and the town rather than with a drafting table.

Existing buildings, sheds and anything else already on the lot. A reviewer needs the whole picture, not just the new part.

Grade and drainage where it matters, which in a good part of Scarborough it does. Where water goes when it leaves your roof is a site plan question.

Easements, right of way strips and any recorded restriction. These come off your deed and your survey rather than out of thin air, so dig them out early.

The site plan is included at the detailed tier. On a simple project a conceptual set may be all a town needs, and on a subdivision lot it very often is not.

When a town wants a surveyed plan

Here is the distinction that costs people the most time, because the two documents look similar and are not the same thing.

A site plan drawn by a designer places your building on the lot using the boundary information you supply, usually from your deed or an existing survey. It is a design document.

A plot plan or boundary survey is produced by a licensed land surveyor, who goes to the property, locates the actual corners, and certifies the result. It is a legal document about where your land is.

A town can ask for either, and which one it asks for depends on the project. A modest addition well inside the lot is one conversation. A new house, a project close to a boundary, or anything inside a shoreland area is frequently another.

In Scarborough this comes up more than in most towns. Fast growth means a lot of building on lots created in the last thirty years, and coastal and marsh-edge property carries its own overlay of requirements on top of the ordinary ones.

The marsh is the single biggest reason to ask early. Scarborough Marsh is the largest salt marsh in Maine, and property near it, near the beaches at Higgins and Pine Point, or out at Prouts Neck sits under rules that decide the footprint before anybody designs inside it.

So make one call before you commission drawings. Ask the Town of Scarborough whether your project needs a surveyed plan or a drawn site plan, and whether any overlay applies to your address. The answer costs nothing and it sets your budget and your calendar.

Check what the town will accept as boundary information. Some offices take a recorded plan from the subdivision. Others want something newer, and on an older parcel the recorded information may be thin enough that a surveyor is the only way to answer the question at all.

Order the survey first if you need one. It is the long pole, and no amount of drafting speed makes up for starting it late.

Who gets house plans in Scarborough, ME

People building new on subdivision lots off Oak Hill and Dunstan. Owners of 1990s and 2000s houses adding on and finding the setbacks tighter than they assumed. Owners of coastal cottages at Higgins Beach, Pine Point and Prouts Neck where the lot decides the design.

What does the job cover here?

A full drawing set with the site plan sheet drawn to scale: property lines, footprint dimensioned to each line, driveway, north arrow, and anything already standing on the lot.

On a Scarborough lot, add your deed and any existing survey to that list. Handing those over on day one is what stops the site plan being drawn twice.

When should you start drawings in Scarborough?

Work backwards from the survey rather than from the build. If a surveyor has to visit, that dates everything after it.

For a summer start, that means the conversation happens in autumn. Frozen and snow-covered ground is not the surveyor's friend either.

Why is Scarborough different?

Because more projects here are governed by the lot than by the building. Between the marsh, the beaches and thirty years of subdivision, where you are allowed to put the house is usually settled before what the house looks like.

A statewide fact for your comparisons: Maine does not license general contractors or builders, and only plumbers and electricians hold state licenses. Land surveyors do hold a state license, which is precisely why a survey and a site plan are different documents with different weight.

What should you ask before hiring in Scarborough?

What is a site plan? Your lot drawn to scale from above with the building placed and dimensioned to the property lines, plus driveways, north arrow and anything already on the lot.

Is a site plan the same as a survey? No. A survey is produced and certified by a licensed land surveyor. A site plan is a design drawing that uses boundary information.

Do I need a surveyed plan in Scarborough? Sometimes. It depends on the project and the location, so ask the town about your address before you order drawings.

Is a site plan included in the price? It is included at the detailed tier. The conceptual tier does not carry one.

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The site plan sheet comes with the detailed tier, which is the practical reason most new builds here land on that tier rather than the conceptual one.

A surveyor's fee is separate and is paid to the surveyor, not to me. I will tell you honestly whether I think you need one before you spend it.

Budget for the survey as its own line rather than as part of the drawings, because the two are bought from different people on different timelines. A survey is also the one item on the list that can sit unused for years and still be worth having.

If you already have one from a purchase or a previous project, send it over before anything is drawn. An existing survey often saves the cost of a new one, and it always saves time.