Building in the hills is an enterprise full of unpleasant surprises and traps just
waiting to snare the inexperienced. Arthur Levin, a structural engineer and
architect who has been involved in more than 2,000 hillside projects, offers a
distillation of his 35 years of experience that will help the uninitiated to avoid
the otherwise inevitable pitfalls and traps.
The book has many real life examples of the unexpected encounters with
unstable land, surface drainage problems, subterranean water, demanding
owners, uncooperative building inspectors, inexperienced contractors, and
other examples of the author's triumphs and occasional enlightening failures.
All of these brief histories are instructive and guaranteed to be of invaluable
help to the first or second time hillside designer and builder. More than 170
line drawings illuminate the text.