Paver Installation in West Seattle

It is mapped and publicly available, and checking it is the first thing worth doing on any West Seattle project involving a slope. Designations cover steep slopes, landslide-prone ground and several other conditions, and they are recorded against the parcel rather than being a judgement anyone makes on site. The reason to check first rather than later is that a designation changes what is exempt from permitting, what assessment is required, and sometimes what can be built at all — and finding that out after a design has been agreed and priced wastes both. We check as a matter of course before quoting anything on that side of the peninsula.

In most cases yes, with the runoff handled properly and the size and position considered rather than assumed. What changes is the order of the conversation: where the water goes is settled before how big the patio is, because the discharge route frequently determines the practical size. A permeable build is often the better answer on these lots precisely because it produces little runoff to route anywhere. What we would not do is design the surface first and treat the drainage as a detail to resolve afterwards, which on stable ground is merely poor practice and on a bluff is genuinely irresponsible.

Generally yes, on both counts that matter. A deck is lighter, and the load it does add goes through posts into footings at specific points rather than being spread as a continuous mass across the ground. It also lets rain through to the soil beneath, so it does not convert absorbing ground into runoff-producing surface. That makes a deck the lower-impact way to get usable outdoor space above a slope, and on genuinely sensitive parcels it is frequently what we end up recommending. It is not automatic — footings still need to reach competent ground, and on some slopes that is its own question — but as a starting point the deck is the gentler option.

Somewhere it is entitled to go, which on these lots is rarely the obvious downhill direction. Releasing collected water over a bank concentrates flow at one point and is exactly what erodes and destabilises ground; discharging it onto a neighbouring property creates a liability that does not go away. The workable answers are a piped run to a legitimate discharge point, connection to an existing system with capacity, or a design that produces very little runoff in the first place. Which is available depends on the specific property, and on bluff parcels it is the question that shapes the whole project rather than a detail at the end of it.