The soil is another aspect of your property that you must know.  The city or county can give you some pointers as to what kind of soils you have but, you may need to get an engineered soils report.  Yes this can cost several thousand dollars.

Generally speaking if you are doing a project in town then the city will typically know what your soils are and what pounds per square foot it can handle, however some places it can be different across the street.  So for the most part it is a good idea to get a soils report from a geotechnical engineer.  This is a must if you are going to build in the county. The soils engineer will tell you what kind of soils you have for the foundation and will make recommendation to your engineer.  They will also tell you the percolation value of the soils for your septic system (more on that later)

Yes there are other departments that you will need to speak with, like the tax assessor’s office and your local real estate brokers. That may sound silly but It won’t do you and good to build that perfect house if the taxes per year are twice what your income is or if the neighborhood has a mean value of 100k and you want to build a million dollar mansion.  You really need to do your homework.  I know you want to build your dream home, so let’s make sure it doesn’t turn into a nightmare

Soils Engineer $$$
They are typically called a Geotechnical Engineer.  There primary responsibilities are to go out in the field to your property and take soil samples, do percolation tests etc.  Then they go back and run lab tests on the soils etc.  When they are done they will give you a report that you can turn in with your plans. Also give a copy to your structural engineer (he can save you lots of money on your foundation with this information) and septic engineer.

One other item, if you are building in a subdivision chances are you can get a copy of an existing soils report and use that.  I have seen soil bearing as high as 2500 lbs per square foot.  This can literally save you thousands in concrete for your footings.  Always find out what the given pressure is in your lot or area.  For example the current code says that if you do not have a soils report you are to use 1,000 pounds per square foot.  That is not very much and your footings will be considerably larger (more concrete lots more $$$$)  Currently here concrete is $110 per 8 cubic yards and just one footing can easily eat up 1 cubic yard that $110 per footing time x can be thousands believe me.

Even if you are building in the county, maybe the previous owner has a soils report you can get a copy of.  This alone will save you thousands of dollars, just in the test itself let alone any benefits from soil capacity.