Home / Service areas / Pleasant Grove
Service area · Pleasant Grove, UT
Pleasant Grove climbs from farm ground up onto the alluvial fans at the mouths of Battle Creek and Grove Creek canyons. Where your lot sits on that slope changes your drainage, your foundation, and your budget. Blackbird is a Provo based design-builder, building since 2001.
The local picture
Seven families settled here in September 1850 and called it Battle Creek after the stream. They renamed it Pleasant Grove for the grove of trees they found, and it incorporated as a city in 1855.
The shape of the city today came later. After the Second World War, the farms around town were subdivided into house lots decade by decade, which is why Pleasant Grove reads as a series of eras rather than one build-out. Very few farms are left.
For an owner, that history is not trivia. It tells you what the houses are. A large part of the stock is now forty to seventy years old, on generous lots, with original kitchens, original wiring, and basements that were never meant to be lived in. That is remodel and addition territory, and it is most of what a contractor does here.
A finished Blackbird project in Provo. We have no completed project photos from Pleasant Grove to show yet.
Battle Creek and Grove Creek
This is the single most useful thing to understand about building on the Pleasant Grove bench.
Where Battle Creek and Grove Creek leave the mountains, they drop what they were carrying. The result is coarser material than the valley floor, full of limestone and quartzite fragments off Timpanogos. Good bearing, good drainage, harder digging.
Alluvial fans are gentle and attractive to build on, which is why houses end up there. They are also where debris flows go when they leave a canyon, with little warning. Utah maps potentially active fans along the Wasatch Front for exactly this reason.
Grading, swales, downspout routing, window well drainage and the finished elevation of the house stop being landscaping decisions and become part of the structural design. On a fan lot, we would rather spend an extra day on the site plan than the next ten years on your basement.
When a fan area is mapped as a special flood hazard area, new construction and substantial improvements trigger floodplain permitting and code requirements of their own. Worth confirming before you fall in love with a lot, not after.
What we get called for
Mid-century and seventies houses on good lots, with layouts built for a different way of living. The bones are usually worth keeping.
Adding square footage to a house that was not designed to grow. Foundation, framing and roof geometry get solved first, then the floor plan.
Older Pleasant Grove basements need the water answer before the drywall answer. See basement finishing.
Covered patios and outdoor kitchens with views of Timpanogos, plus the grading that keeps canyon runoff away from the house.
Infill parcels and the last of the farm ground. Site work and drainage priced before the design, not after.
Downtown storefronts and newer commercial space. See commercial construction.
Everything Blackbird does
Ten services. On a bench lot in Pleasant Grove, the first three usually matter more than people expect.
Feasibility on a Pleasant Grove lot, including how water moves across it, before a designer draws anything.
A real line-item budget with the site work in it, which on a fan lot is where the surprises live.
Independent review of a bid or a job in progress. Blackbird represents you, not the contractor holding the contract.
One contract covering design, budget, permitting and construction, so nobody gets to blame the other guy.
New homes on Pleasant Grove's remaining lots, including the bench parcels that need grading and drainage solved first.
Build-outs, renovations and expansions in the downtown blocks and along the newer commercial frontage.
Townhomes, condominiums and apartments as older parcels get redeveloped.
The core project in a city where a lot of houses came out of the post-war subdividing of family farms.
Bedrooms, baths, theaters and gyms, with the water question answered before the framing starts.
Covered patios, decks and outdoor kitchens, plus the grading that keeps runoff going where you want it.
Questions
Nearby
Pleasant Grove shares a bench and a mountain with most of its neighbors.
Bring an address and we will start with what the site is going to demand. The first conversation is free and it is with Danny.
Or call or text (801) 735-7186