Building a detached ADU in Fair Oaks, lot and all
A detached ADU is a standalone building in your backyard — its own foundation, its own roof, its own walls, fully independent of the main house. In Fair Oaks that freedom runs into three local realities: heritage oaks, river-bluff slope, and septic systems on the back lots. Here's how we plan a freestanding unit around all of it, from the Sacramento County counter to the SMUD meter.
What detached actually means here
Detached is the cleanest version of an ADU and the most expensive one to frame. The unit is a complete, freestanding building. It has its own foundation poured separate from the house, its own walls, and its own roof structure carrying its own loads. Nothing about it leans on the main residence. That independence is the whole point — and it's also the cost.
Compare it to the alternatives for a second. An attached ADU bolts onto your existing house and shares a wall, which saves you one foundation edge and a roof tie-in but locks the unit's orientation to wherever the house already sits. A garage conversion reuses a slab and a roof that already exist, cheapest of all, but you're stuck with the garage's footprint and ceiling. Detached throws all of that out and starts from dirt.