Excavation contractors in Jo Daviess County, IL

Illinois is the flattest digging in the Midwest: the Grand Prairie till plain covers most of the state with deep silt loam and silty clay loam over Wisconsinan till, loess-capped along the Illinois and Mississippi valleys, and glacial lake clay in the northeast (Chicago lake plain). The practical excavation story is water and clay: hydric soils occupy 26 percent of the average county, seasonal high water tables perch on the dense till subsoil, and shrink-swell clays (the highest averages in the Midwest, 4 percent) drive foundation and utility design in the lake plain and the southern till. Digging itself is fast; the recurring issues are wet trench stability, spring mottling pushing septic systems to mounds or fill, and frost at 38 inches. Rock is nearly absent from the glaciated interior (bedrock within 50 inches on 6 percent of land) except in the far south and along the Illinois River bluffs, where Silurian and Mississippian limestone rises under thin loess. Calhoun County and the bluff-land counties along the Mississippi add real slope (30-40 percent) and the only rock-cut work in the state.