Conway Excavating

Excavation contractors dig and move earth for foundations, basements, utilities, pools and site cuts. Most residential jobs run on a mini or mid-size excavator paired with a skid steer and a dump truck; larger cuts bring in a dozer or scraper. The price depends less on the size of the hole than on what is in the ground: clay, ledge rock, high groundwater and buried utilities all slow the machine down and change the hauling math. Before the bucket touches dirt the site needs an 811 utility locate, and any trench deeper than five feet needs a protective system under OSHA rules.

Foundation contractors build the part of the structure that carries everything above it into the ground: spread footings below frost depth, stem walls or basement walls, monolithic and slab-on-grade foundations, and pier or grade beam systems where soils are poor. The work follows the stamped plans and the geotechnical report, and it is inspected at fixed points, usually the open footing trench with rebar in place before the pour, then again before the slab and before backfill. Frost depth sets the footing bottom, from about twelve inches in the Gulf states to four feet or more across the northern tier. Waterproofing or dampproofing, a footing drain and free-draining backfill are what keep a basement dry, and they are cheapest to do right while the wall is still exposed.

Grading is the shaping of ground to a designed elevation and slope. Rough grading moves the bulk of the earth to bring a site close to plan; finish grading dials in the last few inches so a pad is level and a yard sheds water. The number that matters is fall: building codes call for the ground to drop at least six inches in the first ten feet away from a foundation, and a lawn or gravel area needs roughly a two percent slope to drain. Crews do this with a dozer, a skid steer with a grading bar, or a motor grader on larger lots, checked against a laser or GPS grade stake rather than by eye.

Land clearing removes trees, brush, stumps and roots so a parcel can be built on, farmed, fenced or simply seen. The method drives the price. A forestry mulcher grinds standing brush and small trees into chips in a single pass and leaves the ground surface intact; a dozer with a root rake pushes everything into piles for burning or hauling; an excavator with a thumb pulls stumps and stacks logs. Grubbing, which means pulling stumps and roots, is a separate step from clearing and is required anywhere a foundation, driveway or septic field will go. Selective clearing around trees you want to keep takes more hand work and more time than clearing a lot wall to wall.

Retaining walls hold back soil where a grade change is too steep to slope, and they fail for one reason far more than any other: water. A wall that lasts has a compacted crushed-stone base, a perforated drain pipe at the heel, clean gravel backfill behind the wall face, and geogrid layers tied into the backfill on anything tall. Segmental concrete block is the most common residential system and can be built by a landscape contractor up to about four feet; above that, or wherever a driveway, slope or structure sits above the wall, an engineer's design is required by most codes and the wall becomes structural work. Poured concrete and reinforced masonry walls are used for tall cuts and tight sites, boulder walls for rural and natural-look projects, and pressure-treated timber for budget walls with a shorter life.

Septic contractors install and replace the tank, distribution box and drain field that treat wastewater on properties without sewer. Nothing goes in the ground until a soil evaluation or percolation test has been done and the county or state health department has approved a system design; the installer builds to that design and the inspector looks at the open trenches before they are covered. Conventional gravel-and-pipe drain fields are the least expensive where soil drains well, but heavy clay, high water tables and small lots push jobs toward chambers, sand mounds, drip dispersal or an aerobic treatment unit, each with a different price and maintenance schedule. Most states license septic installers separately from general contractors, and many require a pumping and inspection record at property sale.

Site preparation is the package of work that turns a lot into a place a builder can start. On a typical job that means clearing vegetation, stripping and stockpiling topsoil, cutting or filling to the pad elevation, compacting fill in lifts, cutting in a temporary driveway, and installing the silt fence and gravel entrance the stormwater inspector expects to see. The scope shifts with the ground: a flat suburban infill lot may take two days, while a sloped wooded parcel with poor soil can run weeks and involve undercutting and replacing unsuitable material. Site prep contractors typically coordinate with the surveyor who sets the corners and the geotechnical engineer who signs off on compaction.

Trenching and underground utility contractors open the ground for pipe and conduit, bed and backfill it, and put the surface back. What looks like a straight line on a plan is governed by a few hard numbers: 811 locates before any digging, a minimum cover depth that varies by utility (commonly 18 to 24 inches for electric and gas service, and below the frost line for water), and OSHA's requirement that any trench five feet or deeper have a protective system such as a trench box, shoring or a sloped wall, with a competent person on site. Bedding material under the pipe, compaction of the backfill in lifts and tracer wire on non-metallic pipe are the details that separate a line that lasts fifty years from one that settles and cracks the driveway above it.