Davids Hydro Vac

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.

Pond and water management contractors excavate and shape ponds, build or repair the embankment dams that hold them, and cut the ditches, swales and channels that move water across a property. A pond that holds water starts with the soil: it needs a clay core or a compacted clay liner, or a synthetic liner where the ground is sandy or rocky, and the dam is built in compacted lifts with a keyway cut into the original ground. Every pond also needs a way to pass the big storm, usually a principal spillway pipe plus an emergency spillway cut in natural ground, sized for the watershed above it. USDA NRCS publishes free design standards for farm ponds that most contractors follow. Cleanouts, which remove years of silt and reshape banks, are common on older ponds and are priced by the cubic yard removed and where that muck can be spread.

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.

Hydro excavation crews use pressurized water to cut soil and a truck-mounted vacuum to lift the slurry into a sealed tank, so they can dig right next to gas, fiber, water and power lines without striking them. The most common job is daylighting, also called potholing: exposing a buried utility so its true depth and position are known before a bore, trench, pile or foundation crosses it. State one-call laws set a tolerance zone around every 811 mark, usually 18 to 24 inches each side, where mechanical digging is not allowed and soft methods like vacuum excavation are. Crews also dig slot trenches, post and pole holes, valve and manhole repairs, frozen ground and contaminated soil that must be contained. Google Maps has no category for this trade, so most hydrovac companies are listed as excavating or utility contractors.