Montgomery Contracting Inc

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.

Paving preparation is the earthwork under asphalt or concrete: cutting the subgrade to plan, undercutting and replacing soft spots, placing and compacting aggregate base in lifts, and proof rolling with a loaded truck to find anything that pumps before the paving crew shows up. Asphalt is only as good as what is under it, and most premature cracking and rutting traces back to a thin or poorly compacted base rather than the mix. Base thickness runs from about four to six inches of crushed stone under a residential driveway to eight to twelve inches or more under a commercial lot or a road, compacted to 95 percent or better of maximum density, with the surface held to within a fraction of an inch of grade so the asphalt lift is uniform. Prep contractors often also handle the curb subgrade, drainage structures and the connection to existing pavement.