OAC Construction

Demolition contractors take down houses, garages, commercial buildings and foundations, then sort and haul what is left. The teardown itself is the fast part; most of the schedule is the paperwork that has to happen first. Gas, electric and water are disconnected and capped at the main, an asbestos survey is completed by a licensed inspector and any friable material is abated before the excavator swings, and the demolition permit is posted. A residential house typically comes down in one to two days with a 30 to 40 ton excavator; hauling and backfilling the hole can take a few more. Selective demolition, such as removing a wing or gutting an interior for a remodel, is priced by labor hours because it is done with hand tools and small machines around what stays.

Driveway contractors build the surface between the road and the house, from a gravel farm lane to a poured concrete approach, and the base under the surface decides how long any of them last. A typical driveway is excavated to remove topsoil, graded with a crown or cross slope so water runs off, and built up with four to eight inches of compacted crushed stone before the top layer goes on. Where the driveway crosses a roadside ditch it needs a culvert sized by the county, and the connection to a public road is regulated by the road authority. Gravel is the least expensive and needs regrading every year or two; asphalt costs more and needs sealing; concrete costs the most up front and lasts longest if the base and joints are done right.

Erosion and sediment control keeps disturbed soil on the site and out of storm drains, ditches and neighboring property while construction is under way and until vegetation is established. Under the federal Clean Water Act, any project that disturbs one acre or more needs coverage under a construction stormwater permit and a written plan, commonly called a SWPPP, and many cities set lower thresholds. The physical work is simple and unglamorous: silt fence trenched in along the downhill perimeter, a stone construction entrance so trucks do not track mud onto the road, protection around every inlet, check dams in ditches, and erosion control blanket or hydroseed on slopes. What most owners underestimate is the maintenance: controls have to be inspected after every rain of a quarter inch or more and repaired, and inspectors write violations for torn fence and full silt traps, not for missing paperwork.

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.