Smith Excavating, LLC

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.

General excavation contractors handle the range of earthwork that does not fit neatly under one heading, and they are the right call when a property needs several of them at once: a driveway cut, a drainage fix, a pad for a shop, a trench for water to the barn and a pile of stumps hauled off. A typical outfit runs a mid-size excavator, a skid steer or compact track loader, and a dump truck or trailer, and prices by the hour with a minimum or by the job for anything with a defined scope. Because the work is varied, the estimate is only as good as the description of the site, and the most useful thing an owner can do is walk the contractor through everything on the list at once so the machine moves once and mobilization is paid once.

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.