Grading & Excavation in Clark County, WA

Small residential grading is usually exempt, but Clark County and its cities set thresholds based on volume of material moved, slope steepness, and proximity to critical areas, streams and steep-slope hazard zones. Larger cut-and-fill jobs frequently do need a permit. We will flag it during the walkthrough.

Usually. We run compact equipment that fits through most side yard gates. If access is genuinely impossible we will tell you before quoting, because hand-digging changes the price substantially and you deserve to know that up front rather than as a change order.

We haul it off and dispose of it properly, and that cost is included in the written quote. If you want spoils kept on site to build up a berm or fill a low area, we can do that instead and it usually saves money.

Excavation is removing material — digging out for a footing, a pond, a base or a trench. Grading is shaping the surface so it sits at the levels and falls you want, usually so that water goes where you intend. Most projects need both, and the grading is the part that quietly decides whether everything else works.

Rough grading gets the site to approximately the right shape and levels, usually with a machine. Finish grading is the final pass that sets the actual surface — the fall on a lawn, the levels around a patio, the tie-in to a driveway — and it is done with far more precision. Skipping properly done finish grading is why some new lawns hold water.

A definite, continuous slope away from the foundation for the first several feet, then wherever the site allows the water to go. This is the single most common defect we find on both older houses and new-build lots — ground that has settled flat or slopes back toward the wall, delivering roof and surface water straight to the foundation.

Because the topsoil usually left during the build and what remains is subsoil compacted by heavy machinery. It sheds water rather than absorbing it, roots struggle to get into it, and it is often graded to shed water off the building rather than to work as a yard. Almost every new lot we take on starts with decompaction and grading.

It is how densely the soil particles are packed. Compacted ground will not let water through and will not let roots in, which is why lawns fail and yards puddle on lots that were driven over during construction. Under hardscape you want deliberate, controlled compaction; under lawns and beds you want it relieved. The mistake is treating the whole yard the same.

Usually yes, and it is one of the highest-value jobs we do. Depending on the site it means regrading to create fall away from the building, cutting a swale to intercept water arriving from uphill, or a combination with piped drainage. The fix is worth doing properly, because everything downstream of it — crawl space, foundation, patio — depends on it.

A shallow, deliberately shaped channel that collects surface water and carries it somewhere useful, usually grassed over so it looks like part of the lawn. Where the site has somewhere for water to go, a well-cut swale can solve a wet yard with no pipe at all, and it needs no maintenance beyond mowing.

It depends on the machine, and it is one of the biggest cost variables on an excavation job. Gate width, side-yard clearance, overhead branches and wires, and whether we can cross a lawn or driveway all decide what we can get in. Where nothing fits, work goes to hand digging, which changes both timeline and price considerably.

Tracked machines spread load better than wheels, and we use mats and plywood on routes that matter, but on saturated winter ground some rutting is realistic on the access route. We tell you where the machine has to travel and what we expect to reinstate before we start rather than after.

Utility locates come first, every time. Public utilities get marked through the locate service; private lines — irrigation, low-voltage lighting, a gas run to a fire pit, a septic drainfield — are frequently not on any record, so what you can tell us about your own property genuinely matters. Anything you know about, tell us.

Yes, and we need to know exactly where it is first. A drainfield does not want machinery over it, spoil stacked on it, or anything built across it, and damaging one is a very expensive mistake. On rural properties around La Center, Hockinson and Brush Prairie this comes up regularly.

Yes. Importing structural fill or topsoil is routine — raising a low area, building up to a level, or replacing subsoil with something that will actually grow. What matters is using the right material for the job and compacting imported fill in lifts, because loose fill settles and takes whatever you built on it with it.

Saturated soil is heavier, messier and cannot be compacted properly, so some operations genuinely have to wait for it to drain. Excavation and drainage work carry on through winter; large-scale fill and compaction sometimes cannot. We would rather tell you a job is better in April than compact fill in February and have it settle.

Regularly. Buried concrete, old footings, previous fence post bases and demolition debris turn up constantly in yards that have been worked on before. It is one of the genuine unknowns on any excavation, and where we think there is a real risk of it we say so at the walkthrough rather than presenting it as a surprise later.

By staying out of the root zone as much as the design allows, avoiding trenching straight through major roots, and keeping machinery from compacting the ground under the canopy. A mature tree that gets its roots cut or its root zone compacted often dies slowly enough that nobody connects it to the work three years earlier.