Excavation in Cedar

Does Cedar's ground dig differently?

Yes — expect clay or till over interbedded rock rather than the sand and gravel common closer to Nanaimo. It slows the dig and changes how we shore a trench, so we account for it in the quote rather than after we've started.

How do we decide between sloping, benching and shoring?

Once a trench passes 1.2 metres and someone has to get into it, the sides have to be made safe — and there are four ways to do that. We can slope the walls back to a stable angle, bench them in steps, drop in a trench box or shoring cage, or have the whole thing engineered. Which one we choose comes down to room, soil and depth, and we work it out before the machine arrives rather than standing in the hole deciding.

Sloping is the simplest, and it is what we use when there is space around the cut. It costs nothing in equipment but it eats width: the deeper you go, the wider the top of the hole gets, which means more material out and more to put back. Benching does the same job in steps and behaves better in firm ground that will hold a face.

A trench box changes the arithmetic. It keeps the excavation narrow, which matters when the cut runs close to a building, a driveway or a boundary, and it lets us work deep without opening up half the property. It costs more to bring in and set, so it earns its place on depth and tight ground rather than on preference.

Where the soil is loose, saturated or already disturbed by earlier work, none of those is a judgement we will make on our own — that is when it gets engineered.