Excavation in Extension

Do you work in Extension?

Yes — we run site prep, foundation and drainage work across Extension the same as the rest of our service area. It's a quieter, more rural part of the Regional District of Nanaimo, and access and lot size are usually bigger factors in a quote than the ground itself.

What does a larger rural parcel change?

Acreage usually works in your favour on price. Where there's room to windrow material at the edge of the working area, it can stay on the parcel and go back in as backfill instead of being loaded, hauled and tipped — which avoids the disposal rates altogether. The trade going the other way is distance: the machine arrives on a float, so we check the approach, the turning room and any soft ground before we book it, because a truck that can't get in costs us both a day. On a long driveway or a shop pad well back from the road, we plan where the machine sits overnight rather than floating it off and back again each morning.

Does a small retaining wall need a permit?

Not always. A retaining structure under 1.0 metre high that is holding back less than 1.0 metre of earth falls outside the building permit requirement, and that covers a lot of the low walls people put in to level a parking area, terrace a slope or tidy the edge of a driveway. Above either of those thresholds it needs a permit like anything else.

That threshold is worth knowing before you design the wall rather than after. A slope that one wall would handle at 1.2 metres can often be handled by two shorter walls stepped back from each other, and depending on the site that can be the cheaper route once the paperwork is counted in.

We will tell you which side of the line your job sits on when we walk it. What we will not do is build to just under a threshold to dodge an inspection — if the retained height your ground actually needs is over it, the permit is part of the job and we will say so in the quote.