Excavation in Lantzville

What's different about digging in Lantzville?

Lantzville is its own incorporated district, not an RDN electoral area, and plenty of homes here are still on septic, even on streets with sewer.

What does the ground itself do to a dig?

You will hit one of three things under most properties, and each one digs differently. Dense glacial till is slow to cut and hard on teeth, but it stands close to vertical, so the hole stays roughly the size you dug it. On till we spend most of the day breaking it up rather than moving it.

Sand is the opposite. We get through it fast, but it won't hold a face. The sides run in as you go, so the cut opens wider than the trench you actually need. That costs you twice — once to haul the extra material out, and again to bring backfill in.

Under both of them there is sandstone and shale. Where the bedrock comes up shallow we are breaking rock instead of digging soil, and the rate goes up with it, because a hammer moves a fraction of what a bucket does in an hour.

We look at what has already been dug nearby, at what is showing on your property, and at the depth you actually need, and we do all of that before we price the job. Where there is real doubt we will open a test pit first and find out what is down there.

What does excavation cost in Lantzville?

Most Lantzville residential work sits in the Class 4–8 range, and the rate guide puts that at $180 to $248 an hour with an operator. What moves your price is the hours, not the rate: till takes longer to cut than sand, and a septic field or a well in the way means we work around it rather than straight through. Because Lantzville runs its own building department separate from the RDN, the permit side is handled by the District, and we sort out which permits and locates your job needs before we book the machine.

How do we work around what you still need to use?

You still have to live on your property while we are digging it, so we plan the week around the things you cannot do without. Your way in and out comes first. If the work crosses the driveway, we tell you which days you will be parking on the street. We get that stretch back in use as fast as we can. Where we can leave you a track through, we will. Tell us which morning your bins go out. We will keep the pile and the machine clear of the curb, so the truck can still get at it. If you work from home, say so. We can usually put the noisiest part of the job into a block you know about in advance. Then you can plan your calls around it instead of shouting over us. We leave your water and power live, along with anything running out to a shop or a suite. If something has to go off for an hour, you hear about it the day before, not when it goes off. Tell us about deliveries too. If you are expecting a truck that week, we will keep a lane open for it, because a driver who cannot get in will take your load away again. And if you have a neighbour who will be affected, tell us early. We would rather knock on their door before the machine arrives than after. None of this costs you anything extra. It is just how we run a job on a property somebody is living on.