What Does Excavation Cost in Kentucky?
Nobody can price a dig from the road, and anybody who does is guessing. Here is what an excavation quote is really made of, so you can tell a fair one from a wild one.
How much dirt has to move
Excavation is priced on work, and the work is moving dirt. A footer for a small addition is a few bucket loads. A full basement is a hole the size of the house and deeper than a man is tall. Length, width and depth multiply fast, and dirt swells when it is dug, so the pile is always bigger than the hole. The first thing any contractor needs is the size of what you want dug. Plans are ideal. Stakes in the ground and a tape measure will do.
How deep it goes
Depth costs more than width. A shallow cut can be worked from the top with room to spare. A deep one needs the sides laid back or stepped so they do not cave, which means digging a wider hole than the thing you are building. Deeper digs also find more: wetter clay, harder rock, water seeping in at the bottom. A crawl space, a walk-out and a full basement dig on the same house plan are three different amounts of digging.
Rock, the Kentucky wild card
Central Kentucky sits on limestone, and in places it is a foot under the grass. Nobody can see it from the surface. Clay digs fast. Loose slab rock digs slower. A solid ledge can stop a bucket cold, and getting through it takes far more machine time, if it is worth doing at all. Sometimes the smart move is to raise the building instead of lowering the hole. A fair quote says what happens if rock shows up, before the dig starts, so it is a plan and not an argument.
Getting a machine to the spot
An open field beside a county road is the easy case. A back yard behind a fence, a row of maples and a neighbor's shed is not. Tight access means a smaller machine, and a smaller machine takes more hours to move the same dirt. Steep ground, soft ground and overhead lines all slow a job down too. If a way in has to be cleared first, or a gravel approach built so trucks can follow the machine, that is part of the price.
Keeping the dirt or sending it off
Every yard of dirt that comes out has to go somewhere. The low-cost answer is to keep it on your place: stack it for backfill, fill a low spot, build up the yard grade. Sending it off the property means trucks, a place willing to take it and the time to load every one. On a farm there is nearly always a use for it. On a small town lot there may not be, and that shows up in the quote. Decide early what you want done with the spoil.
The size of the machine
A full-size excavator moves a great deal of dirt in an hour, and it costs more to bring out and run. A compact excavator costs less to run and fits through a gate, and it takes longer on a big hole. The right answer is the machine that fits the job. We run a full-size John Deere excavator, compact excavators and tracked skid steers, so a small footer dig and a full basement do not get priced as if they were the same job.
Weather and the time of year
Kentucky clay is two different materials. Dry, it digs clean and packs tight. Wet, it sticks to the bucket, ruts under the tracks and will not compact. A dig that goes quickly in a dry September can take far longer in a wet March, and an open hole that fills with rain has to be dealt with before work goes on. Nobody controls the weather, but a contractor who will wait for the right week often saves you money over one who pushes through mud.
What the hole is for
A ditch only has to carry water. A footer has to be the right width and depth with a clean, flat bottom. A basement has to match the plans closely enough for the concrete crew to work. A water line trench has to put the line at least 30 inches deep under the Kentucky plumbing code. The tighter the finish, the slower the last part of the dig. Kentucky 811 must be called at least two full working days before any of it, so build that into your schedule.
Getting a real number
The fastest way to a real number is to have Trey look at the site. Call (270) 272-8739 or send the form, tell him what you want dug and where, and he will give you a straight quote before any work starts.
See our excavation service or call (270) 272-8739.
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