Excavation & Grading
in Mount Pleasant & Charleston

There's no price list here, on purpose: no two pieces of ground are the same. Josiah walks it and gives you a straight number. What it comes down to:

• How much dirt moves. The volume cut from the high spots and filled into the low ones.
• What comes in. Fill, stone or topsoil trucked to the site.
• What goes out. Spoils that have to be loaded and hauled away.
• Access. How easily a machine and a truck can reach the work.
• The finish. A rough grade, or a finish grade ready for sod or stone.

Either water crossing the drive instead of running alongside it, or a base that was never built to hold up under traffic. Adding stone on top of a soft base washes out again by the next storm.

Regrading the drive with a crown so water sheds to the sides, cutting drainage along it where needed, and prepping a proper base before any new stone goes down.

Not a problem so much as a job: something needs to sit on ground that is level, compacted, and drains, so it doesn't settle or sit in water later.

Clearing and grading the footprint, building a compacted base, and setting the grade so water sheds off the pad rather than sitting under whatever goes on it.

Yes. South Carolina puts that on whoever does the digging: notice goes in 3 to 12 working days before work starts, and it is free (S.C. Code §58-36-60). 811 only marks public lines up to the meter, so tell us about anything private: irrigation, a gas line to a pool heater, power run out to a shed.

The residential building code's minimum is 6 inches of fall within the first 10 feet out from the foundation (IRC R401.3). Where the lot is too tight or too flat to get that, a swale or a drain has to carry the water away instead.

In Mount Pleasant, clearing, excavating or filling a lot needs a zoning permit first (Zoning Code §156.1171), and unincorporated Charleston County requires a stormwater permit once land disturbance passes 5,000 square feet. Near the marsh, state stormwater rules can apply to jobs well under an acre.