What type of excavation job do you require? A driveway put in to your Port Perry cottage? A new well dug on your existing property? Or a basement foundation prepared for your new building site?
Excavation is also useful for digging out houses and trenches. When clearing dirt out for roads or sub divisions, excavation the first step in preparaton for the build. Even though there are a few means, the term excavation is used anytime that the earth or dirt is disturbed.
Anytime you are taking part in excavation, safety is of the utmost concern and common sense is one of the most necessary of skills. If you plan to get down into a hole or trench you should never do so when you are alone on the site, and you should always use a trench box. Even though the hole may not be that deep, excavation sites can always cave in and at that point they become very dangerous – possibly even deadly.
There is a lot to learn with excavation, as you’ll need to know how to run machinery, shoot grade, and how to properly dig holes and trenches so they won’t cave in. This is why you’ll always want to call in the Excavation Experts for your basement, driveway, or other custom work.
Although the process and tasks differ for each job there are many similarities in all excavating assignments. Excavation involves the removal of topsoil on the site. If your job site has specific restrictions or building regulations to deal with there may be more to this process. For instance, the top soil may be examined by a metal detector or analyzed.
Certainly in rural areas where the earth and topsoil may not have been touched for decades or centuries, any type of interesting archaeological finds would be visible just beneath the surface – under the topsoil. In urban areas, there will be thick layers of civilization waste and deposits.
With either case, the first task is drawing a scaled site plan that will show the edges of the excavation.
This plan can be created using tape measures, or an electronic total station. A grid is normally set up, to divide the site.
Heavy machinery is very common with excavation and we’ll go into each and their uses on this website over time. Common machinery for excavating jobs are front-end loaders, excavators or backhoes. Excavators are the most used machinery, as they can move a lot of dirt in a little bit of time. Excavating crews run the equipment and dig up soil and rocks for whatever the purpose may be.
