About Courtenay Excavating

What a quote is built from

We start every quote with a site walk, because nothing about the ground is knowable from a street view. On the property, we check access, slope, existing services, where water arrives from and where it can leave, and what the native soil actually is.

You get back a range with the assumptions written down: machine class, estimated hours or days, the volume assumed to leave the site, the disposal destination, and the exclusions. Rock, unexpected groundwater, contaminated material and utility conflicts are the four exclusions that matter most in the Comox Valley.

We state our assumptions on every quote, so you can see the scope behind the number before you book anything.

Credentials

We back every job with full WorkSafeBC coverage and strict OHS safety compliance. Before digging, we locate underground utility lines under section 20.79, and we follow section 20.81 requiring any excavation over 1.2 metres that a worker enters to be sloped, benched or shored.

We submit a BC 1 Call utility locate before starting work on your lot at no extra charge. Utility members have three working days to respond.

Local knowledge that is actually local

Ground changes street to street here — rock in one lot, clay in the next, wet fill down by the river. Quadra Sand runs under the peninsula and the north end, digs fast, and will not hold a face. Vashon till holds water and needs moisture control. Floodplain silt near the rivers brings a shallow winter water table into scope. Cumberland puts bedrock within reach of a footing.

Which of those a property sits on changes the machine, the method, the schedule and the price — we need to know before we quote.

Approvals are just as local: three municipal building desks, a regional district covering the electoral areas, a provincial road authority, a farmland commission, and a soil bylaw that applies inside one city boundary only. Your property tax notice settles which of them apply.

What we handle

We take on four kinds of work: site preparation, land clearing, driveway and access, and drainage and trenching. Site prep means stripping a lot and cutting a pad to grade. Clearing means brush, stumps and standing vegetation off a lot before anything else can start. Access means the road-edge cut, the culvert and the base a driveway needs. Drainage means the pipe and the trench that keep water away from a foundation once the rest of it is built.

Which one your property needs first depends on what's already built and what still needs to happen, not on a fixed sequence. A drain needs a pad to sit against, a pad needs a cleared footprint, and an access route needs somewhere for the machine to actually stand.

We price each of the four on its own scope, and quote jobs needing more than one together rather than as separate bookings.