Excavation Questions from Comox Valley Property Owners

Two things set your lead time. A BC 1 Call locate needs about a week, since utility members have three working days to respond and we have to start digging within 14 calendar days of the request. Anything involving fill on Agricultural Land Reserve land needs a Notice of Intent we file 60 days ahead.

Every excavation quote differs. With us, every applicable approval gets identified at quote stage — City of Courtenay, CVRD Building Services, the Ministry of Transportation and Transit, or the Agricultural Land Commission — and we say upfront whether filing the application is in the price or with the property owner.

Quadra Sand digs fast, compacts easily and needs no dewatering. Vashon till holds water and needs moisture control. Floodplain silt near the Courtenay River brings a shallow winter water table. The same scope on those three soils can differ by a factor of two. That's why we walk the site before giving you a number.

Where your lot has room, yes, and that's usually the largest single saving we can offer on a residential job. Material that leaves a site costs to load and again to dump. Balancing cut and fill on the same lot avoids both costs. Tight infill lots inside the city rarely give you that option.

We quote rock by the hour rather than include it in a project range, because we can't size the volume from the surface. Cumberland is where underground rock comes up most often, given how close solid bedrock sits to the surface. We name rock as an exclusion on your quote.

On sand, we can generally say yes. On till and silt, often not, because compacting saturated clay doesn't work. The valley receives 1,400 mm of annual rain, mostly from October to April. Your lot's soil type determines whether starting winter digging is practical or expensive.

Separation and surface drainage are the two things we watch, particularly through Black Creek and Merville where properties draw from the Quadra Sand aquifer. Sand that moves water quickly to a well moves contamination quickly too, so we keep fuel, spoil and machine traffic clear of your wellhead and grade so runoff drains away from it.

Wherever the septic field sits, everything else on the property has to work around it — the pad, the driveway, the drain. Drive the machine across the field and you've replaced it, not repaired it. If a new system is going in, an Authorized Person has to file the design with Island Health before it can be used.

No. Many properties with a Courtenay mailing address actually sit outside municipal boundaries in a CVRD electoral area, where regional building rules apply. Your property tax notice settles which building authority, and which soil rules, apply to your parcel.

We list the machine class, estimated hours or days, the volume assumed to leave the site, the disposal destination, and the exclusions on your quote. Rock, unexpected groundwater, contaminated material and utility conflicts are the four exclusions that matter. We also state who files the BC 1 Call locate and when.