Precise digging for pads, footings, trenches, and site prep, run by an owner with twenty years of heavy civil construction behind him.
Excavation decides whether everything above it stays level and dry. The dig, the trenches, the backfill: none of it shows in the finished photos. All of it shows up three years later if it was done cheap. The classic hidden defect is loose backfill — it settles along every trench and foundation edge, cracking walks and sinking driveways. Our backfill goes in as thin, compacted lifts. Every trench, every time.
Every dig starts legally: SC811 locates filed and the three-business-day wait respected before a bucket touches ground. And because Upstate lots sit on dense red clay, sometimes rock, discovery conditions go in writing before work starts. If the ground surprises us, the price doesn’t surprise you.
Heavy brush to whole wooded lots. Cleared, hauled, and left build-ready.
Learn more →
Laser-checked levels and slopes that drain the way they should.
Pads, trenches, and site prep dug right the first time.
A proper base and a real crown, so the driveway survives Carolina rain.
Farm and fishing ponds with a compacted-clay dam that holds water.
SC811 tickets filed, utilities marked, boundaries confirmed before anything opens.
Pads, footings, and trenches cut to depth; topsoil stripped and stockpiled for your final landscape, never buried.
Thin layers, compacted each pass. The difference between a trench line you forget and one you re-level for years.
Spoils hauled or graded out, erosion controls set, site left ready for the next step.
Upstate red clay is exactly what a pond dam wants. We dig the basin, cut a core trench under the dam, and place the fill in compacted lifts so it holds water. We also diagnose and repair ponds that leak or have silted in.
Learn more →Dug to plan depth in the right place, checked against the survey, with the bearing soil verified before anyone pours. Backfill goes back in compacted layers, because loose backfill is why slabs and walks settle along the foundation line.
Water and power out to a shop, barn, or camper hookup: located with 811 first, trenched to depth, bedded, and backfilled in compacted lifts so the yard doesn’t sink into a stripe a year later.
Where regrading can’t carry the water away, a French drain intercepts it: a gravel trench with perforated pipe that picks water up and moves it out. We build them with fabric and washed stone so they keep flowing instead of clogging.
A crushed or undersized culvert dams the ditch and floods the drive. We size the pipe for the flow, bed it right, and armor the ends so the crossing survives the next gully-washer.
Old sheds, barns, concrete pads, and mobile homes torn down, loaded, and hauled off, with the site graded clean behind it. Nothing gets pushed into a pit and buried on your property.
Residential and small commercial site work: building pads, footings, stump and rock removal, trenching for water and drainage lines, and cutting driveways into sloped ground.
Every dig starts with a utility locate. 811 marks the public lines before a bucket touches the ground, and we walk the site with you to flag anything private, like well lines or irrigation.
Usually, yes. Compact excavators fit through standard gates and work in tight residential spaces. It’s exactly what they’re built for, and we confirm access on the site walk.
Your call. We can haul excess material off, use it as fill elsewhere on the property, or grade it out on site. Each option gets priced in the written quote.
National cost guides put a half-acre farm pond with a dam and overflow at roughly $20,000 and up, and a properly built one-acre pond commonly starts around $45,000. Soil, depth, and dam size swing it widely. We walk the site, check the soil, and quote it in writing.
Custom Cut Land Works
Based on 1 Google reviews
Richard Bardy
2026-09-01
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Beyond 5 Stars! If you have a complex land, grading, or drainage issue, look no further than Brian at Custom Cut Land Works. We hired Brian to rework ou… Read more
Free written estimate. See the price before any work begins.
