Permits and Site Planning
Explaining a Grading Plan to Neighbors Who Are Not Engineers
A regrading project I worked on two years ago went sideways not because of the earthwork itself, but because of a neighbor...
A small farm client called me in a panic during his second spring on a new property when his feed delivery truck got stuck halfway up his access road and had to be pulled out by a neighbor's tractor.
Recent
Permits and Site Planning
A regrading project I worked on two years ago went sideways not because of the earthwork itself, but because of a neighbor...
Grading Equipment
A woodworker who had just bought a rural half acre called me about grading a pad for a detached workshop, and his first...
Grading Equipment
A client running a small home based supply business called me about grading a gravel pad behind his garage so a box truck could...
Grading Equipment
Three quotes came in on a job I was competing for last year: mine, one close to it, and one nearly 40 percent lower than both.
Site Grading
I lost an entire week on a job two summers ago because I scheduled the final grading pass for what the forecast called a dry...
Slope and Erosion Control
A homeowner asked me last year whether he really needed a retaining wall for a four foot grade change on his property, or...
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Archive
Three people who have actually stood on a graded lot before writing about it: a contractor who has run a dozer for two decades, a civil engineer who used to stamp the plans and got tired of watching them ignored, and a road builder who learned grade the hard way on land the county would not fix. Every article carries a byline, and nothing runs that the writer has not seen fail in the field.