Light Excavation in St. Louis, MO

Getting to the Wall

On a lot of St. Louis jobs, the hard part is getting equipment to the wall, not building it. In the city that might mean a gangway between two brick houses or an alley with a garage at the end. Out west in Wildwood it's a steep, wooded drive, and in Jefferson County a lot too steep for anything with tracks. In the subdivisions it's usually a fence line and a neighbor's yard. Access decides what equipment we can use and what the job costs, so we look at it first.

Where a machine won't fit, we use a smaller one, lay down a protected temporary route, or bring material in by hand. Each of those gets priced at the estimate.

Cut, Fill and Haul-Off

Wall projects mean moving dirt: excavating for the base and geogrid zone, cutting back a slope, bringing in fill to flatten a terrace, and hauling off spoil that won't go back in. Loess is easy to dig but a mess when it's wet, so we schedule around the weather and protect lawns, drives and the route in. Rocky Jefferson County and Wildwood soils are harder digging and sometimes mean breaking rock for the base.

Before any digging, utilities get marked through Missouri 811. That's free, and it's the law. This work usually goes with new walls, drainage and boulder placement.

Tight Sites We Work

We regularly work alleys and gangways in the city, wooded drives in Wildwood, steep lots in Arnold, fenced yards in O'Fallon and Ballwin, and narrow side yards in Webster Groves.

Typical timeline Priced per site. Access matters more than anything else.