Land Clearing in Augusta & Aiken

If you have bought a wooded lot, inherited overgrown acreage, or are about to put a building on raw ground, clearing is the first real decision on the project — and the one that quietly determines what the rest of it costs.

Pave-Way has been clearing land across the CSRA since 1978. We work both sides of the river, from single residential lots in Evans and North Augusta to commercial pads, subdivision phases and right-of-way work in Richmond and Aiken counties.

Clearing is not the same as clearing to build

Plenty of outfits will knock trees down and push them into a pile. That is a fine service if all you want is a view or a hayfield.

It is not enough if anything is going on top of the ground afterwards. A lot that has been cleared but not grubbed still has stumps, root balls and buried organic material in it. That material rots. As it rots, whatever sits above it settles — unevenly, over the following two or three years. That is where the dip in the new driveway comes from, and the crack across the new concrete, and the corner of the pad that ended up an inch low.

So we clear to a standard that depends on what you are doing:

• Clearing only — trees, brush and undergrowth removed, stumps left. For pasture, views, firebreaks and access.
• Clearing and grubbing — stumps and root systems pulled and hauled, organic material stripped. Required for anything that will be built on, driven on, paved or poured.
• Clear, grub and grade — the above, plus grades shot and cut, drainage corrected, and the lot handed over ready for footings, pad or paving.

Most of our residential work is the second. Most of our commercial work is the third.

What the work involves

Site walk and assessment. We look at tree density and size, slope, soil, where water currently runs, where the access point has to be, and what the finished use is. That last one changes the scope more than anything else.

Permitting. Georgia’s Erosion and Sedimentation Act generally requires a land disturbance permit once you are disturbing an acre or more, reviewed locally; South Carolina runs a comparable process through SCDES. State waters carry buffer requirements. We deal with this routinely on both sides of the river and will tell you what your site needs before anyone starts.

Erosion control first. Silt fence, construction entrance and inlet protection go in before the first tree comes down, not after an inspector asks.

Clearing and grubbing. Trees, brush and undergrowth down and out. Stumps and root balls pulled where the finished use requires it.

Debris haul-off. Hauled away and disposed of properly. If you want merchantable timber set aside, firewood stacked, or material chipped and left on site, say so before we mobilise — it changes how we stage the job.

Grading and drainage. Where the lot is going to be built on, we shoot the grades, cut to plan, and make sure water leaves the site somewhere sensible.

The reason we do the whole sequence

Most contractors do one piece of a site. A clearing outfit clears and leaves. A grading contractor arrives to somebody else’s mess. A concrete or paving crew turns up to a base neither of them built and drainage nobody checked.

Two winters later, when water is sitting where it shouldn’t and the surface has started to go, all three can point at each other.

We clear it, grade it, drain it, and then pour or pave it, with our own crews and our own equipment at every stage. There is one company to call. That continuity is the reason our clearing work looks different from a clearing-only outfit’s: we are the ones who have to build on it afterwards, so we do not leave problems buried for the next contractor to inherit.

Land we clear

Building lots and homesites · farm and pasture land · commercial and industrial sites · subdivision phases · right-of-way and easements · long private drives and farm approaches · overgrown or neglected acreage · storm-damaged property

We work Augusta, Evans, Martinez, Grovetown, Hephzibah, Aiken and North Augusta, and travel further for larger site packages.