Site Grading & Excavation
Rough and finish grading, building pads, drainage correction and excavation. We shoot grades in-house and build to plan.
- Rough and finish grading
- Building pads
- Drainage correction
- Excavation
- Cut and fill
- In-house surveying
Grading is the part of a project nobody sees once it is finished, and the part that decides whether everything above it holds up.
A pad that is an inch low in the wrong corner holds water. A driveway cut without positive fall sends water into the base instead of off the edge. A lot that was filled without proper compaction settles unevenly for years afterwards, and everything built on it moves with it.
Pave-Way has been grading sites across the CSRA since 1978, with our own equipment, our own crews and our own surveying.
What we do
Rough grading. Bulk earthmoving — cutting high ground, filling low ground, balancing material on site where the site allows it, and getting the ground to the shape the plan calls for.
Finish grading. The last pass, to tolerance. Setting the actual elevations and the falls that make water leave rather than sit.
Building pads. Cut, filled and compacted to specification, ready for the next trade.
Excavation. Trenching for utilities and storm, footings for others to build in, pond and basin excavation, removal of unsuitable material.
Cut and fill. Reshaping ground that does not currently do what the project needs it to.
Drainage correction. Regrading existing property that floods, holds water, or keeps destroying whatever is paved on top of it.
Surveying. In-house, so grades get shot when we need them rather than when somebody else is available.
Grading and drainage are one problem
These get sold as separate services and they are not.
Grading determines where water goes. Drainage determines whether it can get there. Do the first without the second and you have moved the puddle rather than removed it — the low spot is now somewhere else, and often somewhere worse.
We look at both together: what direction the ground actually falls, where water enters the property, where it can legally and sensibly discharge, and what has to be built to connect those. Then we grade to make that work, and install the catch basins, piping and culverts that carry it.
This is also why our grading work looks different from a grading-only contractor’s. We are usually the ones paving or pouring on top of it afterwards, so a pad that technically hits its elevations but does not drain is our problem, not somebody else’s.
Compaction is not a formality
Fill that is placed in one thick lift and driven over a few times looks finished and is not. It settles for years, unevenly, and everything above it moves.
Placed and compacted in proper lifts, it stops moving before we leave. The difference costs time on the job and is invisible on the day. It is the difference between a driveway that is flat in ten years and one that has a dip in it by the third summer.
The same applies to organic material. If a site was cleared but not grubbed, there are stumps and root balls still in the ground. Those rot, and as they rot the surface above settles into the space they leave. Anything we are going to build on gets stripped of organic material first, whether or not somebody else already called the lot cleared.
Sites we grade
Residential lots and homesites · commercial and industrial pads · subdivision phases and road sections · farm and pasture land · long private drives and approaches · parking areas · properties with existing drainage problems
The whole sequence, one contractor
Most contractors do one piece of a site. We clear it, grade it, drain it, and then pour or pave it — same company at every stage.
That means no gap between trades where a problem can be handed off. The crew that shot the grades is the crew that installed the storm piping and the crew that laid the surface. When it is finished there is one company to call, and nobody to point at.
We work Augusta, Evans, Martinez, Grovetown, Hephzibah, Aiken and North Augusta, and travel further for larger site packages. Free estimates from either office.
Common questions
- What is the difference between rough grading and finish grading?
- Rough grading moves the bulk material — cutting high ground down, filling low ground, and getting the site broadly to the shape the plan calls for. Finish grading is the last pass that sets the actual elevations and falls to tolerance, ready for whatever goes on top. A pad that is roughly right will not pass inspection and will not drain. Most jobs need both, and on a site with much fall the rough grading is where the money goes.
- Do you do your own surveying?
- Yes. We shoot our own grades in-house rather than waiting on a third party, which is one of the reasons our schedules hold. On engineered commercial work we build to the plan and the engineer's stakeout; on residential and smaller commercial work we set the grades ourselves.
- My lot has a low spot that stays wet. Can grading fix it?
- Often, but not always on its own. Grading can create fall so water moves toward somewhere it can leave. If there is nowhere for it to leave — no outfall, or an outfall that is already backed up — then regrading alone just relocates the puddle. That is why we look at grading and drainage together rather than treating them as separate jobs.
- How much fill will my site need?
- It depends on how much material we can balance on site. A site with high ground to cut and low ground to fill can often be balanced, meaning little or no material has to be hauled in or out — which is much cheaper. A site that is uniformly low needs fill brought in, and that is a haul cost driven by distance and volume. We work this out during the estimate rather than guessing at it.
- Do I need a permit for grading work?
- Generally yes once you are disturbing an acre or more. Georgia requires a land disturbance permit under the Erosion and Sedimentation Act, reviewed locally; South Carolina runs a comparable process through SCDES. Stream buffers carry their own requirements. Smaller residential drainage correction often does not need one. We handle this routinely on both sides of the river and will tell you what your site needs before we start.
Questions we get asked about this
Related work
Free estimates, either office
Tell us about the site and we’ll come look at it. No obligation, and no charge for the estimate.