Photo by Dominik Vanyi

For any construction project, work begins with excavation. The site is inspected, and the excavation site’s boundaries are identified. A professional excavation contractor best handles these meticulous processes. But do you need to hire one instead of doing it yourself? Let’s find out.

Experience and Expertise

Moving earth or rock, using equipment or explosives pose a high degree of danger to the excavation team, including the equipment operator, and everyone else at the construction site.

There are four common excavating accidents you would want to avoid: falling, falling objects, trenching, and electrical. Out of the four, electrocution is the most common accident you might face. Depending on the scope of your project, know that the bigger it is and the smaller the number of people working on it, the higher the risk of facing accidents.

The excavation contractors‘ experience and expertise will give you the confidence that they’re doing the job right and safely. You don’t want the construction site to be a danger zone due to the excavators’ critical errors. You want to ensure that the site is delivered to you, devoid of any accidents.

Equipment

For each work done by excavators, they use equipment that’s suitable for the job. If excavating farms, large fields, long and narrow pits, they use trenchers. On the other hand, they use cranes or backhoes when digging holes over wet or soft soil. A professional excavation company has an inventory of duly licensed equipment for use in the construction location or site.

Soil Test Before Excavation

Knowing the type of soil in the excavation site is essential. Is it muddy or rocky soil? Is it sandy? If you dig into the site without knowing the soil type and composition, accidents are likely to happen. A muddy or sandy pit wall will collapse as you dig, while rocky soil will be difficult to break and cumbersome to lift.
By doing a soil test, the excavation contractor will know soil composition and what equipment is compatible with that type of soil.

Reduce Risk of Property Damage

Inexperienced excavators may accidentally hit buried pipes, overhead electrical lines, or even nearby properties for different reasons. A professional excavator will coordinate with utility companies to ensure that the pipes are marked accordingly on the plan. The excavation site’s perimeter will be fenced to prevent damage to nearby houses or buildings.

A highly trained and skilled excavation equipment operator is critical to the safe use of the equipment and avoiding property damage.

Insurance Protection

Sometimes, despite best efforts, accidents still happen and may result in property damage. A professional excavation company has insurance to cover for repair for property damages that may have resulted from their mishandling or incorrect operation of equipment.

Professional Service

You are avoiding risk, high cost of repair in case of property damages, and damage to the environment when you choose a professional excavation contractor to prepare the construction site for your project. By choosing the experts, you’re assured of the quality of the structure’s foundation and ability to withstand the harsh weather conditions.

What is excavation?

Excavation is a method for the movement of machinery or explosives of soil, rock, or other materials using different tools.  This consists of earthworks, cutters, wall shafts, and tunneling. Excavations require the discovery, Restauration, extraction, and development of many primary applications. The building is one of the most common excavation applications. Excavation is used to make building frames, ponds, and roads in the development.

The trenching, drilling, dredging, and site construction are some of the various methods used in mining. For each procedure to be efficient, specialized methods, equipment, and machinery are required. The processes used depend on the structure resulting from the building process.

What should be done before the excavation?

The site needs to be carefully examined to ensure the natural environment and artifacts around it remain throughout the excavation process before the excavation can commence. Then the site scale and depth maps are drawn up and sketches are made by the construction contractors to specifically define the boundaries of the site. The construction process will continue after these two crucial steps are completed.

The fast completion and cost-effectiveness are the key aspects of an excavation project, but there is another factor that could be much more critical than the two before and which is health. There is no doubt. To avoid incidents such as excavating into buried service routes that you do not know about and destroying other materials, including trees, you must follow strict maintenance protocols to ensure that the best methods for identifying the underground wire are observed.

Survey the land

Before the ground splits break down Ideally, you want to examine the corner of the field, so you need to make the right steps before you even break ground. Both problems that come with elevation and re-leveling should, therefore, be removed. You have to dig twice the last thing you want!

Understand the type of Soil

The best strategy for soft soil is not the best strategy for rough soil, therefore understanding the type of soil is necessary – the most suitable digging method and protection assessment should be calculated on a basis of the type of soil that needs to be excavated.

Dig a pump line before excavating

Underground water can be a major issue if you excavate and your building will start to flood. This can almost make it difficult to construct the base. That was why you want a pump line to remove the groundwater from a dig site next to the excavation area. It diverts the water to prevent significant flooding. 

Locating underground utilities

The most effective way to do this is by hiring a company that can locate all cables and pipelines running underground with the help of special equipment is to find underground services, both used and unused, before the construction project starts. Dialing 811 is the best way to do this in the United States.

Take safety precautions

You want to take extra safety measures while excavating. This includes your head, eyes, and skin to be covered. In addition, you want to learn about major utility lines, especially gas power lines. Eventually, the work has to be performed properly with heavy equipment, and the experts will always be called on.

Call 811 before you dig!

This telephone service is directly linked to utilities that can help you determine where the subway utilities operate and how to mark them and prevent them. You can then continue with your excavation without thinking about reaching any power lines and destroying it. The use of subterranean facilities in Utah encourages health.