Excavation and Dirt Work
General excavation with trackhoes, a dozer and dump trucks: digging, grading and moving dirt and rock on homesites, farms and rural land.
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You buy a lot on the side of Green Mountain, or a few acres out toward Big Cove. The ground looks fine until a machine starts digging. Huntsville sits on limestone and chert, and in many spots the rock is shallow. A house pad that should take a day turns into a rock job.
Precision Excavation is based in Trinity, west of Decatur, and Huntsville is a town we travel to. We bring our own machines over on a lowboy. We do excavation and dirt work here: clearing an overgrown lot, cutting pads, digging ponds and pulling rock. Call or text (256) 303-7210 and we will come look at the ground.
Tell us about the job. We will get right back to you.
Huntsville sits on limestone and chert. The Geological Survey of Alabama calls Madison County karst country, with caves and fractures cut down into the rock. The upland soil here came off that same cherty limestone. How deep you go before you hit stone changes from one corner of a lot to the next.
That is why a dig here can stall. A tractor bucket finds a ledge, or a post-hole digger stops cold on a shelf of stone. We bring trackhoes with rippers and pull the rock out of the ground. Boulders get stacked at the edge of the property or loaded and hauled off.
Water is the other thing that moves a Huntsville job around. Red clay over shallow stone holds rain instead of letting it soak away. The same lot can be soft in February and baked hard by August. We look at the ground before we price the work, so the plan fits what is under it.
Huntsville is the largest city in Alabama and it keeps spreading. The Census counted 215,006 people here in 2020, and estimates now put it above 233,000. Redstone Arsenal and Cummings Research Park keep drawing people in, and housing follows onto rural land. Wooded and grown-up parcels around the city turn into homesites.
Clearing that ground in Madison County takes a dozer and a trackhoe working together. The understory here runs thick with Chinese privet, honeysuckle and eastern red cedar. Cedar in particular loves limestone ground. We push and pile the trees, pull the stumps and roots, then haul the debris off in our dump trucks.
On the flatter ground north and west of the city, the job is often old pasture instead of woods. A dozer pushes out the cedar and sumac, knocks down the humps and spreads fill where the ground is low. Grown-up pasture goes back to grass. Ground that has rutted or washed gets shaped so water runs off instead of standing.
New houses and shop buildings go up all around Huntsville. Hampton Cove and Big Cove sit on the east side, Harvest and Monrovia on the northwest. Most of those lots need a pad cut and built up before the builder starts. We clear the footprint, cut to grade or bring in fill, and slope water away from the pad.
Fill gets built up in compacted lifts so the pad sits solid. Where rock shows up in the footprint, the ripper comes out and the stone gets pulled first. Pad elevation comes from your builder or the plan. We do the dirt work and the builder takes it from the finished pad.
Plenty of Huntsville homesites sit a long way off the road, out toward Gurley, New Market and Owens Cross Roads. Those places need a gravel drive cut and crowned so rain sheds off the surface. We cut the base, shape the crown, ditch the sides and spread crusher run or chert. Old drives that have washed out get regraded and topped.
Huntsville averages more than 54 inches of rain a year. The Flint River runs down the east side of the county, and the Paint Rock comes in from the northeast. Bottom ground near those rivers and the creeks feeding them stays soft well into spring. Wet ground changes when we can work and how the machines get in.
Farm ponds are common on Madison County land, and the clay here holds water well. We dig new ponds, shape the banks and clean silt out of ponds that have filled in over the years. Rock in the hole is normal around Huntsville, so a pond job and a rock job often run together.
Spring storms bring down trees across this county. The April 27, 2011 outbreak sent an EF5 tornado across North Alabama and through Harvest and Toney in Madison County. Smaller storms every year leave downed trees and brush that has to be pushed up, piled and carried off. Our dump trucks handle the haul-off on the same trip.
Communities and areas we serve around Huntsville: Hampton Cove, Big Cove, Jones Valley, Monte Sano, Green Mountain, Chapman Mountain, Owens Cross Roads, Gurley, New Market, Harvest, Monrovia, Meridianville.
Huntsville ZIP codes served: 35801, 35802, 35803, 35805, 35806, 35810, 35811, 35816, 35824.
Free estimates throughout Madison County and the surrounding area.
(256) 303-7210 General excavation with trackhoes, a dozer and dump trucks: digging, grading and moving dirt and rock on homesites, farms and rural land.
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We clear wooded lots and overgrown acreage with the dozer and trackhoe. Trees and stumps come out, the debris gets hauled off, and the ground is left rough graded.
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We mulch brush, briars and small trees in place with a skid steer mulching head. The wood ends up as a mulch layer on the ground.
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We run a crawler dozer for pushing brush, rough grading and leveling ground across North Alabama. That covers spreading fill, cutting pads, reclaiming grown-up pasture and shaping pond banks and road beds.
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We build house pads for new homes, barns, shops and metal buildings on lots across North Alabama. Fill comes in by the load, goes down in packed lifts and gets graded so water runs away from the building.
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Rock removal for house pads, driveways, ponds, pastures and fence lines across North Alabama. Trackhoes with rippers break the rock loose, and the dump trucks haul it off.
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We dig new farm ponds, enlarge old ones and clean out ponds that have silted in. The trackhoe cuts the basin, the dozer shapes the bank, and the spoil gets spread or hauled off.
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We build new gravel driveways and farm roads, and regrade old ones that have rutted or washed out. Base cut, crown shaped, ditches cut, rock hauled in and graded out.
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We tear down old houses, barns, sheds, mobile homes and concrete slabs with the trackhoe. The dump trucks haul the debris off and the ground gets leveled behind us.
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Two dump trucks move material by the load across North Alabama. Fill dirt, topsoil, gravel, crusher run and chert come in, spoil and debris go out.
Learn MoreA few of the questions we hear most around Huntsville. If yours is not here, call or text and ask.
Tell us what you need done and where the property is. Call or text (256) 303-7210, or send the form and we will get back to you.
Tell us about the job. We will get right back to you.