Locally owned excavation and demolition for Buffalo and WNY

Why every price starts with a walk around your property

Photos and a phone call get us most of the way to understanding a project, but the details that change a job only show up in person. So before we price anything, we walk it with you. Here's what we're sizing up while we're there:

• Access. How wide the gap is between the house and the lot line, whether a machine can reach the back yard without crossing a neighbor's lawn, and what wires hang overhead.
• What's likely buried. Where the sewer lateral and water service leave the house, where downspout and sump lines run, and whether an old tank or slab was abandoned in place.
• Where the water goes. Low spots, which way the yard pitches, and where runoff from a new driveway or slab would end up.
• Where the material goes. Whether dug-out soil can stay for backfill or has to be trucked away, and where a truck or container can sit without blocking the street.

Once we've seen it, you get a price built on your site, with a plain explanation of what it covers and what could change it.

What we'll tell you up front, even when it slows things down

Some parts of a job can't be shortcut, and you'll hear about them before you pick a start date.

• The utility locate takes days, not hours. New York's Part 753 regulation (16 NYCRR) makes filing the locate request the excavator's job, so on our jobs that's us. It has to be filed two to ten working days ahead, the day it's filed doesn't count, and neither do weekends or public holidays. If a utility reports that its marks within 15 feet of the work won't be ready, the start waits.
• 811 won't mark everything. Utility locators don't always flag private lines: your sewer lateral, water service, sump line, lamp-post wiring or invisible dog fence. We'll ask what you know about where yours run.
• Demolition needs an asbestos survey first. Before anything is torn down, New York's asbestos regulation, 12 NYCRR Part 56, calls for a survey by a New York State asbestos inspector, and the municipality issuing your demolition permit gets a copy. A newer build date is no way around it: the Department of Labor's position is that a structure with no survey must be assumed to contain asbestos. Planning any house or building demolition starts there.
• Permits depend on your municipality. Building and demolition permits usually come from the City of Buffalo or from your town or village, and requirements differ from one office to the next. We'll tell you what's typical and point you to the office with the final word.

Older houses and lake clay: the ground we work in

Much of what we dig around was built long before its current owners moved in. Five-year Census estimates covering 2020 through 2024 put the median year built for housing units at 1939 or earlier in the City of Buffalo, 1957 across Erie County and 1958 in Niagara County. On lots that old it's common to find clay tile sewer pipe under the lawn, stone, brick or block foundation walls, and detached garages sitting on slabs that have heaved for decades.

Then there's the soil. The USDA's official description of the Odessa series, found principally on the Erie-Ontario plain, describes very deep, somewhat poorly drained ground formed in clayey deposits left by glacial lakes, with water moving slowly through the lower layers. Ground like that is why an open trench can sit full of water in April, why clay backfill goes back in thin lifts compacted one at a time, and why yard drainage fixes come up so often around here. Old clay tile laterals are their own story, and sewer lateral replacement is a regular part of working on houses this age.

Houses, storefronts and raw land: who we work for

We take residential and commercial work, and the approach doesn't change between them: see the site, give a straight answer, keep the job clean.

For homeowners it's usually one focused project. That might be a garage tear-down that leaves a clean pad for the next one, an old in-ground pool filled in, a cracked driveway ripped out to a base that will hold, or a foundation dug for an addition.

For businesses, builders and property managers the ground is usually bigger: site work and site development, stone base for parking lots and private roads graded ready for paving, water and conduit runs underground, storm drainage, and clearing overgrown land before anything gets built.

Either way, a tidy job site is part of the work, not an extra. You'll always know what's finished, what's next and anything the dig turned up that changes the plan.