The 2026 dig calendar opens in March · locates filed inside 72 hours of a signed sheet · travel free within 40 miles of the Calder yard · (555) 031-2209
What we do
Three trades, one pace
Basements & foundation digs
Nine to eleven feet, benched to the OSHA tables, topsoil stripped to its own pile before the first cut. Digs finish within half an inch of stake line so the form crew sets steel the day we leave, and rock is quoted before the hammer starts — never after.
Pads, lanes & road cuts
Building pads fine graded to ±0.5 in on rover checks, lanes and drives cut with a two percent crown and a base laid in two compacted lifts. Gravel goes down once, water leaves forever, and April stops being an argument.
Ponds & drainage
Bowl cut to your surveyed waterline, clay core keyed and packed in six-inch lifts at 95 percent standard Proctor, spillway set to the hundred-year line. The contract includes the first-fill visit, because a pond that holds is the only kind we count.
The sequence
How a Coldbrook dig goes
Day 0
The walk
Boots on the parcel with your plan, reading slope, soil and access. The number is written on the tailgate before the truck leaves — and it is yours to shop with whether you hire us or not.
Before
Locates & stakes
The 811 ticket goes in, gas, power and water get marked, and private lines — well, septic, invisible fence — get walked with you and flagged by hand. Hubs go in to the plan.
Day 1
Strip & keep
Six to eight inches of topsoil peeled to its own pile and fenced off from the spoils. It is the most expensive dirt on the job and it stays yours.
The cut
Cut, fill & compact
Earth moves in balance where the site allows; structural fill goes down in eight-inch lifts, each one rolled to 95 percent standard Proctor and tested before the next goes on.
Handover
The grade sheet
Finish verified against the hubs with the rover, the density log stapled to the invoice, and the site raked clean enough to seed the same week.
2025 — 2026
Dug, graded, handed over
Six jobs from the last two seasons around Pinecrow County. Nothing staged — a hole photographed is a hole inspected, and the inspection tag rides in the truck if you want to read it yourself.
The Coldbrook way
Slow on purpose
Three machines, two operators, no brokered iron. A dig priced from the walk does not need a change-order book, and a crew that owns its machines does not bill surprises to cover a rental. We book fewer holes than we are offered and finish every one of them.
The tailgate number holds
If the ground hands us something the walk could not see — rock, water, a buried foundation — the machine stops and the phone rings before the work continues. A revision is written, priced and signed, or it does not happen.
Spring digs book three weeks out · (555) 031-2209 · digs@coldbrookexcavating.example
The neighbours
Pinecrow County says
The pad was so flat the form crew asked who shot it. Half an inch over a hundred and forty feet, density sheet stapled to the invoice, and the number I signed on the tailgate was the number I paid. Two years on, not a crack worth naming.
Two outfits told us a pond would not hold in our ground. Coldbrook packed the core in six-inch lifts like it was a county dam and came back in February to watch it fill. It has run brim-full three springs running.
They hit rock at seven feet, stopped, and called me from the pit with the hammer hours before they ran them. The add was four hundred and ten dollars — exactly what the sheet said it would be, to the hour.
Before you call
Fair questions
The four we hear on every first call. The yard line runs six to five, Monday to Saturday, and the person who answers has dug in your township.
Do you charge for the site walk?
No — and we will not quote a dig without one. A hole priced from a photograph is a guess with a deposit on it. The walk takes forty minutes, the number is written on the tailgate, and it is yours whether you hire us or not.
Who calls the utility locate?
We file the 811 ticket at least 72 hours before any tracks roll, and the locate numbers go on the job sheet. Private lines are yours to mark and we will walk them with you on day one — the county does not paint those, and they are the ones that matter.
Can we keep the topsoil?
It is stripped to its own pile and fenced off from the spoils by default, written into the sheet so nobody hauls it by accident. Six to eight inches of clean loam is the most expensive dirt on any job, because you already paid to move it once.
What happens when you hit rock?
The machine stops and you get a call, not a bigger invoice. Hammer time runs at the same hourly rate as the bucket, quoted ahead in writing if the soils or the neighbourhood say rock is likely. We never hammer first and negotiate after.
Winter digs run on frost thickness, not the calendar — ask on the call · (555) 031-2209
Walk it before we dig it
The parcel, the plan if one exists, and what the finished ground has to do. The walk is free, the sheet is the quote, and the hours you sign are the hours you pay. digs@coldbrookexcavating.example