Excavation · terraces · retaining subgrades · Garnet Ford & Cutter Brook
Flat ground is built, not found.
Ironpan Excavation cuts hillside pads, terraces and retaining subgrades on slopes the flatland outfits decline. Every fill bench is keyed into undisturbed ground, every wall subgrade is compacted and proof-rolled, and every cut face is left at the angle the soil table allows — not the angle the schedule wants.
What we dig
Five trades, all of them uphill
Hillside pads & benches
Benches cut into native soil in stable steps, fill keyed and compacted in eight-inch lifts, pads finished to ±0.5 in on rover checks. The house sits on ground that was already there — we just made it level.
Retaining subgrades
The ground behind a wall is half the wall. Subgrades over-excavated, keyed, drained with perforated lines and compacted to 95 percent Proctor before the first block or pour — a wall is only ever as good as what it leans on.
Rock excavation & trenching
Hammer work at a quoted rate, trenches benched or shored to the tables, bedding stone and lift-compacted backfill. Cutter Brook granite is on a first-name basis with our breaker.
Driveway cuts & switchbacks
Grades held to the county maximum, crowns cut to shed, base laid in two compacted lifts. A switchback is drainage engineering with a steering wheel on it.
Erosion control until the green takes
Slope blanket, silt fence above every cut, check dams in the swales — and we hold the controls until vegetation passes the permit’s coverage test, not the calendar’s.
The sequence
How a slope becomes a yard
Five moves, the same on every hillside — the only variable is how far apart they happen.
Shoot it
Drone and rover read the slope; the soil test reads what is under it.
Design the bench
Cut, fill and key depths drawn to the soil table, not the budget.
Key the subgrade
Benches stepped into undisturbed native — the part nobody sees that holds everything up.
Compact in lifts
Eight inches at a time, tested to 95 percent Proctor, watered and rolled.
Green & guard
Blanket, fence and check dams until the slope grows its own armor.
The settling clause
If a pad or terrace we cut settles more than an inch in three years, we re-grade it at our cost. Thirty-one years of hillsides and the clause has been invoked twice — both times on jobs whose owners had added fill themselves first. We regraded anyway.
2025 — 2026
The slope gallery
Six hillsides from the last two seasons. Every one of them was a lot somebody else called too steep.
Every gallery job passed its final grade inspection on the first visit · (555) 034-8862 · bench@ironpanexcavating.example
Thirty-one years of uphill work
Our lot was a forty-percent slope with a view and two contractor refusals attached. Ironpan benched it in three steps, keyed the fill, and set a pad the framer checked with a level out of pure disbelief. Four winters on, the hillside above the road has moved and ours has not.
Before you call
Questions from the steep lots
The four we hear from everybody holding a slope. The shop line runs six to five, and the voice on it has personally hammered Cutter Brook granite.
How steep is too steep?
Above roughly thirty degrees we want an engineer’s stamped section before we cut — benched cuts in valley soils run stable at 1.5 horizontal to 1 vertical, but every soil has an opinion. We work to stamped plans several times a season and can name the engineers the county trusts.
What does keying a subgrade actually do?
It keeps your terrace from becoming a landslide in slow motion. Fill dumped on a slope slides on the seam between new ground and old; a key is a trench cut into undisturbed native soil that the fill is compacted into, so the two become one mass. It is invisible, unskippable, and the reason our settling clause is nearly unused.
Can you build the retaining wall too?
We build the half of the wall that matters — the subgrade, the drainage and the leveling pad — and coordinate with your mason or segmental crew for the visible half. A wall over four feet needs engineering either way, and the ground behind it needs us.
What happens to the slope while the grass grows?
Blanket, fence and check dams, inspected after every storm until vegetation passes the permit’s coverage test. One wet week on an unprotected cut can undo a month of compaction — the controls come out only when the slope can defend itself.
Hillside walks booked two weeks out, year round · (555) 034-8862
Bring us the slope
Parcel, rough grade, and what you want standing at the top of it. We walk it, bench it on paper, and quote the keying before a track turns. bench@ironpanexcavating.example