Foundation holes, garage pads, additions, utility trenches, final grade — the dirt work that turns a Gilmanton lot into a build site, done on schedule so your contractor isn’t waiting.
A lot of Gilmanton land is a generation into growing back, and reclamation is its own kind of excavation: mowing and grubbing juniper and pin cherry out of old pasture, pulling stumps, removing the rock that every New Hampshire field produces, and grading it back to something you can hay or fence. The town’s network of dirt roads is part of the deal here — beautiful ten months a year, posted and impassable for loaded trucks in mud season, so material hauling gets planned for late summer and fall. Long driveways are the norm; a 600-foot farm drive with proper ditching is a routine Gilmanton quote. Around Crystal Lake the standard shoreland rules apply within 250 feet, but most of our Gilmanton work is upland: woodlot house sites where the questions are hardpan, springs that surface in April, and where to push the stump pile.
Reclaiming a Gilmanton field? Don’t just brush-hog it and call it done — grub the roots out. Mowed juniper and gray birch come right back in two seasons; grubbed and graded ground stays open. And keep the stones: a picked-rock pile is free material for the base of your next farm road.
Every build starts and ends with dirt. We dig foundations and frost walls to spec (four-foot frost depth here isn’t a suggestion), cut and fill to bring a sloped lot to grade, trench for water, power, and septic lines, and come back at the end for the finish grade that sheds water away from the new foundation. On ledge-prone ground we dig test pits first — finding granite with a quote instead of a change order.
We coordinate directly with your builder, and we show up when the schedule says — because everyone downstream of the dirt is waiting on it.
Machine-and-operator excavation runs $110–$200/hour in the region; typical foundation digs land $3,000–$10,000 depending on size, soils, and ledge. Test pits and a site walk get you a flat number before we start.
Most Lakes Region foundation excavations run $3,000 to $10,000 — driven by size, soil, water table, and whether we hit ledge. Test pits before quoting mean the number you get is the number you pay.
It's common here. We dig test pits at the corners before quoting, so ledge shows up in the plan — hammering or blasting gets priced up front, not as a mid-job surprise. If ledge makes one corner of the lot expensive, sometimes shifting the footprint twenty feet saves five figures.
Prime season is May through November. Deep frost slows winter digging, and March–April mud season closes many posted town roads to loaded trucks. We schedule around both — and fall is the smart time to book a spring dig.
Free site walks, test pits before quotes, flat pricing, and a crew that knows Lakes Region ground.
Tell us where the property is and what you’re trying to do. We’ll walk the site, talk it through, and give you a straight, flat quote.
