Sandwich is ninety-one square miles of land with about fifteen hundred people on it — the largest town by land area in the Lakes Region and one of the largest in the state. Right around thirty percent of it is federal or state ground, mostly White Mountain National Forest filling the northwest quadrant, and the conservation trusts hold several thousand acres more of what is left. We do the earthwork on the part you can actually build on: clearing inside a shoreland buffer that runs 600 feet where the state stops at 250, foundations in ground the 1763 grantees called shelves of rock, long dirt drives, and drainage in a town that sends its water two different directions.
Start with the arithmetic, because in Sandwich the arithmetic is the whole story. The town covers 57,538 acres; 17,103 of them, close to thirty percent, are federal or state land, and the Squam Lakes Conservation Society, the Lakes Region Conservation Trust and the Forest Society hold roughly 3,060 acres on top of that, with another forty-odd lots and some 2,275 acres carrying conservation restrictions. On what is left, the Rural/Residential minimum is 100,000 square feet of unrestricted area, and that climbs to 260,000 if sixty percent or more of it sits on slopes of fifteen percent or steeper — ground over twenty-five percent may not count toward the minimum at all. Layer on the Skyline District over the steep and high country, a Shoreland District reaching 600 feet from the named lakes and ponds, 160 feet of frontage and 320 on water, a seventy-five-foot setback off the road centerline and a hundred feet off water and wetlands, and a thirty-two-foot height cap. One more thing worth knowing before you plan anything: there is no municipal wastewater treatment plant anywhere in Sandwich, and the town’s water supply is private wells, so every lot handles its own on both ends — which puts the septic, the well and the foundation in the same conversation from the first site walk.
Before you count the acres on the deed, measure 600 feet back from any named pond and take out everything steeper than twenty-five percent. What is left is the buildable lot, and in Sandwich it is routinely a good deal smaller than the number on the paper.
Foundations, pads, trenches, and grading — test pits first, flat quotes, on schedule.
Gravel driveways built with real base and crown — and washouts fixed for good.
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.
We reply to every request within 2 business hours.
