Excavation & Septic FAQs for Routt County Property Owners

Yes. Routt County requires on-site wastewater treatment systems to be installed by a registered installer, and holds that installer to the permit. David is registered in Routt County. Ask any contractor to show you a current registration.

It depends on soil and percolation results, whether an engineered design is required, depth to bedrock or groundwater, distance from the house, and haul distance. Those vary enough between properties that a figure on a web page would mislead you. We give a firm number after walking the site.

In outline: soil evaluation and percolation testing, a system design, then a permit application to the county, then installation by a registered installer, then inspection. On direct jobs David handles the permit as part of the work. See our guide to septic permits in Routt County.

Sometimes, depending on site conditions and what the county requires for your parcel. Difficult soils, a high water table, steep ground or a larger system are the usual triggers.

Slow drains throughout the house at once, gurgling pipes, and wet, unusually green or smelling ground over the leach field. One slow fixture on its own is more likely a plumbing problem.

It is standard on rural property sales and buyers and lenders generally expect one. Getting ahead of it is cheaper than discovering a problem mid-contract.

Width, base depth, shaping, ditching, culverts and haul distance all move it, so a per-foot figure is close to meaningless. A short flat drive on good ground and a long steep one on soft ground are different jobs.

It varies with traffic, grade and drainage, but most drives here benefit from reshaping every few years. A drive that sheds water properly needs it far less often than one that holds it.

If the drive crosses a ditch or drainage path, almost certainly, and there may be a requirement where it meets a county road. Sizing matters as much as having one.

Give us length, width and the depth you are after and we will work out the volume with you before ordering, so you are not paying for a second delivery or for rock you did not need.

Managed space around a structure that reduces the chance a wildfire reaches it and gives crews somewhere to work. Cost depends on existing fuel load, slope, tree size and what happens to the slash, so it is priced after walking the property.

Colorado has had a state-level incentive for wildfire mitigation on residential property. The mechanism and limits have changed more than once, so any figure you read online, including ours, needs checking. Your accountant can confirm what you can claim, and we provide documentation of the work.

Programs at county, state and federal level have existed and been actively funded here. Because details change annually we do not publish figures. Ask when we come out and we will tell you what is current.

Insurers in this part of Colorado increasingly ask about it, and documented mitigation work is worth having in hand. Whether it changes a particular policy is between you and your carrier, and we would not promise otherwise.

Pile it, chip it, or haul it off. Piling is cheapest on the day and leaves you with a fire hazard. On a job whose purpose is reducing fire risk, that is worth thinking about carefully.

Per-acre pricing is close to meaningless because an acre of light sagebrush and an acre of dense timber differ by an order of magnitude. Density, tree size, slope, access and slash disposal drive it.

It depends what you are doing. Septic, some grading and drainage work, work in a floodplain, and anything touching water rights all have requirements. Ask before you start, because retrofitting a permit onto finished work is the expensive way round.

We do, as the party doing the digging. It is free and required. What we need from you is anything you know about private lines, such as a feed to a barn or a well, because those are not part of the public locate.

Late spring through fall. Early spring is often too wet and soft to be worth it, and hard frost stops some work in late fall. The common mistake is calling in June for work that needed booking in March.

A footer dig or a driveway can be a day or two. A full site prep is often a week. Septic is usually days of machine time but weeks of testing, design and permitting ahead of it, which is the part people underestimate.

Usually hours, not materials. Two contractors quoting the same job can be assuming very different numbers of days on site depending on how they stage the work. It is also worth checking that both quotes actually include the same things, particularly disposal and backfill.

We prefer to give you a number for the job, because that puts the risk of a slow day on us rather than on you. Some open-ended work genuinely suits hourly, and we will say which one applies before we start.

Both, and a good share of the work is directly with owners. Working directly is also how the schedule stays in our hands rather than somebody else’s.

Across Routt County and into Grand County. Distance is part of the price. Larger jobs, or several jobs batched into one visit, make more sense at a distance than a single small call-out.