Preparing Your Yard for the First Day of Excavation

The week before excavation is the most stressful one for clients. We get it. There's about to be a 6-tonne excavator in your yard and a serious hole opening up.

Here's what we ask you to do before we arrive — and what we'll handle ourselves. The cleaner the start, the smoother the build.

What we'll do (so you don't have to)

We always:

• Confirm your start date the week before, in writing
• Mark the pool footprint on the ground with paint or string lines
• Coordinate with Dial Before You Dig for service location
• Notify your immediate neighbours by letterbox drop with our contact details
• Set up site fencing, toilet, and rubbish skip

You don't need to organise any of this. It's all part of what we do.

What we'll ask you to do

Move what's movable. Garden furniture, pot plants, kids' toys, BBQs, washing lines — anything portable that's near the pool zone needs to be cleared. We can move heavier stuff if you need help, but most clients prefer to do this themselves so things end up where you want them.

Identify what stays and what goes. If there's a tree, a shed, a clothesline pole, or established plants in the work area, let us know what's precious and what we can remove. We'll do our best to protect what stays.

Confirm the access route. We'll have agreed this at contract sign, but the day before we start, walk the route with our site supervisor (we'll arrange) so everyone is on the same page about gates being unlocked, neighbour fences, and so on.

Lock the dog up. Sounds obvious but it gets missed. Trades coming and going through gates that normally stay closed is a recipe for an escaped pet.

The first day on site

Excavation usually arrives between 7 and 8 AM. Depending on access, we'll either bring the excavator down a side return or crane it over the house. By the end of day one your yard will look very different.

Expect:

• Significant noise (excavator, trucks, occasional jackhammer if rock)
• Dust — especially in the dry months. We'll water the site to keep it down.
• Trucks coming and going to remove spoil. We use our own bin truck for most of this.
• The hole gets bigger faster than you'd expect

By 4 PM the site supervisor will have packed up, secured the site, and locked the gate. We'll send you a photo of progress.

Common day-one surprises

Sometimes we hit something unexpected. Old concrete footings, a buried oil tank, rock shelf in the dig path. We've seen it all in 20 years.

If we hit something, we stop, photograph it, and ring you. Most issues are resolved with a small variation. Big issues (e.g. unmapped sewer line) might require a re-design — rare, but it happens.

The point is: you'll know about anything unusual within the hour. We don't bury problems and present them at handover.

Week-one neighbour management

One last tip. Drop into your immediate neighbours yourself the weekend before we start. Let them know there'll be noise and trucks for a few days. We'll do the formal letterbox drop, but a face-to-face conversation goes a long way.

If you've signed up but haven't started yet, your project manager (usually Mike) will run you through all of this in detail. If you're earlier in the process, get in touch.

— Mike