Serving the Cowichan Valley
About Duncan Excavating
Free, no-obligation quote
Excavation quote request
The more detail about the property and the work, the closer the first number will be. We send a written quote after we visit your site.
Duncan Excavating handles excavation, drainage, footings and site preparation across the Cowichan Valley, from Cowichan Bay to Lake Cowichan. Ground here changes from river sand and gravel on the valley floor to bedrock less than 1 metre down at Mill Bay within a few kilometres, so we quote every job after a site visit.
What we do
Four lines of work cover most groundwork on a Cowichan Valley property: lot clearing and grading, footings and foundations, perimeter drains and ditching, and driveways and culverts. A foundation excavation that encounters groundwater needs drainage, while a driveway across a ditch needs a culvert before gravel. We evaluate your entire site plan during our visit to catch these steps early.
How a quote comes together
We calculate your price based on access width, space for trucks to turn, spoil volume, digging depth, and ground rock. We quote your project after visiting your property in person. We break down machine time, trucking and disposal separately on your estimate.
Machines and crews
We run the machine the job actually calls for — a mini excavator on a job with a garden-gate approach, a larger machine and a float where rock has to be broken. WorkSafeBC's Part 20 requirements apply on every site regardless of which authority issued the building permit, and the BC 1 Call locate is done before ground is broken.
Built for this valley
When we excavate on the valley floor, we work through sand and gravel down to 30 metres. The median water table sits at 2.4 metres and reaches its peak between November and January. Cowichan Bay is impervious clay, which changes how drainage behaves. At Mill Bay and along the Malahat, bedrock less than a metre down is mapped across most of the area, so a footing dig can become a breaker job. We establish which of those a property sits on before the machine shows up, because that decides the method and the price.
To see what your lot requires, request a quote from us. We visit your property first, then send an itemized estimate separating machine time, trucking and disposal.