Updated August 2026
What excavation actually costs in the Cowichan Valley
No excavation contractor on Vancouver Island publishes a price list, and one Duncan company's own pricing page states only that equipment carries a 2-hour minimum plus transport. Published figures do exist for the work around the work: CVRD recycling centres charge $94 per tonne for rubble, and an Agricultural Land Commission Notice of Intent costs $150.
Updated August 2026
This page does not give a dollar figure for excavation work, because no defensible one exists for this region. What follows instead is what a price is actually made of, and the figures that are published — tipping fees, permit fees and statutory waiting periods — which are the parts of a quote a property owner can check independently.
An excavation quote is a price for machine time, trucking and disposal assembled after a site visit — not a rate card applied to a description given over the phone.
The work behind these figures is set out in more detail on Lot Clearing and Grading.
Why nobody publishes a rate
Eighteen excavation contractors across Vancouver Island were checked for this page. One publishes an hourly figure. The most telling case is closer to home: a Duncan company maintains a page headed Pricing, and what it says is that all equipment carries a two-hour minimum charge plus transport, and that trucking is billed hourly with a one-hour minimum — please contact for current rates. A local competitor built the page and still declined to put a number on it. That is not evasiveness. It is what happens when the largest variables are invisible from the road.
What actually moves the number
Six things, in roughly the order they bite. Machine size and whether the site can take it, since a mini excavator needs a path barely wider than a garden gate while a machine that can break rock needs a float and room to work. Haul distance and disposal, which is covered below and is the one most often underestimated. Whether the bucket finds rock, because rock is broken rather than dug and that is a different machine at a different rate. Depth, because of a specific legal threshold covered further down. Access and reinstatement on an established property, where getting to the work and putting the surface back can exceed the digging. And season, since ground that is workable in July behaves differently in January.
The disposal problem, which is particular to this valley
Here is a fact that shapes every clearing and excavation quote in the Cowichan Valley and appears on no other contractor's website. The CVRD's recycling centres — Bings Creek at Duncan, Meade Creek and Peerless Road — publish a clear tipping fee schedule, and that schedule does not cover excavation spoil. The yard waste rules state it plainly: no rock, sod or dirt, and no stumps. Construction and demolition waste is not accepted either. So soil, sod, stumps and land-clearing debris go to a private facility such as Fisher Road Recycling at Cobble Hill, which accepts exactly those materials and publishes no rates at all, directing customers to ask the scale attendant. The facility that publishes prices will not take the material, and the facility that takes the material will not publish prices.
| Material | Fee |
|---|---|
| Garbage | $242 per tonne ($7 minimum) |
| Rubble — asphalt, brick, concrete, paving stones, gravel, rock | $94 per tonne |
| Lumber — clean and untreated | $165 per tonne |
| Lumber — painted or treated | $242 per tonne |
| Roofing | $242 per tonne |
| Yard waste — commercial | $110 per tonne |
| Yard waste — residential | No charge |
| Rock, sod, dirt, stumps, construction and demolition waste | Not accepted |
Depth is the other multiplier
Under the OHS Regulation, before a worker enters any excavation deeper than 1.2 metres the sides must be sloped to a specified angle, benched, or supported by shoring or a trench box. Excavated material has to be kept 60 centimetres back from the edge of a trench and 1.2 metres from any other excavation. Past 6 metres, or where a structure sits adjacent to the dig, written instructions from a qualified registered professional are required. A trench at 1.1 metres and a trench at 1.3 metres are not the same job, and the difference does not show up in a description over the phone.
What is published, and what it is worth
The figures below are real, current and checkable, and together they cover a meaningful share of what a property owner pays that is not machine time. They are also the part of a quote most likely to be missing from a cheaper number: a quote that omits disposal is not cheaper, it is incomplete.
| What | Authority | Published figure |
|---|---|---|
| Utility locate request | BC 1 Call | No charge; three working days' notice, or five for large projects |
| Notice of Intent for fill or soil removal in the ALR | Agricultural Land Commission | $150, filed at least 60 days before the work |
| Soil removal and deposit permit security | North Cowichan | $4,000, plus $4,000 for each hectare of land disturbed |
| Highway access permit | North Cowichan | $25 to process, $500 refundable per unit to a maximum of $2,000, plus a $50 street sweeping fee |
| Driveway access permit | City of Duncan | $50 application fee and a $1,000 damage deposit |
| Protected tree removal permit | City of Duncan | $50 plus a refundable replacement security; the fee is waived for a hazard tree |
These are the published rates at the time of writing and they move without much warning — the CVRD's clean lumber rate went from $105 to $165 per tonne on 1 January 2026. Check the current schedule before relying on any figure here.
Anyone weighing a project in the Cowichan Valley is welcome to request a quote and see the numbers against a real site rather than against an average.