Ultra Excavating tracked excavator digging out a basin in a stand of birch and spruce near Telkwa BC

Excavation

Digging, trenching, backfill and final grade across the Bulkley Valley. Small to large, we bring the machine that suits the job instead of the one that is free.

Phone250 643 2805

Emailinfo@ultraexcavating.ca

Yard

5423 Morris Road, Telkwa, BC V0J 2X3

Hours

Seven days, 7:00am to 6:00pm

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Excavation across the Bulkley Valley

Ultra Excavating works out of a yard on Morris Road in Telkwa, which puts most of the valley inside an easy morning drive. We dig for homeowners, builders, developers and local businesses from Houston through Telkwa and Smithers, and north to Witset, Quick, Hazelton and Round Lake.

An excavation job is rarely just a hole. There is access to sort out, spoil to place, services to locate, water to keep moving, and a finished grade that has to drain the right way long after the machine leaves. We price the whole thing up front, so the number you hear at the start is the number you pay at the end.

What we dig

Basement and house pad excavation
Footing and foundation trenches
Water, sewer and power service trenches
Septic field excavation
Driveway and approach builds
Culvert installs and ditching
Pond and dugout excavation
Rock removal and boulder work
Backfill, compaction and final grade

The right machine for the ground

We size the machine to the job rather than sending out whatever happens to be free that week. A tight residential yard with a fence and a septic field to protect is a different problem from an open commercial pad, and an oversized machine on a small lot costs you in lawn repair and hand work.

Bulkley Valley ground changes fast. A lot that digs like soft loam at one end can turn to hardpan or river rock twenty feet over. We walk the site before quoting so what we find below grade is a plan, not a surprise on your invoice.

Frost, drainage and getting it right the first time

Telkwa and Smithers sit far enough north that frost depth drives most of what happens below grade. Service lines have to run below it. Footings have to bear on ground that will not heave. Backfill has to be placed and compacted properly, or a driveway settles into the trench line two winters later and you are paying for the same work twice.

Local ground is the part you cannot look up, and it is the part we know. That is the argument for hiring a valley outfit rather than the cheapest quote from out of town.

Where we work

Where we dig

One yard, one crew, and a valley that changes character every twenty minutes along Highway 16. What a dig actually involves depends a good deal on which end of it you are standing at.

Telkwa

The yard is on Morris Road, so a Telkwa dig is a few minutes of float rather than a few hours, which on a half day job is most of what you would otherwise be paying for. The village core runs on municipal water and sewer, so service work in town is short runs to the property line. Everything outside it is acreage on a well and a septic field. The benches above the Telkwa and Bulkley confluence are river gravel, which digs quickly but will not hold a clean vertical face, and the older townsite lots are tight, treed, and carry services nobody has a drawing for any more.

Smithers

The most built up ground in the valley, and the most varied. An older in town lot usually means fences, mature landscaping and a neighbour's driveway within a machine width, so spoil placement and machine size get settled at the site walk instead of on arrival. The bench and hillside properties under Hudson Bay Mountain sit on glacial till and clay that runs wet through spring with meltwater coming off the hill, which changes how a trench is kept open and how backfill gets placed. Work inside town limits also means the municipal permit and a locate before anything is dug.

Houston

Flat valley bottom at the Bulkley and Morice, with larger rural lots, and that moves the whole cost picture. Access is rarely the problem. Length is. A service run from the road to a house out here gets measured in hundreds of feet, so the price is driven by trench length, bedding and backfill volume rather than by how hard it is to get a machine in. It is roughly forty five minutes along Highway 16 from the yard, so we plan Houston work in full days rather than splitting a morning across two towns.

Also working Witset, Quick, Hazelton and Round Lake, and the rest of the valley in between. If your property is somewhere not on this list, call and ask, the answer is usually yes.

Common questions

Excavation questions

How much does excavation cost in the Bulkley Valley?

It depends on access, volume, what is under the surface and how far material has to travel, which is why we walk the site before putting a number on it rather than quoting off a phone description. You get one price for the whole scope up front, so the number at the start is the number at the end.

Do utilities need to be located before you dig?

Yes, on every job, without exception. Underground services get located before the bucket goes in the ground. On older lots there are also services nobody has a record of any more, and no locate will show those, which is part of what the site walk is looking for.

How deep do service trenches have to be here?

Below frost, which in this part of the province is the number that drives most of what happens below grade. A water or sewer line run shallow to save a day of digging freezes, and a line that freezes once tends to keep doing it every winter after.

Can you get a machine into a tight residential yard?

Usually, and the decision gets made at the site walk rather than on the morning. We size the machine to the access instead of sending whatever happens to be free that week, because an oversized machine on a small lot costs you in lawn repair and hand work.

Do you take on both residential and commercial work?

Both, with the same crew and the same written quote. A homeowner's driveway and a commercial pad get the same site walk and the same price up front.

More of what we do

All eight services