Land & Lot Clearing: prepare a site for its next practical use.
Estimate clearing cost↗Selective or broad clearing for homesites, additions, views, access, agriculture, commercial planning, and property recovery. Land clearing is an outcome category, not one method. Forestry mulching, felling, excavation, stump removal, grading, hauling, and erosion controls solve different parts of the job. A responsible proposal separates those scopes. Before work, verify boundaries, easements, wetlands, stream buffers, utilities, access, permits, protected resources, and the intended finish. The operator should not guess where a property line or regulated area lies. Land clearing is an outcome category, not a machine. A homesite might be two days of mulching, a day of felling, and three days of excavation and hauling, and the excavation is usually the largest number of the three. Winter for the vegetation half, and the following dry season for the excavation half. Splitting them is normal and often cheaper than forcing both into one mobilization.
Checked 2026-09-01
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Avoid | Starting before the survey. It is the one scheduling mistake that cannot be undone by waiting. |
| Most common mistake | Clearing the whole lot because the machine is already there. Screening you remove takes twenty years to grow back, and every extra square foot of exposed soil is extra stabilisation, extra erosion risk, and possibly the difference between under and over the one-acre stormwater threshold. |
| Can I do it myself? | Realistically, no. The stump and haul portion needs machines and disposal routes a landowner does not have, and the stormwater obligations attach to the disturbance regardless of who caused it. |
| Afterwards | Exposed soil is the liability the day the machines leave. Stabilisation, seed, mulch, matting, or a temporary cover, is a scheduled task with a deadline, not something to get to eventually. Vermont's Low Risk stormwater coverage sets that deadline at 7, 14 or 21 days from initial disturbance, as the project authorization states. |
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Machine | Whatever the sequence requires: mulcher, feller, excavator with a thumb, grapple, dozer, dump trucks |
| Material handled | Whatever the site holds: this scope selects methods rather than being limited to one |
| Planning range | Not a single rate; a lot-clearing job is several scopes in sequence |
| What it finishes | A defined area opened to the marked limit of work |
| Factor | What it does to the job |
|---|---|
| Stumps | Grubbing and hauling stumps is frequently the largest single line on a lot-clearing bill. |
| Haul-off volume | Trucking is priced by the load and by the distance to somewhere that will take it. |
| Erosion control | Silt fence, matting, stabilised entrances and seeding are real materials and real labour. |
| Sequencing | Clearing in the wrong order means clearing twice, or clearing an area the plan later moves. |
| Regulatory review | Stormwater coverage and any wetland or shoreland permit take calendar time before anything starts. |
Get the surveyed building envelope and driveway centreline on the ground as stakes before anything is cut. Everything else on the estimate hangs off those.
Price stump excavation, grubbing, grading and compaction separately. A mulching pass can expose a site without producing a building-ready subgrade.