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+1 (239) 359-8463Southwest Florida · Licensed and insured
Land Grading · Lehigh Acres, Lee County, FL
▸ Elevation is the whole job
Land grading in Lehigh Acres: building pads brought up to the elevation the septic and the drainage require, driveway grade and lot leveling on platted lots.
What grading actually is
Every graded site is the same three moves. What changes is how much ground has to move, where it comes from, and how tight the finished surface has to be.
Two stages, two prices
Most quotes that go wrong go wrong here. Ask which one you are buying — a site brought roughly to shape and a site finished to tolerance are different amounts of work and different amounts of money.
The ground is moved to within striking distance of the target: high spots cut down, low spots filled, the shape of the site established. This is where the cut and fill balance gets decided and where most of the machine hours go.
The last few inches, held to tolerance. Finish grade is what a slab, a driveway or a sod line actually sits on, and it is where the difference between a good site and a callback lives.
How the work gets judged
A site can look level and still be wrong. These are the checks that decide whether the grade holds up once there is a building, a driveway and a rainy season on it.
A grade that does not move water is not a grade, it is a shape. Fall away from the structure, swales that carry it off, and no low point where there should not be one.
The finished level has to be the one on the plan, and it has to still be there in a year. That is a compaction question as much as a shaping one.
A pad under a slab and a driveway under a concrete truck are different specs. The grade is built for what goes on top of it, not to a single default.
Grades meet roads, neighbours, existing structures and setbacks. Where they meet is where drainage problems and disputes start if the transition is wrong.
Bare graded ground erodes in one storm. Silt control and stabilisation are part of the job, not an extra line after the fact.
The ground here
Lehigh Acres is around 152,000 platted lots laid out on a grid of canals and swales, and most of it has no central sewer. That single fact drives the grading. A drainfield has to sit a required distance above the seasonal high water table, and on ground this flat and this wet the only way to get there is to bring the pad up.
So the sequence runs backwards from the septic. The drainfield elevation sets the pad elevation, the pad elevation sets the fill volume, and the fill volume is most of the price. A lot that needs a foot of fill and a lot that needs three feet are the same size and completely different jobs.
Then the water has to leave. The grid of swales is the drainage system, and a finished lot has to shed into it rather than hold water against a fresh pad. Getting the pad high enough and forgetting the fall around it is the most common way a Lehigh lot ends up regraded twice.
What we grade in Lehigh Acres
The Lehigh job: fill placed in lifts and compacted to bring the pad to the level the septic and the plan require, and to keep it there.
The pad shaped and compacted to the elevation the plan calls for, and checked before anyone pours on it.
Fall across the drive so water sheds instead of standing, and a base that holds up under delivery trucks rather than rutting on the first wet week.
The contours that carry water off the lot and away from the structure, tied into wherever the water is supposed to go.
The last pass, held to tolerance so sod lays flat, irrigation sits right and the yard drains instead of ponding.
Shaping and elevation for the drainfield area itself, coordinated so the septic contractor arrives to ground that is ready rather than ground that needs another pass.
Coverage
Lehigh Acres, Alva, Buckingham and east Fort Myers. Owner-operated, and used to lots where the fill volume is the whole conversation.
Owner-operated crew · Licensed and insured · +1 (239) 359-8463
Before you call
Because the drainfield has to sit a required distance above the seasonal high water table, and most of Lehigh has no central sewer. On flat, wet ground the only way to achieve that separation is to build the pad up. The septic elevation sets the pad elevation, and the pad elevation sets how much fill arrives.
It follows from the elevation you have to reach and the area you are filling. That is why the septic number matters so much — a lot needing one foot and a lot needing three are the same size and completely different jobs. We measure it on the walk rather than guessing from the plat.
Very rarely here. Balancing needs high ground to cut from, and Lehigh lots are flat. Almost all of the volume is imported, which is why trucking shows on its own line in our scope instead of being buried in a lump sum.
That is the classic Lehigh mistake: getting the elevation right and forgetting the fall around it. A raised pad with no shaped drainage becomes an island with water standing against it. The grading has to include how water leaves the lot and reaches the swale.
Yes, and the order matters. Grading the pad and the drainfield area to elevation before the septic crew arrives means they work on ground that is ready. Doing it out of order means somebody comes back.
On a long Lehigh drive across flat ground, yes. Without crown and fall built into it, the drive becomes the lowest point on the property in the first heavy rain, and then it ruts under every delivery truck.
If there is vegetation on it, yes. You cannot shape ground through brush and stumps, and organics under a pad rot and settle. We run land clearing as well so it happens as one sequence.
Mostly a function of fill volume and truck availability rather than machine hours. A pad needing modest elevation moves quickly; one needing several feet is a logistics job before it is an earthwork job.
Hector TractorNaples, FL · +1 (239) 359-8463
Tell us the address and what needs to happen. You get a clear scope, a real schedule and one crew that owns the work.
