Excavation in Shawnee tends to come in two shapes. Somebody wants a storm shelter set in the ground before spring. Or somebody bought acreage outside town and needs footings and utility trenches dug. We run out of Ada, about 47 miles south, with a 30,000-pound excavator and a Cat D6 dozer. A tracked skid steer comes along for the tight work. Pottawatomie County ground shifts on you. Sandy loam up on the terraces digs one way. Bottom ground along the North Canadian River digs another.
Shawnee sits at the north edge of what we cover, so we plan the trip. Moving a dozer and an excavator 47 miles is a real cost. Jobs with some size to them work best. A shelter pit plus the trenches, or roughing in a house pad and cutting the driveway. We load once, dig it all, and haul out. If you have a few items on the list, put them on one visit. Call (580) 344-7473 and tell us what the ground looks like. Estimates are free.
Tell us about your property and we'll get back to you fast.
Two kinds of ground show up on most Shawnee digs. Shawnee sits in the Cross Timbers, where the upland soil is coarse and sandy under post oak and blackjack. The Konawa series is a good example, a fine sandy loam on old low stream terraces. It drains well and it cuts fast and clean. It also sloughs. A trench wall that stands at nine in the morning can slide after an afternoon rain. Sand gives little warning before it goes. We slope or bench the sides instead of trusting a vertical face. We keep the spoil pile back from the edge, since that weight is what caves a sandy wall.
Down along the North Canadian River, which runs right through Shawnee, the bottom ground changes. Port soils there run silt loam to clay loam, laid down as flood alluvium on narrow flood plains. That ground floods on and off from March into October. It digs slower and it holds water. On a wet bottom job we plan for water in the hole before the first bucket. Sometimes that means a sump. Sometimes it means waiting out a week of rain instead of churning the site into soup. It also means checking the flood maps. The City of Shawnee issues a Floodplain Permit and a Land Disturbance permit. Call City Hall at 405-878-1601 before you dig near the river.
April 19, 2023 put six tornadoes on the ground in Pottawatomie County. The Shawnee one was an EF2 with peak winds near 135 mph. It ran 15.5 miles and reached 2,300 yards wide at its worst. It started southeast of Bethel Acres and ended up in Lincoln County. Damage ran near I-40 and Kickapoo and across the Oklahoma Baptist University campus. Shelter pits have been a steady call here since. We dig the hole and set the shelter to grade. Then we backfill in lifts so the sandy loam does not settle into a dip. We set a shelter on the ranch we have been clearing near Sulphur. The pit is the quick part. The dirt work around it is what lasts.
The other steady Shawnee call is an acreage build. Somebody buys ten or twenty acres out toward Pink or Macomb and needs a house site opened up. That means footing trenches, a water line, an electric run, and a line to the septic field. Old rural places are where trenching slows down. Oklahoma law says the dig goes to OKIE811 at least 48 hours ahead. That count skips the day you call, weekends, and holidays, and the ticket runs 14 days. OKIE811 marks utility-owned lines. The old feed to a shop, a barn, or a pump house belongs to the owner. We find those by hand, digging soft near the marks before the bucket goes in. Excavation is one piece of what we do around Shawnee.
More about the service itself is on our Excavation page, and everything we do around town is on the Shawnee service-area page.
Answers specific to excavation work around Shawnee. Something else on your mind? Call us.
Cedar taking the pasture, a pad to build, an old house to take down, or a pond you have been thinking about for years? Call or send the form. We come look at the property with you, and the estimate is free, from the owner who runs the machines.
Tell us about your property and we'll get back to you fast.
