Land & Lot Clearing
Typical NJ range: $1,400 – $6,000+ per acre
Across New Jersey, clearing wooded or overgrown land typically runs $1,400 to $6,000+ per acre, and most homeowners clearing part of a residential lot spend somewhere in the $1,500 to $6,000 band total. The spread is that wide because 'clearing' covers everything from mowing down light brush to pulling mature trees, grubbing roots, and hauling out boulders.
What moves the number: vegetation density, tree diameter, slope, and — above all — what happens to the debris. Chipping brush on site is cheap; loading and trucking whole trees and stumps off the property is not. Gate width matters too, since a lot a mini excavator can slip into costs less to clear than one that needs hand work. A short site walk tells us which end of the range your lot actually sits on, and you get that number in writing.
French Drain Installation
Typical NJ range: $10 – $50 per linear foot (deep systems $30 – $90)
Exterior yard french drains in New Jersey generally price between $10 and $50 per linear foot, with shallow curtain drains at the low end and deeper systems that intercept water near a foundation running $30 to $90 per foot. A typical 50 to 100 foot run through a soggy side yard lands in the low-to-mid thousands.
Depth is the biggest lever — every extra foot down means more spoil to dig, more stone to place, and more material to haul away. Clay soil and a high water table (common in this part of Middlesex and Mercer counties) slow the dig, and tight side-yard access can force smaller equipment and more trips. None of that is guesswork once we've walked the yard and seen where the water actually goes; the written price we leave with you is the price.
Yard Regrading & Leveling
Typical NJ range: $1,000 – $5,000 for a typical backyard
Regrading an average New Jersey backyard runs $1,000 to $5,000, with per-square-foot pricing usually between $0.50 and $2.00. Small fixes — feathering a low spot, re-pitching soil away from the house — sit at the bottom of the range; reshaping a whole sloped yard with imported fill sits at the top.
The price is really a question of dirt math: how many yards of soil have to move, whether fill needs to be trucked in or spoil trucked out, and how steep the existing slope is. Wet or clay-heavy soil takes more passes to shape and compact than sandy loam. We measure the fall, estimate the yardage on site, and hand you one firm number instead of an hourly guess.
Driveway Excavation & Gravel Driveways
Typical NJ range: $4 – $10 per square foot installed
A new gravel driveway in New Jersey typically costs $4 to $10 per square foot installed — roughly $4,000 to $10,000 for a 100-foot by 10-foot drive. If there's an existing driveway to dig out and haul off first, the excavation and prep portion alone commonly runs $1,000 to $2,500.
The dig is what separates a driveway that lasts from one that ruts in a year, and it's also where the cost lives: stripping topsoil or old asphalt, cutting to the right depth, compacting the subgrade, and pitching it so water sheds off. Soft or clay subsoil may need extra stone or fabric, and haul-off of the old material is priced by the truckload. Every one of those variables is visible on a site walk, so the written quote covers all of it — no surprise change orders.
Inground Pool Excavation
Typical NJ range: $1,500 – $6,000+ for the dig
The dig itself for an inground pool typically runs $1,500 to $6,000 in New Jersey, with most digs landing near the middle. Rocky ground or a backyard the machine can't reach directly can push that figure well higher, because rock hammering and long material runs multiply machine hours.
Three things set the price: how many cubic yards come out, what the soil is (sand digs fast, saturated clay and rock don't), and where those 100+ yards of spoil go. A yard with a 6-foot gate needs a different machine — and more trips — than one with open access. This is exactly the kind of job where a generic range means little and a site walk means everything, so we'll look before we quote and the quote will hold.
Stump Removal
Typical NJ range: $150 – $500 per stump
Removing a stump in New Jersey generally costs $150 to $500 per stump, with grinding priced around $2 to $6 per inch of diameter and most companies carrying a minimum service fee. Pulling multiple stumps in one visit drops the per-stump price sharply, since the machine is already on site.
Full extraction with an excavator — roots and all, the right prep if you're building or grading over the spot — costs more than grinding but leaves nothing behind to settle. Stump size, root spread, soil, and whether the stump debris gets hauled away or buried on site all move the figure. Count your stumps, and we'll give you one written price for the lot.
Utility Trenching
Typical NJ range: $5 – $25 per linear foot in open ground
Straightforward residential trenching for water, electric, gas, or drainage lines runs about $5 to $25 per linear foot in New Jersey for open ground. Cutting through asphalt or concrete roughly doubles the per-foot cost, and deeper trenches for water lines below frost depth price toward the top of the range.
Depth and surface are the big drivers: a 12-inch conduit trench through a lawn is a different job than a 42-inch water service under a driveway. Soil that collapses or holds water needs a wider cut, and utility markouts sometimes force hand digging near existing lines. Tell us what's going in the ground and we'll walk the run, flag the complications up front, and put a firm number on paper.
Small Demolition: Shed Removal & Pool Fill-Ins
Typical NJ range: $500 – $2,500 shed removal · $4,000 – $16,000 pool fill-in
Tearing down and hauling away a shed typically costs $500 to $2,500 in New Jersey, depending on size, construction, and whether there's a concrete slab underneath. Filling in an inground pool is a bigger lift: partial fill-ins commonly run $4,000 to $8,000, and full removals $4,000 to $16,000, driven largely by the 60 to 90 truckloads' worth of fill a typical pool swallows.
In both cases, disposal is most of the bill — dumpster or truck loads of debris out, and for pools, clean structural fill in. Machine access to the backyard, the amount of concrete to break, and local requirements for how a pool must be punctured and compacted all shift the total. A site walk lets us count the loads accurately, which is how we can commit to a fixed written price instead of an open-ended estimate.
Gravel Shed Pads
Typical NJ range: $5 – $9 per square foot
A properly built gravel shed pad in New Jersey generally prices at $5 to $9 per square foot on reasonably flat ground — roughly $1,000 to $2,000 for a common 10x12 to 12x16 pad, more if the site slopes or needs a retaining edge.
The cost hides in the prep, not the stone: stripping organic topsoil, cutting the site level, fabric, timber or steel edging, and compacting the gravel in lifts so the shed never racks. A sloped yard that needs a cut-and-fill bench, or a backyard the dump truck can't reach so stone moves by skid steer, will run higher than a flat spot beside the driveway. We can usually size and quote a pad in one short visit — firm price, in writing.