Excavation and Site Work in New Hampshire

Excavation is where every good project starts. Before there is a driveway, a parking lot, a foundation, or a drainage system, there is dirt that has to be moved correctly. Young's Excavating & Paving LLC has been doing exactly that across New Hampshire since 1947, with our own excavators, loaders, and trucks and the operators who know how to use them.

Residential Excavation

We handle the site work homeowners need. Driveway cut-ins and regrading. Land clearing and lot preparation. Drainage correction when water is going where it should not. Trenching, backfill, and grading for additions and outbuildings. If your property has a water problem, a grade problem, or a project that starts with digging, we can evaluate it and give you a straight answer about what it takes to fix.

Site Preparation

Clearing, cut and fill to the grade the plan calls for, and a compacted base ready to build on. Water is routed off the site first, because the base and the drainage under a surface decide how long it lasts.

Foundation Excavation

Digging and backfilling for foundations, slabs, additions and outbuildings, cut to the depth and grade the plan calls for. Spoil is handled on site or hauled away and the area is left ready for the next trade.

Asphalt/Concrete Demolition

Breaking out and removing failed asphalt, concrete pads, walkways and old driveway surfaces. Removal can be scheduled with the paving that follows so the site is not left open in between.

Contact us for special projects

Drainage corrections, culverts, trenching, regrading and site problems that do not fit a category. Describe the property and what is going wrong when you request a quote and it will be looked at on its own terms.

Excavator digging a trench through a lawn for drainage or utility work.

Compact excavator on a gravel driveway beside a house.

Commercial Site Work

For builders, property managers, and business owners we provide full-service commercial excavation. Recent commercial paving and parking lot projects show the finished result. Site preparation and rough grading. Parking lot excavation ahead of paving. Catch basins and storm drainage installation and repair. Utility trenching. Because we also pave, we can take a commercial site from raw ground to finished lot with one contractor and one point of accountability, which saves time and prevents the finger-pointing that happens when the site crew and the paving crew are different companies.

Young's Excavating & Paving LLC, member of the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce

USDOT 2821639

Drainage Done Right

New Hampshire freezes and thaws are what destroy pavement and flood basements. Most of the problems we get called to fix trace back to water. Proper pitch, working catch basins, and correct base drainage protect everything built on top of them. It is the least visible part of the job and the most important one. See examples on our drainage projects and excavation projects pages.

Young's Excavating & Paving LLC provides excavation, site work, grading and drainage services from Penacook for homeowners and businesses in Concord, Manchester, Nashua, and towns across Merrimack, Hillsborough, Rockingham, Strafford, Cheshire and Belknap counties. Residential and commercial customers can request a free quote for projects that involve excavation alone or excavation connected to paving.

Why the base decides how long the surface lasts

Almost every failed driveway in New Hampshire failed underneath before it failed on top. Frost drives several feet into the ground here through the winter, and any water trapped in the base expands as it freezes and lifts whatever is sitting on it. When it thaws, the ground drops back unevenly and the surface above it cracks along the line of the movement. That is why a driveway can look fine in November and have a crack down the middle by April.

Good site work is mostly about not letting water sit. That means cutting to a grade that sheds water rather than holding it, a base of clean crushed stone that drains instead of soil that holds moisture, and compaction in layers rather than all at once, because a thick layer of gravel compacts on top and stays loose underneath. Asphalt over loose base is asphalt with nothing under it.

Slope is the part nobody thinks about until it is wrong. A paved surface needs a consistent fall of roughly a quarter of an inch per foot to move water off it reliably. Less than that and water sits in the low spots, freezes, and works into the surface. On a site with nowhere for the water to go, that means catch basins and a run to somewhere it can discharge, and that is a decision made before anything is paved, not after.