I build the dirt a building sits on. House pads, barn and pole barn pads, shop pads, shed pads and equipment pads, cut and filled, compacted in lifts, and shot to grade with a laser. If water is standing in your yard and you need it to run somewhere, that is grading, not a pad. If something is going up on the ground, that is this page. I haul the fill too, so the material and the machine turn up the same morning.
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What a building pad actually is
A pad is not a pile of dirt in the shape of a rectangle. It is a compacted elevation.
Three things have to be true when I hand it off. It has to be high enough, so the finished floor sits where your plan or the county says it sits and water runs away from the building instead of at it. It has to be firm enough, so the slab above it is not sitting on something that will settle in two years and telegraph a crack across your floor. And it has to be square, level and big enough to work off, because your slab contractor needs room outside the building line to set forms and stand.
Get the elevation right and the wrong compaction, and it settles. Get the compaction right and the wrong elevation, and you are looking at water under the door on the second big rain. Both of those get found out by somebody other than me, months later, which is exactly why I would rather build it right the first time than argue about it.
Who calls me about pads
- Somebody putting up a pole barn, a shop or a metal building and the erector wants level dirt on a date
- Owner-builders on five acres who need a house pad before the slab contractor will schedule
- Manufactured and modular homes, where the pad and the drive usually get done in the same trip
- Shed, carport and container pads, which are small jobs and I still take them
- Equipment pads: a generator, a bulk tank, an AC unit, a lift, a compressor
- Barn and stall pads, run-in sheds, and the dirt under a wash rack
- Builders who have had one pad settle on them and now want somebody with a roller and a laser
- Lots where the previous owner filled a low spot with whatever came off the last job and nobody knows what is down there
The ground up here decides the pad, not the other way around
Two very different jobs live in this county and the map does not warn you which one you are on.
On the ridge, from Umatilla south through Eustis and Mount Dora and across most of the high ground around Altoona, the sand runs deep and clean. It drains almost the instant it rains, which is good news for your drainfield and mixed news for your pad. Clean sand compacts well when it is worked at the right moment and it has decent bearing once it is confined, but it has no cohesion at all. It will not hold a slope on the side of a pad without a shoulder, and the edges will ravel if the pad is built square-sided and left that way.
East toward Astor and the river, and in the flatwoods pockets, the water table sits higher and there is organic ground and muck in places. Muck under a pad is the single most expensive thing you can leave in the ground. It compresses for years. If I find it, it comes out and gets replaced with clean fill, and I will tell you what that changes about the number before I do it, not after.
Old fill is the third case, and the one people forget. If somebody dumped material on your lot at some point in the past, I do not know what is in it and neither do you. Organic material, stumps, buried trash and construction scrap all show up under old fill in this county. Rooting through it costs a day. Building on it costs a slab.
How I build one
Six steps. Skipping any of them is how a pad ends up in somebody's engineering report.
- Strip the organic material. Topsoil, roots, stumps, chip and grass come off the footprint and off a working margin around it. Organic material under a pad rots out and leaves a soft spot, and it will do that on its own schedule, usually after your floor is down.
- Proof the subgrade. I run the machine over the stripped ground and watch it. Soft spots show themselves under a loaded track before they show themselves under a slab. Anything that pumps or ruts gets dug out and replaced.
- Bring in clean structural fill. Select fill, free of organic material, roots and trash. Not yard dirt, not the spoil out of somebody's pond, and not clay unless an engineer specifically put clay in the plan.
- Place it in lifts and compact each one. This is the step that separates a pad from a pile. One thick dump does not compact through, no matter what runs over the top of it. Each lift gets rolled with the ride-on double drum roller, and the plate compactor gets the edges, the corners and anywhere the roller cannot reach.
- Shape it and shoot it. The laser transmitter goes up, the receiver goes on the grade rod, and the final surface gets cut to an actual elevation across the whole pad instead of an eyeball across two hundred feet.
- Build the shoulders and the fall. The pad gets a working margin outside the building line, side slopes that will hold, and the ground around it shaped so water leaves. A pad that is dead level and drops off vertical at the edge is half a job.
The laser is on every pad I build
A laser transmitter on a tripod and a receiver on a grade rod. Instead of guessing at a slope, I am reading a real elevation at any point on the site.
It matters most exactly where you cannot see the problem: on a long run, on a big footprint, and anywhere a small fall has to travel a long way. Eyeballing a two hundred foot pad is how a building ends up sitting a couple of inches low on the corner where the water collects. Nobody sees it on the dirt. Everybody sees it the first time it rains hard.
Most small outfits around here do not carry one. It goes out on every grading and pad job I do, and it is the reason I will tell you a finished elevation instead of "about level."
What goes in a pad, and what does not
Structural fill. Clean, free of organic material, and compactable. This is what a pad is made of, and I bring it.
Limerock, where a plan calls for a rock cap, or where equipment and concrete trucks have to run on the pad before the slab goes down. It also keeps the surface from turning into a bog if the pour date slips into a wet week.
What does not go in a pad. Clay, unless an engineer put it there. Clay holds moisture, swells and shrinks, and a slab does not enjoy either one. Topsoil, which is organic by definition. Chip and mulch, for the same reason. Stump grindings. And whatever came out of the hole on the other side of your property, unless I have looked at it and told you it is good material, which does happen and comes off your number when it does.
Fill dirt Limerock Sand clay Work out how much you need
Flood zone lots
If your lot is in a flood zone, the pad stops being a dirt job with an opinion and becomes a dirt job with a number attached to it.
Your finished floor has to sit above the base flood elevation plus whatever additional height Lake County requires on top of it. That drives the fill quantity, which drives everything else. It also usually means engineered fill, documented compaction, density testing by a lab, and a surveyor's elevation certificate at the end.
Here is the order I want you to do this in, because getting it backwards is expensive. Get the required elevation from the county floodplain administrator in writing, before anybody orders dirt. Then the quantity is a calculation instead of a guess, and the quote you collect from me and from anybody else is against the same target.
I build the pad and I compact it. Your surveyor certifies it and your testing lab tests it. I am not the permit office and I do not file for you.
Compaction and testing, and who does which part
I compact in lifts and I roll it properly, because that is the job. What I do not do is issue a density report, and you should be suspicious of anybody who says the two are the same thing.
Whether your pad needs testing at all depends on your building department and on what your plan says, and that is a question for them and for your engineer rather than for me. Florida's building code requires a geotechnical investigation where a shallow foundation sits on deep compacted fill, with allowances where the in-place density is right. If a test is required on your job, an independent testing lab does it. That independence is the point of it.
What I will do is build the pad so it passes, tell you the week I can have it ready, and stay out of the way of the people whose signature goes on the paperwork.
What it costs, and what moves the number
I price a pad after I have walked the property, and the number I write down holds unless you change the scope.
I do not publish a per-yard or per-pad price, and here is the honest reason: a pad is mostly a fill quantity, and the fill quantity is set by your elevation, which I do not know until I have stood on the ground with the rod. Two pads the same size on the same road can be eight loads apart. Anybody quoting a pad off a phone call is quoting an average, and averages get corrected on invoice day.
What I will do instead is give you a real number the same day. Call me with the dimensions, the town, and the finished elevation if you already have it. You get a price back, not a promise to call.
What makes a pad go easy: dry season, a stripped or already open lot, a gate a truck and trailer actually fit through, firm ridge sand, one pad instead of three, and a known target elevation.
What eats the number: water in the ground, muck or organic material that has to come out, unknown old fill, a long haul for the material, tight access where a tri-axle cannot turn around, and a wet-season pour date that forces the pad to be built and then held.
Small jobs carry a minimum, because the trailer, the fuel and the drive cost the same whether the machine runs one hour or eight.
Good fit for me, and what to call somebody else about
Good fit
house pads, barn, pole barn and shop pads, manufactured and modular home pads, shed and carport pads, container pads, equipment and generator pads, stall and run-in shed pads, arena bases, and rebuilding a pad that settled. Pad plus the driveway plus the drainage in one booking, which is usually the cheapest way to buy all three because the machine is already sitting on your property.
Call somebody else for
pouring the slab, which goes to a licensed concrete or building contractor. Anything a geotechnical engineer has to design, because you want the engineer independent of the person who moved the dirt. Density testing, which is a testing lab. Subdivision-scale mass grading that needs three machines running at once. Deep muck removal on a site that needs dewatering. Retaining walls or engineered slopes.
When a job needs more than one machine or a trade I do not do, I bring in people I have worked with for twenty years and I stay the one you call. What I will not do is take a job that needs somebody else's license and figure it out afterward.
What usually comes next
Questions I get
What actually goes into a building pad?
Strip off the organic material, because roots and topsoil under a pad rot out and leave you a soft spot. Bring in clean structural fill. Place it in lifts rather than one big dump, because one thick lift does not compact through. Compact each lift, shape it to grade with the laser, and shoot the final elevation. What you get is a compacted elevation you can build on, cut square, and drained so water leaves it.
How much fill will my house pad take?
Length times width times depth in inches, divided by 324, gives you cubic yards. A forty by sixty pad raised twelve inches is about eighty nine yards, and then you add ten to fifteen percent because it compacts. Run yours through the calculator, or send me the dimensions and the elevation you need and I will work it out.
Do I need a compaction test?
That depends on your building department and your plan, and you should ask them rather than me. Florida's building code requires a geotechnical investigation where a shallow foundation sits on deep compacted fill, and there are allowances where the in-place density is right. I build the pad and compact it properly. If a test is required, your engineer or testing lab does that part, and you want them independent of me.
My lot is in a flood zone. What does that change?
Your finished floor has to sit above the base flood elevation plus whatever additional height Lake County requires, and that usually means engineered fill, a compacted pad, density testing and a surveyor's elevation certificate. I build the pad. Your surveyor certifies it. Get the required elevation from the county floodplain administrator in writing before anybody orders dirt, because that number drives the entire quantity.
Do you pour the slab too?
No. I build the dirt pad, compact it, shoot it to grade and hand it off ready. Your slab contractor pours on top of it. I do pour flatwork like driveway aprons, shed slabs, inlet pads and culvert headwalls, but house slabs, foundations, stem walls and structural footings go to a licensed concrete or building contractor.
Do I have to find my own fill?
No, and this is the part that surprises people who have priced a pad before. Most excavating outfits make you source the material and wait on somebody else's truck, and most material yards will drop a pile in your yard and drive off. I do both ends. The fill and the machine show up the same morning and somebody is there to spread and compact it.
How long does a pad have to sit before we build on it?
If it is built in lifts and compacted properly, it does not need to sit. That is the whole point of compacting as you go instead of dumping and hoping. What does change the schedule is rain: a finished pad that gets soaked before the slab goes down may need the surface reworked, which is one of several reasons pads are better bought between October and May.
Can you do the pad and the driveway together?
Yes, and you should ask for it that way. The machine, the roller and the material truck are already coming to your address, so doing the pad, the drive and the grading around them in one booking is cheaper than three separate mobilizations. It also means one person is responsible for how the water leaves, instead of two people each assuming the other handled it.
Tell me what is going up
Call (352) 932-3653, or send the form. What helps most: the town, the outside dimensions of the building, whether you already have a required finished floor elevation, and a couple of photos, one from the road and one from where the pad goes.
Free estimate, on site, no pressure. Get other quotes too. I would rather you compare than wonder.
Free estimateCall (352) 932-3653