Fill dirt is not all the same and a load is not a fixed amount. The questions worth asking any supplier before the first truck backs onto your lot, answered from our own pit on River Rd.

The order matters on a wooded lot. Mark what stays, fence off the keeper oaks, silt fence, clear, grub the pad, grind or haul, rough grade. Each step the way we run it.

Snapped pines, tipped root balls and ground too wet to hold a machine. How a storm damaged lot gets back to buildable, and why the chainsaw crew and the dirt crew are two different calls.

The day the brush comes off your lot is the day the sand starts looking for a way out. Where the silt fence goes, what the rock is for, and how we keep it working through the job.

Your acreage has gotten away from you. A bush hog handles grass and light scrub, a forestry mulcher eats woody growth and small trees, and neither one builds a pad. Which one you need.

Somebody told you to order fill, somebody else said topsoil, and the pit asked if you wanted sand. Which one goes where on a lot around here, and what happens when you get it backwards.

In Walton County the answer depends on your parcel, what you are building, and which side of the bay you are on. Here is what actually comes up on the lots we clear.

The storm is gone and your yard, driveway or private road is buried in what used to be trees, fence and roofing. What we haul, where it goes, and what to have ready for your adjuster.

You want the trees gone. What you actually want is a lot you can build on, and clearing by itself does not get you there. Why we treat clearing and grading as one job.

Your lot is cleared, the pad is half built, and there is a storm in the Gulf. Here is what we do on our own jobs before it gets here, and why.

Closing on a lot feels like the finish line, but it is the starting line. Five things to do first, in order, before anyone prices your build.

Your builder wants a pad, not a raw lot. The full order of site preparation steps around here, what you need ready at each one, and where jobs stall.

Tearing down a house sounds simple until you get into the hauling, the dump fees, and the county paperwork. Here is what demolition usually runs around here.

If your yard turns into a pond every time it storms, the water is telling you something about how the lot sits. What causes it, and how to fix it in the right order.

Anybody who hands you a number over the phone is guessing. Here is what really turns the clock on a clearing job around here.

Figuring fill dirt is fourth grade math with one trap in it. Get your yardage right, know what a truck really holds, and know when to hand the numbers to us instead.

In Santa Rosa County the clearing is usually tied to whatever you are building. Every parcel is different, so here is what actually comes up on the lots we clear.

Almost every development in Florida ends up with a pond in the corner of the site. What they do, how they work in our sand, and who gets stuck maintaining them.

Site development runs 15 to 25 percent of a project budget and is where vague numbers turn into change orders. Here is what separates a real sitework proposal from a number on a page.

Your project sits on whatever the sitework crew puts under it. Here is how to tell a real sitework contractor from someone who just owns a machine.