Los Angeles excavation
Grading a hillside lot in Los Angeles is as much paperwork as dirt. Most jobs need a grading permit, many need a soils report, and large exports in hillside areas need a haul route approved at a public hearing. We plan the cut, the fill and the export together so the schedule holds.
In the City of Los Angeles, most grading needs an LADBS permit, and the exemptions are narrow: small cuts or fills under 50 cubic yards that don’t change drainage. On a lot inside a designated hillside area, even the dig for a basement or footings under a building permit is not exempt; only caissons and piles are. All grading in hillside areas counts as engineered grading, which means a grading plan prepared by a civil engineer. In single-family hillside zones, the Baseline Hillside Ordinance also caps total grading by zone and lot size, and we check your lot’s limit before design. Separate cities run separate rules: Pasadena, for example, issues its own grading permits and runs its own hillside development permit, outside LADBS.
LADBS requires soils and geology reports for grading over 5,000 cubic yards and whenever the grading pre-inspection calls for them, which is common on hillside lots. Those reports shape the plan we build to: how steep a finished cut may stand, where fill has to be keyed and benched into firm ground instead of laid on the slope face, and where the engineer wants to see the exposed soil before anything is placed on it. Our role is to cut and fill to that plan, pause at the inspection points it names, and leave the pad at the grades it shows.
In LA’s designated hillside areas, importing or exporting more than 1,000 cubic yards of soil needs Board of Building and Safety approval after a public hearing, with notice to owners within 300 feet, so it belongs in the schedule from the start. Below that, a single-lane canyon street still limits truck size and how many loads a day can run. In the Hollywood Hills, where many streets are too narrow for two vehicles to pass, smaller trucks and staged loading are often the only workable plan. City of LA grading and export are also barred from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. and on Sundays.
From October 1 to April 15, no grading job over 200 cubic yards in the City may start until LADBS has approved an erosion-control system. In practice, an open cut on a slope needs sandbags, plastic and a planned path for runoff before the first storm, not after it. If a project will cut into a slope for a new wall, see retaining wall excavation; for brush and debris removal ahead of grading, see site clearing.
What sets the schedule? The volume of soil, the permit and any haul-route approval, grading hours, and whether the work falls in the October to April rainy season.
These often come up on the same lot, and can be planned from the same site visit:
Cutting back slopes for new retaining walls, to the wall designer's plans, with a temporary cut that stays stable.
What it involves →Clearing brush, roots and debris and rough grading the lot so water drains away from where you'll build.
What it involves →Footing trenches and foundation excavation for new homes, additions, walls and decks, dug to the engineer's plans.
What it involves →Site visit request
Tell us the address, what you're building and any plans you have. We'll call back to set up a site visit.
We'll call to set up a site visit. To talk sooner, call (213) 319-3620
Something went wrong sending your request. Please call (213) 319-3620 and we'll take the details over the phone. Your answers are still filled in below if you'd rather try again.