Land Clearing in Roseville, CA

In Roseville, land clearing takes brush, small trees and stumps off lots and acreage so you can build, cut a fire break or get a usable yard back. Lot clearing usually means one parcel, such as a lot before a foundation goes in or a back slope that has gone to brush. We find the native oaks first and work around their protected zones.

What land clearing includes

Land clearing is the removal of brush, small trees, stumps and debris from a piece of ground so it can be built on or kept as usable open ground. It is vegetation removal with a purpose: what the ground is for decides what comes out.

Brush and underbrush

Brush and underbrush are the shrubs, vines, saplings and dry grass under trees and along fences. Brush removal is usually most of the job by area, and it is the fuel that matters when Roseville's hottest summer days routinely peak above 105 °F.

Small trees and stumps

Small trees are cut with a saw or fed straight into a forestry mulcher. Their stumps come out whole with an excavator or are handled by stump grinding, which cuts them below grade and leaves the roots to rot. Bigger trees, or any tree near a house or a power line, go to our tree service crew.

Debris and haul-away

Debris is the fallen limbs and dead brush piles already on the ground, plus the cut material the clearing produces. It is chipped and spread on site or hauled off, and that choice changes both the cost and the finished look of the ground.

Lot clearing for a build

Lot clearing for a build takes everything off the footprint the builder will grade, stumps and main roots included, because wood left under a slab rots and the ground settles. Clearing land you will keep is lighter work, and the two differ in four places:

Our new construction site clearing page covers lot clearing services for a new home or an addition in more detail.

• Stumps and roots: a build pad needs them out with an excavator; land you keep usually only needs them ground below grade.
• Chips: a pad needs bare soil, so material is hauled away; a yard can keep a mulch layer through the wet season.
• What stays: a build site keeps only trees outside the footprint, while a yard keeps its shade trees and healthy shrubs.
• Finish: a pad is left bare for the grading contractor; a kept area is raked out, with erosion cover where it slopes.

Forestry mulcher, skid steer or hand crew

The right method depends on the size of the area, how steep it is, what is growing on it and what has to stay.

A forestry mulcher is a drum of carbide teeth on a tracked carrier or skid steer that grinds brush and small trees into chips where they stand. On open ground it is the fastest and usually the cheapest way to clear underbrush, since nothing is loaded.

• Forestry mulcher: larger open areas of brush and small trees on gentle slopes, with the chips left on the ground.
• Skid steer with a grapple: material gathered and trucked away, or a build pad that must end up bare, with an excavator after it for stumps.
• Hand crew with saws and a chipper: steep banks, narrow side yards, ground inside an oak's protected zone, and patches too small to justify a machine.
• A mix: a machine on open ground and a hand crew near the oaks and along the creek banks.

Chip in place or haul away

Cleared vegetation either stays on the ground as chips or leaves the site in a truck, and you choose which before the work starts. Chipping in place costs less and lays mulch over bare soil, which slows runoff in the October to April wet season. The catch is a wood layer that breaks down slowly and does not belong under a new lawn or a slab.

Haul-away leaves clean soil and costs more, since a chipper fills a truck that has to be driven off and emptied. Many owners split it: chips stay on slopes and back corners, and everything near the house goes.

Clearing near Roseville's protected oaks

Roseville protects native oaks of 6 inches DBH or more, which means trunk diameter measured at breast height, and the protected zone around each tree is the dripline radius plus 1 foot. The tree preservation chapter, 19.66 of the Roseville Municipal Code, also says to avoid cut or fill slopes in or near a protected zone.

So the work starts with a flag-and-measure walk before any machine goes in:

• Find every native oak, including a young valley oak buried in brush.
• Measure each trunk at breast height and note which meet the size limit.
• Flag each protected zone on the ground, one foot past the outer branch tips, where the operator can see it from the cab.
• Work inside the flags by hand, and keep any cut or fill slope well away.

Rocky ground, hardpan and creek soils

Rocky ground, hardpan and creek soils can all be cleared; what changes is the machine and the timing. USDA soil maps for the ground within about 1 km of our Roseville address show four soils that matter:

Erosion on cleared slopes is the risk common to all four. Bare soil on a slope sheds water in the first heavy rain, so cleared slopes get chips or straw before the wet season, and stumps on steep banks are ground so their roots keep holding soil.

• Exchequer very stony loam: bedrock at about 28 cm. Mulcher teeth find rock fast, so the drum runs higher and stumps are ground, not pulled.
• Inks cobbly loam: bedrock at about 46 cm, with cobbles throughout. Grinding is slower and pulled roots bring up rock.
• Fiddyment loam: a duripan, or hardpan, at about 71 cm. Water passes through it slowly, so after winter storms a cleared lot can stay soft and rut until it dries.
• Xerofluvents, frequently flooded: creek-bottom soils like those along Dry Creek and Linda Creek. Clear them in the dry season, June to October, and go lightly on the banks.

What decides the cost of land clearing

Four things set the land clearing cost: how much is growing per acre, how hard the ground is to work, how much hand work the oaks need and what leaves the site. A fair figure comes only after someone walks the lot. Brush clearing on flat, open ground sits at the low end, and dense growth on rock or a creek bank sits at the high end. Jobs are quoted by the hour or as a fixed price for the area, and the same factors drive both.

A land clearing quote should list:

• The area, marked on a site plan or on the ground.
• What comes out and what stays.
• Stumps: pulled, ground below grade, or cut flush and left.
• Chips or haul-away, and where any chips will be spread.
• Erosion cover afterwards on any slope.
• The oak flags: which native oaks were found and where their protected zones run.

Related clearing services

Narrower jobs grow out of the same property clearing work, each with its own page on the Roseville Stump Grinding site.

Defensible Space Clearing

Defensible Space Clearing thins brush and lifts low limbs around a house so a fire has less to carry it to the walls.

New Construction Site Clearing

New construction site clearing takes a lot down to bare soil for the grading contractor, stumps and roots included, with the oak flags set before the pad is laid out.

Shrub & Hedge Removal

Shrub & Hedge Removal takes out overgrown hedges and old foundation shrubs, roots included, without a machine crossing the yard.