Three tips for clearing a plot of land for your building project
Posted on: 28 April 2017
If you've purchased a plot of land and intend to build a house, you must first clear away any vegetation that is currently growing on it. Here are three tips which should help to make this process go as smoothly as possible.
Seek out the help of your local land surveyors
Before you begin this process, you should seek out the assistance of your local land surveyors. They will help you to identify the exact boundaries of the property. This is a crucial step which should not be skipped; if you fail to do this, you run the risk of clearing (and potentially damaging) sections of land which do not belong to you. If this should happen, you may find yourself involved in a legal dispute with the owner of the land that you accidentally cleared.
Whilst the initial cost of hiring a land surveyor may seem high, it could actually end up saving you a substantial amount of money in the long run, by eliminating the chance of you being caught up in any costly legal battles in the future.
Hire the appropriate construction equipment
Unless the size of the plot that you need to clear is extremely small, you will need to hire some heavy construction equipment for this job. At the very least, you will need an excavator, with two types of attachments; namely, a mulcher (which is used to cut down trees) and a stump grinder (this is used to extract tree stumps from the ground). Additionally, you may need a bulldozer, with a root plow attachment that will enable you to extract the roots of shrubbery and other vegetation from the earth. If there are trees which, because of their location or size, cannot be cut down with a mulcher and an excavator, then it may be necessary to hire a chainsaw.
It should be noted that, if you do not have a lot of experience with this equipment, you should hire trained professionals to do the work for you. Attempting to use this equipment without help from a qualified construction worker, could leave you with an improperly cleared plot of land or worse still, a severe injury.
Create a disposal plan
It's important to create a plan which details what you will do with all of the vegetation that you have cleared from your plot. Due to the volume of refuse normally produced by this process, it is not usually realistic to dispose of it in a landfill. Instead, you may need to grind up and compost some of it. If your local authority allows for it, it might also be possible to burn some of the vegetation.
If there are a large number of trees on your plot that need to be cut down, it might be worth making some inquiries with a timber company in your area regarding whether or not they would be willing to purchase the wood from you. If they do, not only will the company collect the wood from the land (and thus spare you the hassle of transporting it), but you should also be able to make a sizeable profit.
Share