some questions about clearing land
 

My wife and I are thinking about buying another home to be our retirement house. Or possibly thinking buy land and clear/build . Currently looking in the Cleveland , Dahlonega , Dawsonville area here in Georgia . Anyway is there a " general " cost estimate for clearing land ? By clearing land I mean cutting in a driveway and clearing trees for the home site . Is it best to contract one company to clear and build to save money by bundling ? Can money spent be offset somewhat by a company wanting the trees for lumber ? Anyone have a buddy that does this work they can recommend ?

I just bought land in NY for the same purpose. I was quoted $7k/acre.

Too many variables to get a general price.
How long of a driveway? Paved, gravel?
When you find a place you're interested in have a few contractors visit the site. Also a forester can tell you the value of the trees.

I let my builder do this as part of the excavation process. When digging the footings, he cleared the driveway and removed about 20 good sized trees. Trees stacked neatly for firewood later. Stumps in a burn pile. Graded for a lawn. 3 acre parcel.

At my previous place, I sold 3 and half log trucks full of trees. I got 1/2 of what the logger received. I was paid directly by the mill from the load slips.

My quote was for heavily wooded land.

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But lake front:

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Wow, beautiful. I think if I was going that route, I would clear the bare minimum to build the house and the house would be in the middle of the woods still once it was done.

Might want to talk to your local bobcat/tractor dealer. Mine offers rentals with all the attachments to clear. Mine will leave it there for how ever long you need it and only charge you of the hours used (8 hours = 1 day).

That is an excellent suggestion thank you .

Brother bought a D-4 Cat with tree pusher on blade. Sold it when done clearing for drive/house, and playing (every once in a while he would just decide he didn't like at tree, lol). Cleaned it up and sold it for more than it cost him.

That's what I did when I built my shop. Didn't have any flat ground to build on so I bought an old Allis-Chalmers HD21 dozer and had things rearranged in no time. Even dug a pond with it.
Had trouble selling it because it was huge. Ended up scraping it for more than I was asking (back when scrap prices were good).
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I can sell you a bulldozer and you can do it yourself! SmileWavy

This is actually what I'm planning. Buy a bulldozer & loader/excavator and do the work myself.

My advice, having done this for a living, is just find a local dirt contractor and have him do it. If you rent a bobcat and tackle this yourself, we'll still be reading about your ongoing project 10 years from now. He'll want to use a trackhoe for the trees and a medium sized dozer for the pad and road work. You want one with an angle blade, not a fixed blade. he should be able to knock it out in less than a day, at around $60 an hour for each machine, give or take.

JR

There are many things I will do myself. Clearing land of trees averaging 50' tall or more is not one of them! Too many opportunities to damage myself in a way that will keep me from doing those things I do enjoy doing myself. Leave this one to the experts.

We have 15 acres. The driveway will be 1/4 mile long. The land is wedged between Fahnestock state park on two sides and the lake on the other. We are clearing about three acres for the road, house and garden and to Steve's point, building in the middle of the woods. Here is the front door with my wife and daughter greeting visitors.

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If you decide to do this, make sure you factor in the time and cost of permits, inspections, access, power, well, septic, etc., etc., etc. it adds up quickly and makes you swallow hard!

Is there still a ski area at Fahnestock?

It really depends on what type of trees you will be clearing. Pines and hardwoods have different values depending on size. Most home sites are created with tracked loaders in our area. Bin grinders are also popular if they can get one on the site.

Strack is a large grading and site prep company in the area, they are most likely too big for a single home site but they may be able to refer you to someone.

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This is exactly what we did... and the exact equipment he used. He made our driveway which is a quarter of a mile long as well as clearing an area by the creek - we call it the beach. We incurred some big expenses for running water lines and electricity (we went underground for part of the length) - I think it was around $6k for the trenching and pipes! The dirt contractor that we hired did a great job and his experience and guidance saved us much money. He hauled in 27 loads of chert for the driveway which makes a really excellent road base. We have 24 acres of and, the best I remember, he quoted us $1k/acre to clear. Additionally, I bought two old Gravely Two Wheel tractors to clear the areas next to the creek as I cannot get my tractor down to that area - isn't it grand when you are able to get an additional toy to work with? The Gravely Twins a 1957 and 1974 model recently reworked by me.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1476638278.jpg

I like the Gravelys! A big issue I had when doing a similar, smaller project was dealing with the brush after I had it down. A dump truck and a loader would have been really handy. Unfortunately I hadn't looked that far ahead.

When in my teens by best friend's Dad had a construction company and also ran cattle. He would take his son and myself out to some property out in the country with dozer, tractor with loader and drag box, and big fork lift. He would leave us all day on a Saturday with instructions to dig a pond and put in roads. We had a blast. For us it was like a big sand box. Pushing over trees and piling them up, digging out ponds, and filling, packing, and grading in roads. His Dad made arrangements to run his cattle on the unimproved land and in payment had us put in roads and ponds.

We only had trouble once. We were trying to put the road thru where an underground stream crossed the road. We got the dozer stuck and had to embarrassingly wait for his Dad to come help us pull it out so we could use both the tractor and the forklift while someone was on the dozer. The next weekend we got to play with a big backhoe to dig it out and bury a culvert.

One time his trailer was down and he had us drive a tractor from the shop to a work site 20 miles way across the metro. It took ALL DAY! Was a good thing his Dad followed in the car, we ended up taking turns on the tractor. It was so bouncy it would wear you out.

My wife and I went and looked at three different land sites today , at each one we looked at each other and asked " do we really want to do this " ? May be switching gears to just buying a home with some land and be done with it .

Given the chance to do our all over again, we would not change a thing. Our home in Huntsville is under contract and will be closed on next month. Our current 'homestead' is a Dutchman 40' camper... but it is on our property. Hopefully, we will be starting construction on our new home and it is truly amazing to take some virgin land and create your own oasis. We have been working with the Alabama Forestry Commission so that we can create a sort of ecological harmony (these folks have been amazingly helpful and are vastly underutilized!... they jumped at this opportunity). Granted, this has not always been easy but taking that one minute walk to the creek (our house will be overlooking that creek) makes it all worthwhile. We just came back inside from a quick walk to the 'mossy knoll' - all we could hear was the wind rustling through the trees, birds chirping, and an occasional digging sound from some unknown creature behind us... but no sounds of civilization. If you find some land that 'speaks' to you, get it!!!