Excavation contractor in Palmdale
Pads, septic, trenches and clearing priced off the published cost guide, permitted in Los Angeles County. Call (661) 466-2785 or send the form below.
Poppy Excavation connects Palmdale property owners with one licensed excavation contractor who already knows the difference between a flat lot off 47th Street East and a foothill parcel above Barrel Springs. Palmdale is two cities when it comes to dirt. The west side and the Anaverde and Rancho Vista slopes are alluvial fan coming off the San Gabriels, with cobble and decomposed granite that fight a trencher. The east side flattens out, trades rock for caliche, and the farther you drive toward 93591 the more likely the lot is on a septic system and a well.
Most of the requests that come in from Palmdale are pads for new houses and manufactured homes on the east side, septic systems where the sewer never reached, and pool digs in the 1990s and 2000s tracts around Rancho Vista. A pad on a flat east Palmdale acre typically lands between $3,000 and $8,000 for rough grade and compaction. The same pad on a sloped Anaverde lot is an engineered cut with compaction testing, and $8,000 is where it starts.
Palmdale issues its own grading permits through the city, separate from LA County, and the core of the city sits inside the sewer district while the outskirts do not. The contractor you are referred to handles that paperwork and the DigAlert ticket. Your job is to send the address and say what you want built.
What the south Palmdale foothills do to a quote
Barrel Springs and the south Palmdale foothills hide boulders the size of a truck bed under a foot of topsoil. A quote written off a satellite photo of that area is a guess. The contractors we work with walk the cut line with a probe bar before they put a number on paper, and that is why their foothill numbers hold.
East side flats to the Anaverde slopes
Around Palmdale the requests come from east Palmdale off Avenue S, Anaverde, Rancho Vista, the Barrel Springs foothills, Lake Palmdale, covering ZIPs 93550, 93551, 93552, 93591. Grading permits here run through the City of Palmdale and septic through LA County Public Health; the permits page has the details.
Price a Palmdale dig
The address and a photo of the lot get the fastest answer. One licensed contractor who works Palmdale calls within one business day.
Palmdale owners ask about
Do I need a grading permit from the City of Palmdale for a house pad?
Almost always yes for a new building pad. Palmdale runs its own Building and Safety and Public Works review, separate from LA County, and a pad that moves more than 50 cubic yards or changes drainage needs a permit and compaction certification. The referred contractor pulls it, and the fee rides inside the quote.
Is east Palmdale on sewer or septic?
It depends on the street. The core of Palmdale sits inside the county sanitation district, but much of the 93591 edge toward Lake Los Angeles and parcels north of Avenue R are on septic and private or small-district water. If you are buying a lot, the title report or a call to the sanitation district settles it before you budget $10,000 to $20,000 for a septic system.
How much is a pool dig in a Rancho Vista tract?
Typically $2,500 to $7,500 for the excavation alone. Tract lots in Rancho Vista have tight side yards, so the dig uses a compact machine and more hours, and the spoil almost always has to be hauled at $150 to $350 a truckload because there is nowhere on the lot to spread it.
Who actually does the work if I send a request here?
A licensed California excavation contractor who covers Palmdale, holding a CSLB C-12 or A classification. Poppy Excavation does not dig or contract anything. We publish the price ranges and hand your request to one contractor, who quotes on their own paper and whose license number you can verify at cslb.ca.gov.
Poppy Excavation covers the whole valley. See the cost guide, the septic page, or nearby areas: Quartz Hill, Rosamond, Lake Los Angeles.