What clearing a building lot actually covers
Clearing for a build is not the same job as taking trees down. The trees in the footprint come out, the stumps and roots are grubbed out of the ground the foundation and the leach field will sit on, the brush and slash are dealt with, and the spoils have to go somewhere. A tree crew finishes at the stumps. A site contractor finishes at a pad somebody can pour on.
Mulching, cutting, and grubbing are three different scopes
- Forestry mulching grinds brush and small stems in place. Nothing is hauled and nothing is burned, and the ground is left covered. It suits a view corridor, a trail, or keeping a parcel open while you wait on a permit.
- Cutting and hauling takes the standing timber off and removes it. The stumps are still in the ground afterwards.
- Clearing to subgrade is the one a house, a garage or an ADU needs: trees down, stumps pulled, roots grubbed, debris off the pad, ground left at a grade the foundation plan can work from.
Most builds never clear the whole parcel. The footprint, the septic field, the well, the drive and the trench lines get cleared, and the rest of the trees are what screens the finished house.
What moves the number on your lot
1. What is standing. Mature pine and oak take longer to drop and haul than alder and brush, and on a larger parcel merchantable timber can offset part of the work. 2. How the truck gets in. A lot on pavement with room to stage is a cheaper day than a back lot up a soft camp road. 3. Ledge. Grubbing roots off a rock shelf is slow, and the Lakes Region and southern Maine both have plenty of shelf. 4. Wet ground. Frozen or dry ground protects the budget. Mud season does the opposite, and wetland limits can shrink the area you are allowed to clear at all. 5. Shoreland rules. Within 250 feet of a lake or a great pond, both states limit what comes down, with buffer strips and permit requirements. The clearing plan gets drawn to those rules before a machine moves. 6. Where the debris goes. Chipping on site is the cheap end. Trucking stumps and slash off the lot adds the haul.
Why there is no per-acre price on this page
Two acres on a flat, dry lot off a paved road and two acres of mature pine over ledge on a seasonal road are not the same job, and a published per-acre figure would be right on one of them and wrong on the other. The same reasoning is in Excavation 101: the things that move an earthwork price are the things somebody has to stand on the ground to see.
Clearing priced with the rest of the site work
When the clearing, the grubbing, the drive, the septic and the pad are on one contract, the machines are already on the lot and the plan is drawn once. It also changes the clearing itself. The trees worth keeping get marked before anything starts, the septic field is located before the woods are opened up, and the spoils are graded into the driveway base instead of being trucked away.
Before you buy a lot or clear one, the 10-point land feasibility checklist is the shorter read.
Get a number on your actual woods
Book a land review and we will walk the lot, or start with an instant estimate if the build is already decided.
The 2-minute calculator is on instant pricing. Published packages are on the ADU models.