A county built on hillsides needs a grading crew
San Diego lives on mesas cut by canyons, and its yards inherit the terrain. Grading here is the trade that keeps winter water moving past houses instead of into them, turns slopes into usable flats and repairs the hillsides that creep after wet years. Residential regrades start around $5,000 on the published table, building pads run $3,000 to $12,000 and slope repairs price by volume up to $30,000, with a free site walk turning any of those ranges into a written number.
Drainage first, always
Most grading calls are really water calls. A patio that floods, a crawl space that smells like February, a slope that sheets mud across the lawn: each one traces back to ground that no longer falls the way the original grader left it. Soil settles, hardscape gets added, and twenty years later the lot drains toward the most expensive thing on it. Regrading re-establishes fall away from structures and gives water a designed path, which is cheaper and more permanent than any gadget sold to catch it after the fact.
Slopes, benches and the canyon edge
Canyon-rim living is the county’s signature, and it comes with slope stewardship. We bench flats into hillsides for studios and courts, repair the surface erosion that wet winters carve into cut slopes and rebuild the failed corners where an old fill finally slumped. Serious movement brings a geotechnical engineer into the plan, and we build exactly what the engineer prescribes, in compacted lifts with the drainage that keeps the repair permanent. Where the fix involves a wall, we cut and backfill for your wall contractor as one sequenced project.
Grading questions, answered
Water runs toward my house every time it rains. Is that a grading problem?
Almost always. Original grading settles over decades until the fall that once carried water to the street now delivers it to your slab. The fix is re-establishing slope away from the house and cutting honest swales, typically $5,000 to $15,000, and it beats a lifetime of drain gadgets fighting gravity.
My canyon slope is eroding. Do I need an engineer or an excavator?
Sometimes both, and we tell you which honestly. Surface erosion and small slumps regrade and drain for $5,000 to $30,000 on the published table. Movement that involves structures or large volumes gets a geotechnical engineer first, and we build whatever the engineer prescribes.
Do grading projects need city permits?
Beyond minor landscape work, usually yes: San Diego and the county regulate grading volume, slope alteration and drainage changes. We tell you at the site walk which side of the line your project sits on and handle the excavation portions of the paperwork.
Can you cut a flat pad on a sloped backyard for a studio or sports court?
Yes, that is bread and butter benching work: cut into the slope, compact the fill in lifts and manage the water around the new flat. Pads run $3,000 to $12,000 published, with the slope steepness setting the position in range.
Building an ADU on the slope you are fixing? The ADU site prep page covers the combined scope, and Cabrillo Excavation prices both in one walk.
Walk the slope with us
Send the address and what the water or the slope has been doing. The walk is free and the number comes back in writing.