Clearing, Grading & Soil Wall in Mercer Island, WA
How the job started, what our in-house crew built, and how it turned out.
01Site & challenge
Two-point-three acres of steep, wooded hillside on Mercer Island had to be cleared and graded for a future home — and the whole site sat directly above a live neighborhood road. Every felled tree, every truckload of stumps and spoils, and every yard of quarry rock had to move across that roadway without closing it. The grade change down the slope also needed to be held permanently, which called for an engineered soldier-pile retaining wall rather than a simple gravity wall.
02What we built
We phased the tree removal, chipping and sorting debris on site before hauling it off, then brought in tracked excavators to grub stumps, cut the hillside to grade, and load dump trucks staged on the shoulder with flaggers directing traffic. Quarry rock was placed and compacted for access and pads. Our survey crew then set the wall line and we drove steel H-piles, stepped treated-timber lagging down the slope, and backfilled with free-draining rock so water never builds up behind the wall. Silt fence, orange construction fencing, and daily street sweeping kept the road clean and the stormwater on site — work that falls under our engineering and permitting and concrete and site wall services.
03Outcome
The hillside is now a graded, stable building pad held by a soldier-pile wall that steps the full grade change down the slope, permitted through the City of Mercer Island and King County and ready for the new home to follow.
