My favorite type of job-one offs, something I’ve never done and will never do again. When CK called me to bid this I knew I was in, enough difficulty to make it interesting, a great customer, never seen it before, great access, all the things I weigh when making a decision to bid. It was a mid 1980’s hot tub with 18” reinforced concrete walls which was poured around all the plumbing which made it inaccessible for repair.

He took enough swings with a sledgehammer to quickly know there’s a better way.

A better way being a mini excavator with a hammer. Perfect machine for the job it allows demolition to take place from one area without driving and tearing up his well kept lawn. Plywood was down in case I needed to change positions.

Concrete was taken down to grade at which point he was going to take over which he did amazingly well.

Here’s where the fun begins watching him do an exceptional job installing the tub. The pictures speak for themselves. Thanks CK for hiring me and being great to work with and for!

After my 90 foot, 150 year old pine tree was blown down by the wind storm January 13th we faced two problems. We had to have this huge tree cut up and removed from our neighbors property and our yard. The tree was removed partially by a crew from the city to clear our street. A commercial company was available to remove the tree but this still left us with very large root ball. Specialty Services NW was the only company that offered to come out and evaluate the job. Mike explained how hard this job would be and what machinery would be required. He forwarded an email with a price later that night, noting the only change would be how much dirt we would need to add after we let the site settle. The date was set for a month later when the weather opened up. We knew it would be expensive but felt the price was fair. Mike arrived one day early and left a piece of equipment. He showed up early the next morning with rest of the equipment and methodically removed dirt, roots and 8 feet of the tree to get the root ball lighter. The whole process was done very professionally and was completed by late afternoon. This included filling the hole and cleaning up all debris.

Mike thanks for the prompt and professional solution to our problem. Nancy and I enjoyed the show watching all the equipment.

Our local team, the Spokane Indians contacted us to laser grade their infield. This picture shows the basics of laser grading, where all control inputs to box scraper our done by a computer, which receives inputs by a laser beam striking a receiver on the tall mast on the front of the machine. Outputs are given to a valve, which automatically raises and lowers the box scraper.

This shows the job under way, light areas in grade are where cuts, or high points were, the dark areas are fills, or where low points were. Having a second loader is nice, if material needs to be picked up and moved a distance.”

Grade heading towards completion. After it’s graded the grounds crew will wet it down, let the moisture sit overnight then drag a nail board over it to homogenize the dirt in the infield, so there are no hard or soft spots. Many thanks to the Indians for choosing us do this job!

This is a backyard landscaping project we did for Josh and Jenny in Spokane, Washington.

“We highly recommend Specialty Services! Mike is wonderful to work with, prompt, professional, and fair. He was so good we immediately hired him for the next phase of our project. He loves what he does and it shows. What more could you ask for? ”

Josh & Ginny

We did a lot of work on this project, all of the concrete was removed, the sub-grade was redone, and we added topsoil and sod in the end.

Getting Started

Aerial View (Before)

Topsoil being brought in, and graded out

Finished Landscape – Wittkopf’s Turf builder on this, a great product

What made this job a little unique is that the homeowners wanted to save a little money, well quite a bit actually. So Josh and Ginny did all the final raking, and laid all the sod! Well done guys, and it was a true pleasure working for you”

The first step in any excavation is to “Call before you dig”. Even if the job is all hand work it’s still a must. In this picture, the red says “no Avista” meaning no underground power, the yellow says the same, meaning no gas. The white marks were painted by me to show the locators where to mark.

Next, a string line is laid out, the painted to give a nice straight line to ditch.

Since the ditch was in between the sprinkler valves and the timer, the control wire had to run through dig area. Locator was hooked to control wires, so no damage would take place. Ya I go crazy with the pink paint, in this case it was to make wire plainly visible to the electrician.

Sod was slit on previously marked red line, then folded over. Plywood was laid out, the finally ditch is dug.

The end result- like a lot of construction doing the prep is most of the battle. Machinery was not an option here, lawn was very wet and soft, access was down a steep hill, customer had a nice yard with sprinklers, the ground was all sand, super easy dig.

We removed this large stump in Spokane.  It generated a massive amount of chips. It is very important to clean up chips as you go so that none of the stump gets missed.

5 foot in diameter Dutch Elm.  Due to the amount of rock inside the stump, that was  the closest the arborist was able to cut it.

Our small track machine is ideal to remove and load chips. Very easy on lawns this makes for efficient chip removal.

This stump made over 7 yards of chips at about 1000 pounds per yard is 3 and a half tons.

Stump is almost done, ideally in this situation, the grinded stumps are ground 4 inches below grade.

We leveled this ground in the backyard in order to put a perfectly flat patio in place, the results speak for themselves!

We did this excavation on South Hill Spokane, WA,  he did all the hard work after, and it turned out great.

In this case it was prep for pavers and concrete, but the concept is very similiar – a good foundation of compacted gravel in several lifts. 4 to 6 inches on this job will give a long lasting base. The boards are screed boards and the one in the center will be pulled after the sand is screened. The others will remain as edging to retain gravel, sand and pavers.

This is a laser grading project we did here in Spokane. We prepped the site for a prefabricated garage. The grade was +/- 1/4″ when the laser grading was complete, which is very tight.