Many Hands Make Light Work: A Construction Blog

If you've decided to get off the grid, embrace minimalism and move into a tiny house in a remote location, the first thing you need to do is prepare your plot. In some cases, you may not need to make many substantial changes to the land before you start to build, but in other cases, you may need to hire an earthmover to address issues for you. Here are four signs, you need to hire an earthmover:

1. You need access to the site.

Before doing anything else, you need to consider how you are going to access the building site. If it is in a remote area, you may need to move earth to create a driveway up to your building site. This can be essential if you are bringing in concrete mixers, trailers of building supplies or other items.

2. There's no flat spot for a foundation.

If you are creating a tiny house that's going to stay in the same spot, you need a relatively flat area for the foundation. An earthmover can help move dirt to create a flat area. Even if you plan to move your tiny home at some point, you may want to elicit the help of an earthmover so that you can create a flat spot to park your trailer or even to pour a slab of concrete to host the trailer with your tiny home on it.

3. The land surrounding your building site is higher than it

In some cases, you may already have a flat patch of land to host your tiny home. However, if it is the lowest spot of the plot, that is not ideal. When it rains, water will roll from all the higher areas on your land and towards your tiny home. That may result in flooding or erosion of the ground underneath your tiny home.

Ideally, you want an earthmover to come in and address the issue. They could flatten some of the high spots while building up the elevation of your building site. Alternatively, they could create a trench to help with water drainage.

4. You need flat spots for other outdoor areas.

In many cases, your tiny home may not be the only thing you are putting on your property. If you want to build a patio, add a shipping container for storage or pour a slab of concrete for parking spaces, you also may want to use an earthmover to flatten these areas. Similarly, if you want to add solar panels for electricity generation, you may also need to clear a plot of land for that as well.