Services / Earthworks & Drainage
Earthworks & Drainage
Water managed, levels resolved, sites that work in winter
Every winter, Adelaide's clay tells the truth about a site's drainage. Water that can't get away sits on the surface, drowns lawns, floods sheds, and works its way into footings. The fix is never a product — it's levels, falls and pipes, engineered together.
We do bulk and detailed earthworks — cut and fill, pad preparation, regrading — and full stormwater solutions: surface falls, ag-drains behind walls and along boundaries, pits, slotted channels and connections to legal points of discharge.
The sequence below shows a waterlogged site rebuilt into one that sheds water by design. It's the least glamorous work we do and the most consequential.
Water problems are level problems
A waterlogged yard is rarely a mystery: shoot levels across it and the water's path — and where it stalls — is written in the numbers. That's why every drainage job we do starts with a survey, not a trench. Surface falls move the bulk of a storm; ag-drains lower what soaks into the clay; sealed stormwater carries the collected water to a legal point of discharge. Any one of the three without the other two is how you buy the same fix twice.
Adelaide's reactive clay makes the stakes higher than soggy lawn. Water held against a house works on footings, and the same seasonal swell-and-shrink that cracks paths will find any structure sitting in a wet hollow. Getting water away from the building line is footing protection as much as it is landscaping.
Built to keep working in year ten
Drainage fails in the details: ag-pipe laid without geofabric silts up, trenches cut without continuous fall hold water in the pipe, and pits set proud of the low point collect nothing. We bed slotted pipe in screened aggregate with the fabric sock on, cut every trench to grade, and put pits where the water actually goes — then photograph the open trenches before backfill, so you can see what you paid for after it disappears under the lawn.
The build — real job, real stages
How your earthworks & drainage goes together.
Straight answers
Earthworks & Drainage — FAQs
Why does my Adelaide backyard flood every winter?
Usually three factors compounding: reactive clay that seals when wet, a block graded flat or towards the house rather than away, and downpipes or neighbouring runoff discharging onto ground with nowhere to go. The permanent fix is regrading surface falls plus subsurface ag-drains to a legal discharge point — not spike aeration, sand slitting or hoping.
What's the difference between stormwater and an ag-drain?
Stormwater pipes are sealed and move collected water (from downpipes, pits, channels) to discharge. Ag-drains are slotted pipes in gravel that collect water out of the soil itself — they lower the water table along their run. Wet sites usually need both: ag-drains to gather, stormwater to carry away.
Can you fix drainage without wrecking the existing garden?
Often. Trenching is surgical — we lift and reinstate lawn, cut cleanly through paving where crossings are unavoidable, and route drains along maintenance edges rather than through beds. Where the garden itself is the problem (levels falling at the house), some rebuild is unavoidable and we'll say so plainly.
Related services
Talk to us about your earthworks & drainage project.
Site visits across Adelaide metro and the Hills. Fixed quotes, no obligation.