Grading, dirt work and site prep in the Knoxville area

Grading is shaping the ground so it does what you need: holds a building, drains away from a foundation, carries a driveway at a grade a car can climb, or turns a lumpy pasture into a usable yard. On the hilly lots common around Knoxville, almost every grading job is a balance of cutting high ground and filling low ground.

Common dirt work requests

• House and shop pads. A flat, compacted area at the right elevation for a slab or foundation, built up in thin lifts rather than dumped in one pile.
• Driveway cuts. Benching a gravel or future paved drive into a hillside, with a ditch or culvert so runoff doesn't wash out the drive.
• Yard leveling and drainage. Reshaping the yard so water moves away from the house and toward a swale or the street, not into the crawlspace.
• Fill dirt. Bringing in material to raise a low area or finish a pad. Ask what's in it. Fill with roots, trash or chunks of concrete settles over time.
• Finish grading. Spreading saved topsoil and smoothing everything for seed, sod or landscaping.

Cut and fill on a slope

When a pad is benched into a hill, the uphill side becomes a cut bank and the downhill side becomes a fill slope. Both need attention. The cut bank has to be laid back or retained so it doesn't slump, and the fill has to be compacted so it doesn't creep or settle under the slab. The state's construction stormwater permit defines a steep slope as a 35% grade or more and requires steep slopes on permitted sites to be stabilized within a week after work on them stops. Even if your job is too small for that permit, the same logic applies: get grass, mulch or blanket on a bare slope fast, because East Tennessee rain will find it.

When grading needs a permit

For land in unincorporated Knox County, Knox County Stormwater uses these thresholds:

Inside the City of Knoxville, grading runs through the city's site development permits. The city's 2024 fee schedule lists a residential rough grading permit for under 10,000 sq ft of disturbance at $75 (Engineering fee schedule). Blount, Anderson and Sevier counties and the cities inside them, including Maryville, Alcoa, Oak Ridge, Clinton and Sevierville, each have their own offices. Your contractor should know which one applies. The full walkthrough is in the permit guide.

Grading near creeks and sinkholes

Knox County protects strips of vegetation along streams, ponds and wetlands, generally 30 to 60 feet wide on new developments, and its ordinance bars parking or storing equipment, stockpiling material and dumping, including landscaping debris, inside those buffers (Knox County stream buffers). Low spots that hold water after a storm may be sinkholes. Filling them can flood a neighbor or cause a collapse later. Read sinkholes, rock and steep lots before you push dirt into one.

Getting a useful quote

Walk the property with the contractor if you can. Point out where water stands, where you want the building, how trucks will get in and whether anything is buried (a septic tank, a propane line, an old cistern). Remember the 811 ticket as well. In Tennessee it now covers hand tools, and grading is on the state's list of jobs that need one.

Frequently asked