Lot Clearing in Ohio: Build-Ready Township Lots and Acreage Homesites from Delaware to Perrysburg

Clearing comes before the pad, and the pad comes before the footer, so we are the first trailer on your parcel. The order on a residential lot is fixed. Flag the pins and the setbacks, grind the honeysuckle and underbrush, fell the dead ash, grub the stumps inside the pad and driveway, rough grade. Then the house footprint goes to the excavator. OUPS 811 is called 48 hours before any digging; tile lines are not marked and we find them at 30 inches with the bucket.

A homeowner usually wants to keep trees. We keep the oak and the sugar maple and take the box elder, the callery pear and the dead ash. Site prep for the pad is the only place roots come out. Send the plat with the photos and I mark what stays.

Delaware pulled 438 single-family permits in 2025 and Plain City 293, by the Census Building Permits Survey. Pickerington 132, Harrison 124, Xenia 125, Monroe 103, North Ridgeville 100. Every one of those parcels was honeysuckle or an old field first. Our crews run the central towns from the Delaware yard and the southwest from Lebanon. North Ridgeville, Medina and Perrysburg carry a transport line.

A small residential lot in a subdivision has rules the township does not. Read the covenants for tree limits. A half-acre lot in Plain City on the Madison and Union line was one day, $2,500, callery pear and honeysuckle, ground flat. Service areas and lead towns are listed below; send the address and I tell you which yard it runs from.

Till clay holds water the way a farmer holds a grudge, quietly and all spring. Crosby and Kokomo silt loam in central counties, lake-plain clay from Lorain to Toledo, and the fragipan under Clermont and Hamilton all perch water a foot down. Take the trees off and the water that the roots drank now sits in the yard. Heavy spring rains show you exactly where.

Two fixes. Clear on frozen ground, December to February, so the machine leaves no ruts for water to collect in. Then plan drainage before the grade: a swale to the county ditch, never a blocked one. Drainage solutions beyond a swale, tile or a dry well, are the excavator's job. A wet pocket that holds water into May gets an ORAM look first. Send a photo after a rain and I will tell you what you have.

A 1 to 5 acre homesite gets three zones, not one price. Pad and driveway cleared to dirt, $2,800 to 5,000 per acre for the footprint. Leach field area mulched, $1,200 to 2,000 per acre. The rest of the woodlot mulched selectively, $1,800 to 2,600, keeping the large trees you want and removing trees that are dead. Honeysuckle goes everywhere.

Trees over 3 inches on a tract over 1 acre are cut October 1 to March 31 for the Indiana bat, unless a USFWS survey clears the site. A 2-acre homesite with a half-acre pad is two to three days. On a woodlot in Sunbury we did 3 acres of honeysuckle in a day and a half, $3,800, pad grubbed in July when the clay held a truck.

Six tasks, in order, and most parcels need four. Brush clearing first: the honeysuckle and overgrown brush go through forestry mulchers, and brush removal by truck is only for what will not chip. Fell dead trees, mostly ash. Grub the stumps inside the pad with the excavator at $160 an hour, or grind them at $4 an inch. Cut the driveway. Haul away what cannot stay, $600 to 1,100 per 10-yard load, because burning is out inside corporation limits. Rough grade and pad prep.

What we do not do: concrete, wells, septic, or demolition of a structure. Tree removal of a single oak over a roof goes to a climber. We run heavy equipment at clearing scale, the right equipment and the same crew from the first day to the last. Describe the brush and trees and I will tell you which tasks apply.

A wooded parcel and an overgrown one price differently even at the same acreage. Wooded means 60-year maple and oak over honeysuckle: selective clearing, keep the crown trees, grind the undergrowth, fell the ash. Call it $1,800 to 2,600 per acre. Overgrown means an old field gone to callery pear and multiflora rose in 15 years: everything goes, $1,200 to 2,000 per acre, faster.

Tree size decides the machine. Stems to 8 inches run through the skid steer. To 12 inches, the 300-hp machine. Over that, a saw first. Callery pear gets cut-stump treatment within minutes or every root suckers by July. The overgrown property is the cheaper clear and the harder one to keep clear.

Rough grading after site clearing means a pad the surveyor can shoot within a few tenths, not a finished yard. Site preparation past that point is the excavator's. On till clay the dozer cuts and fills in June when the ground holds. On a gravel terrace along the Great Miami or the Scioto, grading runs any month.

Excavation for the footer, the final grade and the topsoil respread belong to the excavation services contractor who follows us. We hand over a cleared lot with the stumps out of the pad, the brush chipped, and the grade knocked flat. Frost depth here is 32 to 36 inches, which the footer crew already knows.

Quarter acre, $1,700 flat. Half acre, one day with the skid steer, $2,500. Those two cover most township homesites.

• 1 acre, honeysuckle and brush: $1,200 to 2,000. Mixed woodlot with dead ash: $1,800 to 2,600.
• 2 acres: two to three days, $5,000 to 7,500 depending on dead ash.
• 5 acres: 300-hp machine at $3,900 a day plus transport, usually three days.
• Pad footprint cleared to dirt with stumps: $2,800 to 5,000 per acre.
• Stumps: $4 per inch of diameter, $150 minimum per stump. Ten or more by the day.
• Haul-off: $600 to 1,100 per load.

A 1-acre parcel in Lebanon, callery pear thicket, ran one day plus 9 stumps: $2,500 plus $360. Land clearing cost drops in winter and rises a day in mud season. Grading is not in these numbers. Call (740) 729-8625 or send the form with photos. I email you a budget range and two dates before the end of the day, and I walk it free within 60 miles of a yard.

Clearing a parcel needs no permit, but the pad does: a county building department permit plus a township zoning certificate under ORC 519. Cities with their own building departments, Columbus, Delaware, Hudson, Mason, Lebanon, Medina, Perrysburg among them, add tree rules. Columbus has tree preservation on development sites and Hudson has a tree ordinance. A power line easement across the parcel stays clear, and the utility decides what grows under it.

Burning is out inside every corporation limit, so a township homesite is chip or truck. An isolated wetland pocket under half an acre takes an Ohio EPA Level 1 permit, which I file with you. One acre or more of disturbance brings the construction general permit and silt fence the county SWCD reviews. Land management on a parcel starts with those four facts. I put them in the email before the price.

Transport is included within 60 miles of Delaware or Lebanon. Central: Delaware, Powell, Sunbury, New Albany, Pickerington, Lancaster, Plain City, Marysville and the Columbus suburbs. Southwest: Lebanon, Mason, Springboro, Monroe, Harrison, Milford, Loveland, Beavercreek, Xenia. Northeast and Northwest, Avon to Perrysburg, carry a transport line from Delaware.

Ohio land clearing for contractors and developers runs on the same rate card as a homeowner's half acre. Property owners with a piece of land near the Intel site in Licking County or the Honda plant in Union County are most of this year's calls. Commercial land for a commercial building or a construction project clears the same way, with a SWPPP. Let a parcel overgrow five years and the vegetation is the same anywhere in the state. Land clearing in Ohio is frozen, mud or dust. Pick frozen.