About Wharff Excavating, Lebanon Indiana
Lebanon, Indiana. One yard, one crew, and sixty-two years of the same ground.
Wharff Excavating is a family owned and operated excavating contractor in Lebanon, Indiana, working Central Indiana since 1964 for homeowners, contractors, builders, businesses and municipalities.
Sixty-two years in one place is worth something specific in this trade, and it is not sentiment. It is that we have already dug in most of the ground around here. We know where the clay turns and holds a wall, where it does not, where the water goes when you open a trench in it, and roughly what is likely to be down there before the locates come back.
It also means the work has to hold up. A contractor who has been in the same county since 1964 does not get to leave a bad job behind, because the next call is usually from somebody who knows the last customer. That is a better guarantee than anything we could print.
The work runs from a single yard drain to a water line, a sewer line, a sump pit, a bored crossing under a driveway, a retaining wall, a culvert, a pond, a finish grade for a slab, a cleared lot or a storm shelter set below grade. Fifteen kinds of work out of one shop is unusual now. It exists because a homeowner with water against the foundation and a builder who needs a pad at grade were both calling the same number, and neither one wanted to be handed to somebody else.
Everything runs out of the yard in Lebanon, in Boone County, and reaches Indianapolis and the towns around it: Zionsville, Whitestown, Brownsburg, Avon, Danville, Plainfield, Carmel, Fishers, Speedway, Beech Grove, Mooresville and Martinsville. Martinsville is the long run at about forty three miles. One location and one crew is the reason the person who looks at your job is the same outfit that does it.
How an Excavating Job Runs Here
The office takes the details
Somebody picks up and gets what the problem actually is, where it is, and what you have already tried.
We look at it on site
Nothing here gets quoted off a photograph alone. Somebody stands on the ground and looks at it.
You get it in writing
A detailed written estimate, so there is a document rather than a conversation to argue about later.
We handle the paperwork
Permits, utility locates and inspections are ours to arrange. That is not a thing we hand back to you.
The crew works and keeps you told
You are told where it stands rather than left to guess from what is parked in the yard.
Final inspection, then the invoice
The job is looked at when it is done, and the invoice follows the inspection rather than leading it.
Who We Work For
About half of what we do is for homeowners, and it usually starts with water in the wrong place or a line that has finally given up. The other half is for contractors, builders, businesses and municipalities, where we are one trade among several and the schedule matters as much as the work.
Those two are different jobs even when the digging is identical. A homeowner wants to know what is happening in their yard and when they get it back. A builder wants the pad at grade on the day the concrete is coming. We try to be honest about which one we are talking to.
