Trench next to my Moncton house after rain, is it unstable?

Stay out of the trench and back from the edge until the contractor has assessed it.

Whether a trench is stable after rain is not something to judge by looking at it from the top.

What WorkSafeNB's rules say

WorkSafeNB's General Regulation 91-191 requires that any trench 1.2 m (about 4 ft) or deeper that workers need to enter must have walls that are shored, sloped or benched, or cut in solid rock, and any shoring must be certified as adequate by an engineer. Excavated material must be kept at least 1.2 m from the edge. The trench must be kept reasonably free of water. These rules bind the employer, meaning the excavation contractor, not you. But they tell you exactly what to ask when you call the contractor back to site: has the trench been assessed since the rain, is the water out, and is the wall condition still what it was when work stopped?

If water is pooling in the bottom or seeping through the face, the contractor needs to deal with that before anyone goes back in. Ask the contractor directly whether the walls need to be re-evaluated and whether an engineer needs to look at the shoring before work resumes.

On the permit side, the City of Moncton requires a building and development permit for new construction. Regulation 2021-2 under the Building Code Administration Act requires at least one inspection of the footings and foundation before any backfilling begins. If this trench is part of a foundation dig, backfilling cannot start until that inspection is done. Ask the City of Moncton's building department how to book it, and make sure the contractor knows the inspection has to happen before any backfilling.

Before any digging started, the contractor should have requested locates from Info-Excavation, with at least three working days' notice, and separately from NB Power, with at least five business days' notice. NB Power's locate covers only NB Power-owned underground power lines and is valid for 60 days from the date on the locate form. Ask the contractor to show you both locate tickets. Any private lines, such as wiring to a garage or an old drain, are yours to find and mark.

When you are comparing two written quotes for this job, set them side by side and check whether each one spells out how rock is priced if it is encountered, what trucking distance is assumed for spoil removal, when backfill happens relative to the foundation inspection, and what site clean-up is included at the end.

The form on this page can send your job details to excavation contractors listed in the New Brunswick Construction Network directory.