Rock Breaking & Removal

Rock is the part of an excavation budget nobody can price before the digging starts. No public source says how deep it sits under any particular New Brunswick town, so nobody can promise you in advance that your lot is rock-free.

There are two ways through it. The common one is a hydraulic breaker, a hammer on the excavator arm, which breaks ledge and boulders into pieces a machine can load. The other is blasting, and WorkSafeNB's Regulation 91-191 says a blasting operation must be run by a blaster who holds a certificate of qualification for the work. No provincial homeowner blasting permit was found; ask your municipality whether it has its own blasting by-law before anyone plans a blast.

A trench cut in solid rock is one of the exceptions to WorkSafeNB's shoring rule for trenches 1.2 m or deeper, and rock excavations deeper than 1.8 m carry an extra rule about loose material near the edge. Rock also has to go somewhere, so ask whether trucking it off site is in the price.

Pricing is where quotes differ most. Some excavators quote rock as a fixed extra, some by the hour, and some leave it out entirely until they hit it. Ask how each quote handles rock before you sign. Published rates are thin: one national guide read in September 2026 put a hydraulic breaker on an excavator at about $200 to $300 an hour, and large machines run higher.