Last Updated: · Written by Flatwood Land Clearing Palm Bay
Flatwood Land Clearing Palm Bay clears and grubs lots and sites across Palm Bay, and the difference between the two is where the work stops. Clearing removes trees, brush and surface growth and leaves stumps and roots in the ground. Grubbing removes those stumps, roots and the buried organic layer, leaving clean sand. Clearing and grubbing together prepare ground for fill, a slab or a driveway.
The rest of this guide explains each step, why the line matters on a Palm Bay lot, and why the city’s code uses the word “grubbing” differently from the trade.
In short
- Clearing: trees, brush and surface vegetation out. Stumps and roots stay.
- Grubbing: stumps, root balls, roots and buried organics out of the prepared area, down to clean mineral soil.
- House pads, driveways and septic areas need grubbing. Lawns, buffers and trails usually do not.
- Palm Bay’s grubbing permit is about underbrush, not roots, and it does not allow scraping or filling.
- Fill, grading and compaction come after grubbing as earthwork, a separate trade.
Clearing: what comes off the surface
Clearing is the visible part of the job. Trees are felled and cut up, palmetto fans, brush and vines are cut, mulched or pushed, and the debris is processed. When clearing alone is done, a lot looks open. The stumps are still there, cut low, and the roots of every pine, oak and palmetto are still woven through the top of the sand.
That finish suits plenty of ground. A buffer, a back lot, a trail, a pasture or a yard where stumps are ground below grade can all stay at the cleared stage. Forestry mulching is a form of clearing; forestry mulching vs land clearing compares it with the traditional approach.
Grubbing: what comes out of the ground
Grubbing goes after what clearing leaves. An excavator or dozer lifts stumps with their root balls, a root rake combs roots and palmetto trunks out of the sand, and the dark organic layer is removed until the ground is mineral soil. The debris is heavy, because roots hold sand, and it is either hauled, chipped where it can be cleaned enough, or piled for disposal.
The reason is settlement. Wood and organic soil decay, and decay leaves voids. Fill placed over roots and stumps drops as they rot, and the slab, driveway or septic system on top cracks, dips or loses its grade. Owners on tractor forums ask whether they can bury truckloads of stumps and spread root-filled fill near the house site; the settling that follows is the answer. A pad is grubbed to clean sand before any fill arrives.
On Palm Bay’s flatwoods, palmetto is the main grubbing load. Its trunks lie along and just under the surface and resprout if left, so in the building areas they come out with a root rake or bucket. Saw palmetto clearing explains the methods and the trade-off between thoroughness and the sand that comes out with the roots.
Palm Bay’s “grubbing permit” means something else
Palm Bay’s Chapter 175 tree code, adopted September 19, 2024, uses “grubbing” for removing underbrush, and it lists the methods as hand clearing, roto-chopping and mulching in place. A grubbing permit covers that work and nothing more: it does not authorize clearing, scraping, balancing or filling land, or removing protected or specimen trees. Single- and two-family residential sites under an acre are exempt from it, as is any grubbing area of a quarter acre or less.
So a homeowner can read “grubbing” in the code and think it covers pulling stumps on a house pad. It does not. On a residential lot under an acre, any land clearing needs the city’s tree removal and small residential site land clearing permit, with the building permit already under review when the clearing is for development. Larger sites need a site work permit to clear, scrape, balance and fill, which comes with a site plan, an environmental assessment and a tree survey. The Palm Bay permit guide covers each one.
Want the pad and the yard scoped separately?
Send where the house, driveway and septic go and a few phone photos. Each area gets its own finish in the written scope.
Which parts of a lot need which finish
A house lot is rarely one finish from line to line:
- House pad and a working margin around it: cleared and grubbed to clean sand, ready for fill.
- Driveway: cleared and grubbed, since it carries vehicles and usually sits on fill.
- Septic drainfield area: cleared and grubbed, with the mulch and root mat out so the system can be built on mineral soil.
- Future lawn: cleared, stumps ground below grade, roots left to decay where nothing heavy will sit.
- Kept trees and buffers: cleared selectively by hand inside the root zone, which Palm Bay sizes from trunk diameter and requires to be barricaded, with no machines, materials or soil inside it. See selective clearing.
Clearing, grubbing and excavation
Grubbing is the last step of clearing, not the first step of earthwork. It ends when the prepared areas are clean sand with no stumps, roots or buried debris. Bringing in fill to reach the floor elevation the building permit sets, spreading and compacting it, shaping swales and grading the lot are excavation and earthwork, done by an excavation contractor or the builder as the next trade.
The line matters on Palm Bay lots because so many need fill. The city is nearly flat, its dominant soils are mapped at 0 to 2 percent slopes, and in EauGallie sand, the most common soil in the city, the wet layer sits about 12 inches down from June through November. Clearing does not change the ground’s shape, and grubbing only takes material out. Keeping the clearing and earthwork scopes separate, and timing them so fill follows grubbing closely, stops anyone from paying twice for the same machine time.
What drives the cost of grubbing
No reliable published range exists for grubbing alone, so it is priced from the site. The drivers are the number and size of stumps, the density of palmetto root mass, how much of the lot is grubbed, wet ground, the sand that comes out with the roots, and where the debris goes. As national budgeting ranges, heavy-growth clearing runs about $4,500 to $8,000 an acre, and a heavy clear and grub with every stump pulled and the debris hauled can run past that. The lot clearing cost guide breaks a Palm Bay price into its parts, and debris hauling explains how loads are priced.
Which parts of the lot need grubbing?
Send the site plan or a sketch of where the house, driveway and septic go, plus a few phone photos. The scope marks each area as cleared, grubbed or left.