Bobcat and mini excavator work in Bonsall costs $150 per hour with a 4-hour minimum, operator, fuel and delivery included throughout 92003. Bonsall is ten minutes from our yard in Fallbrook, so there is no travel charge. Arena and barn pads, grove removal, trenching to wells and barns, private road grading and drainage are the usual calls.
Bonsall is horse country, grove country and estate country, strung along the San Luis Rey River valley between Fallbrook and Vista with Highway 76 running through the middle. The lots are measured in acres, the roads are private, the barns and arenas need pads, and the groves on the hills above the river are the same aging avocados we pull in Fallbrook. It is a ten-minute trailer ride from our yard and one of the places we work most.
Horse properties are a specialty here. An arena needs a pad that is level, drains and has the right footing base; a barn needs a graded pad and a trench for water and power; paddocks need fence lines opened and manure piles moved. We do all of it with the T300 and the excavator, and we know the difference between a pad for a round pen and a pad for a covered arena.
The estates along Gird Road, Camino del Rey, Olive Hill Road and West Lilac Road bring the other half of the work: ADU and guest house pads, driveway regrading on long private approaches, French drains along foundations that sit below a slope, and the occasional old pool deck or grove shack that has to go.
The ground in Bonsall
The valley floor along the San Luis Rey is sandy loam over river cobble, which digs easily, drains fast and makes a good base for an arena. The hills on either side are the same decomposed granite as Fallbrook, with granite boulders near the surface on the ridges toward Vista and Fallbrook. The two soils meet on many properties, and a trench that starts in sand can finish in rock.
Bonsall floods. The river and its side creeks, Moosa Canyon and Gopher Canyon among them, run hard in a wet winter, and Highway 76 has closed at the Bonsall Bridge more than once. Properties near the river need drainage planned for the big storm, not the average one, and the hillside properties above them send their runoff down. Swales, berms and rip-rap are a regular part of our Bonsall work.
What we do most in Bonsall
Arena, round pen and barn pads
Level pads with a slight crown for drainage, base rock placed and track-rolled, ready for your footing contractor or your barn builder.
ADU and guest house pads on estate lots
Rough grading to the site plan on the Gird Road, Camino del Rey and West Lilac Road properties, with cut and fill on the hillside lots.
Grove removal and replanting prep
Dead avocado and citrus groves on the hills above the river, cut and stumped with the excavator and graded for pasture or a new planting.
Trenching for wells, barns and paddock water
Long runs across pasture and grove to water troughs, barn panels, well pumps and automatic gates.
Private road and driveway grading
The shared roads off Olive Hill Road, Lilac Road and Old River Road, regraded, crowned and ditched for the neighbors who share them.
Flood and erosion work near the river
Berms, swales, rip-rap and regrading for properties that take water off the hills or off the San Luis Rey in a wet year.
Roads and places we know
If your property is on or near one of these, we have probably been on it.
- Highway 76
- Gird Road
- Camino del Rey
- Olive Hill Road
- West Lilac Road
- Old River Road
- Mission Road
- Gopher Canyon Road
- Lilac Road
- Little Gopher Canyon Road
- the Bonsall Bridge over the San Luis Rey
- San Luis Rey Downs
- Bonsall Community Center
- Sullivan Middle School
- Moosa Canyon
- the Vessels Stallion Farm area
- Rancho Monserate
- Pala Mesa to the north
Permits in Bonsall
Bonsall is unincorporated San Diego County, so any permit comes from County Planning and Development Services. Pads, driveways, trenching, drainage on your own lot and small demolition need none. Larger grading, work in the river floodplain or near a mapped creek, and anything inside the Bonsall Community Plan's resource conservation areas can need County review. Arenas and barns over a certain size need building permits that your builder pulls; the pad itself usually does not.