Solar Farm Land Clearing in Florida
Array footprints, access roads and laydown areas cleared by forestry mulching, priced by the machine day rather than by the acre. Statewide, with the day count worked out and agreed before anything mobilises.
- Priced by the machine day against published rates
- Blocks released to suit your build sequence
- Material stays on site, no burn and no haul-off
What we clear on a solar site
Eight things that come up on utility scale and commercial arrays. If your scope has something not on this list, say so and we will tell you straight whether it is ours.
The bulk of the work. Standing growth cut and ground into the ground as chip in one pass, leaving a surface you can survey, stake and drive on.
Where the entire footprint comes down rather than selected blocks. Priced by the day count the parcel needs, not by an acreage rate.
Mulching leaves the root plate in the ground. If your foundation or trenching design cannot live with that, grubbing is the excavator and it is a separate line.
A way in from the public road, and a cleared area to receive deliveries, cut to the width and position you mark.
A clean line to run security fence along, cut without disturbing what is either side of it.
Where a buffer of standing trees is retained for screening or permit reasons and only the scrub underneath comes out.
Cable runs, inverter pads and internal roads cut to a set width once the layout is fixed.
Blocks released in the order your build sequence needs rather than the whole site at once, so you are not paying to hold cleared ground.
Four things worth settling before anyone quotes you
These are the misunderstandings that cost money on large clearing packages, and they are worth reading whoever you end up hiring.
On a hundred acres the ground is never uniform. Open pasture, closed scrub and a wet bay bottom price identically under a per acre rate, and they are not the same work. Somebody absorbs that difference, and on a job this size it is not a rounding error.
It grinds off what is standing and leaves the roots in the ground. That is usually fine under a racked array on driven piles, and it is usually not fine where you are trenching or pouring. Establish which one you are before anyone quotes you, because it changes the machine and the rate.
We sell machine days against published rates. What we work out from your site is how many of those days it needs. That number is the entire quote and you get it before anything mobilises.
Large tracts of genuinely heavy timber, or ground that needs earthmoving rather than clearing, are not what our three machines do. Saying so costs us the job and saves you a wasted mobilisation.
How a site package runs
Four steps. The first two cost you nothing and happen before a machine leaves our yard.
Boundary, acreage, and whatever you have on what is standing. Aerials are usually enough at this stage. Tell us what has to be retained and what the ground does in the wet season.
Against a published rate, so the arithmetic is visible. On a site of any size we will break it into blocks so you can see where the days are going rather than getting one number.
We can release the array footprint first, or the access and laydown first, or work to whatever sequence your build programme needs.
Cut, ground and spread as the machine moves. No burn pile, no haul-off line item, and a mulch layer that holds the surface together against erosion until you build on it.
Photographs from our jobs
Photographs from jobs we have run. Nothing here is stock photography and nothing here is generated.
The rates, in public
A machine day is eight hours of machine time on your ground. These are the three rates we quote against, and the only variable is how many days your parcel needs.
Stems to 8 inches. Transport included. Our most used machine, including on the two largest tracts we have cleared
Stems to 30 inches, and grubbing. Plus transport. The machine when roots have to come out
Stems to 24 inches. Plus transport. The heaviest machine we run and the fastest over acreage
What moves the day count
Transport is what it costs to get the bigger two machines to site and is separate from hauling material away, which almost never applies here because the material stays on the parcel. The full breakdown is on the cost page.
The largest ground we have cleared
We are not going to show you a solar project we have not done. What we can show you is what our machines do on scale, and both of these are on the public record with their day counts.
| Hawthorne, Alachua County | 66 acres, 15 machine days, dedicated mulcher |
| Hawthorne, Alachua County | 64 acres, 18 machine days, skid steer mulcher |
| Cottondale, Jackson County | 50 acres, 22 machine days |
| Largo, Pinellas County | 34 acres, 11 machine days |
Two tracts of nearly identical size at Hawthorne came out at fifteen and eighteen days, and the difference was which machine went on them. That is the single most useful thing we can tell you about pricing a large clearing package, and it is why we will not quote one from an acreage figure alone.
What Florida ground does to a day count
| Flatwoods sand | Saw palmetto and gallberry under slash pine. Most of Florida, and the standard case. Quick going until the low ground holds water. |
| Ridge and scrub oak | Forks at the ground and grows into itself. The commonest reason a parcel takes more days than the acreage suggests. |
| Improved and unimproved pasture | The fastest ground we work. If your site is genuinely open pasture the day count drops sharply and we will say so rather than quote it like scrub. |
| Old grove | Rows already spaced for a machine, with regrowth between them. How many seasons it has stood is most of the day count. |
| Bay bottom and marsh margin | Soft ground that carries a machine badly and stays wet late. On a large parcel there is usually some, and it wants identifying before mobilisation rather than after. |
| Planted pine | Open under an established stand and fast to work. Slower where titi and bay have filled the low ground between rows. |
Machine days on two Hawthorne tracts of 66 and 64 acres, cleared in the same month. Same county, near identical acreage, three days apart because of the machine. Any acreage based quote on a site this size is guessing at that gap.
What customers say
FloridaLandClearing.com was beyond helpful in getting our property cleared. They were spot on with their quote, their crews arrived on time, and the machines they used were impressive to watch.
Jenny AndersonWe had a difficult project a few other companies attempted and left. Florida Land Clearing was able to get the job done and a day earlier than quoted.
Joseph KellyThese guys are pros. Watching these machines just devour acres of underbrush in a day was one of the coolest things I have seen. I cannot believe how this transformed my property.
Adam WilsonPermits and approvals are yours
On a development parcel these usually sit with your civil consultant, and we are not a substitute for them. We are a clearing contractor and we do not file applications.
What is protected depends on the species, the size of the trunk and how the parcel is classified, and every county and city in Florida writes its own rules. Land in genuine agricultural or silvicultural use is usually treated very differently from a parcel that has been rezoned, and a parcel inside a city limit answers to the city rather than the county.
Tell us what approvals are in place when you send the parcel. If clearing is conditioned on something that has not been issued yet, we would rather know before we schedule a machine than after.
Questions we get on large sites
Have you cleared a solar site before?
We take this work and it sits inside our commercial clearing, but we are not going to show you a solar project we have not done. What we can show you is scale: two tracts at Hawthorne of 64 and 66 acres, which are the largest pieces of ground on our record, with their day counts printed next to them. Everything we have finished is listed county by county and you are welcome to read all of it.
How is a large site priced?
By the machine day against published rates, starting at $3,000. We work out the day count from the parcel and what is standing on it, and on a large site we break that count into blocks so you can see the shape of it rather than being handed a single figure.
Do you price per acre for volume?
No, and the larger the site the more strongly we would advise against buying it that way from anyone. A per acre rate has to assume what is standing across the whole parcel. On a hundred acres that assumption is wrong somewhere, and the money that error costs is real.
What happens to everything you cut?
It stays on the parcel as a mulch layer, spread as the machine moves. Nothing is piled, burned or trucked off. On a large clearing that layer is worth having in its own right, because it holds the surface against erosion between clearing and construction.
Will the ground be ready for piles?
Mulching leaves the root plate in place, which is usually compatible with driven or screwed piles and usually not with trenching or slab work. Which you need is a question for your engineer, and the answer changes whether you are buying mulching or grubbing.
Can you work around a retained buffer?
Yes, and it is common. You mark what stays and we cut around it. On most jobs we do the list of what stays is longer than the list of what goes.
Do you work statewide?
Yes. We have finished work in 57 Florida counties and we quote the rest. The bigger two machines are quoted plus transport, which is what it costs to get them to you.
Who pulls the permits?
You do, or your civil consultant does. We are a clearing contractor, not the permit office, and we do not file applications. What is protected varies by county, by city and by species, and land in agricultural use is treated differently again.
Where we work
Send us the parcel
Boundary, acreage and whatever you have on what is standing. You will get a day count against a published rate, broken into blocks if the site warrants it.
Call or text 813-733-6607