Springbank Acreage Excavation Between the Bow & Elbow

Lots, Homes and Sites in Springbank

Rocky View County's Springbank Area Structure Plan describes many parts of the community as comprehensively planned two-acre subdivisions, and it sets the minimum parcel size at about 0.8 ha (1.98 acres). The County notes that Springbank started to attract rural residential living in the 1950s, so an older acreage house with its original well and field can sit beside a new custom build. An open parcel gives room to work: we strip and stockpile topsoil, dig a full basement with over-dig for the footing forms, and keep suitable spoil on site for backfill instead of trucking it away.

Water and sewer are what make Springbank different from a city lot. The ASP says the community has historically relied on groundwater wells, private water cooperatives and septic fields, and the County's Municipal Development Plan describes piped servicing through private water co-ops alongside wells and septic systems. A new house therefore needs a water line trench from the well or the co-op connection, a sewer line to the septic tank, and a tank and treatment field excavation laid out to a certified installer's design. Every trench is routed around the setbacks in the 2021 Alberta Private Sewage Systems Standard of Practice, which keeps a treatment field 15 m from a well and 10 m from a basement.

The long driveway is the other constant. A two-acre parcel set back from a county road needs a stripped, built-up gravel driveway that will carry a loaded concrete truck in a wet spring, plus an approach with a culvert where the road ditch calls for one. We rough in the driveway before the basement dig so every trade that follows can reach the house pad without rutting the lot. Harmony is the exception: a master-planned Growth Hamlet outside the Springbank ASP with piped servicing, where a lot needs service trenches to the mains instead.