A typical Asheville job is a backyard that used to be woods, now staked for an ADU, with a neighbor’s canopy hanging over the line. The lot is often a fraction of an acre. The city still wants a formal erosion plan if you disturb more than 10,000 square feet (City of Asheville design standards). That’s a city-lot rule, not a mountain-acreage rule. A driveway plus a pad plus a utility trench can get you there.
We’re based in Asheville. The machine is already in town.
Backyards, ADUs, and a dense canopy
The French Broad sits on the valley floor around 2,100 feet (Britannica on Asheville). Most infill work lives there: River Arts District edges, I-240 cuts, Patton Avenue side streets, lots that have held a house for decades and now want a second dwelling in the back. Climb Town Mountain Road or the Beaucatcher face and you leave that bench. Clay-rich saprolite over weathered granite and gneiss still shows up in the bucket (Buncombe soil survey). On a city lot the rock is less of a problem than the trees, the fence, and a dump truck with nowhere to turn.
English ivy and Chinese privet take the understory on a lot of these parcels. That’s invasive species removal and brush clearing, not a dozer day. Keep-trees stay. The envelope gets marked before anyone starts a saw.
What owners here actually buy
The ticket we write inside city limits is lot clearing and homesite prep for ADUs and small additions. A shed or old garage that has to come down before the pad is a demolition contractor’s job. Demolition in Buncombe routes through the Asheville-Buncombe Air Quality Agency because of asbestos rules (Buncombe permits). Skip that step and the job stalls at the inspector.
Cover rides with every cut. Graded slopes need ground cover within 21 days of a grading phase (NC DEQ seeding specs), and the grading contractor who cuts the pad closes that clock, even when the “slope” is a 40-foot backyard. Where we mulch in place, the chip layer is the cover (forestry mulching and erosion control). Land clearing with stump grinding is the rarer city ticket, usually on a larger parcel at the edge of town. Most Asheville work is selective.
The guides hub is the place for the longer permit walkthrough, including Asheville’s tree ordinance.
City permits that catch small lots
You’re in the City of Asheville, not unincorporated Buncombe. Unincorporated ground follows the state 1-acre erosion trigger, filed at least 30 days before work (NC DEQ erosion rules). The city runs a delegated program and requires a formal erosion plan over 10,000 square feet of disturbance (Asheville design standards).
The Steep Slope and Ridgetop ordinance applies at 2,220 feet elevation and 15 percent grade or more. It regulates grading, impervious coverage, and screening. Retaining walls over 4 feet are separately regulated. A 25-foot drop within 100 feet of a structure triggers screening plans (Asheville steep slope ordinance). Town Mountain Road and the Beaucatcher face are where that overlay stops being theoretical.
Read Asheville’s tree ordinance guide before you mark canopy for removal. The French Broad basin has no Neuse-style riparian buffer of its own; protection comes from the trout rule, local stormwater ordinances, and forestry BMP streamside zones (NC Forest Service buffer rules). If a designated trout water is on the survey, stay 25 feet off the top of bank (15A NCAC 04B .0125).
Do you need a city erosion plan for a backyard ADU?
Often yes, if the combined disturbance of the pad, driveway, and trenches crosses 10,000 square feet. That’s about a quarter acre, which sounds large until you add a drive aisle and a spoil pile. Under that line you still owe silt fence and ground cover. You still owe the slope ordinance if the lot sits at 2,220 feet with a 15 percent grade. You still owe whatever the tree ordinance requires on the canopy you want down. The state’s 1-acre plan is the wrong number to quote a city lot against.
Statewide open burning puts piles 500 feet from occupied structures (NC Forest Service open burning). An infill backyard can’t meet that. Mulch or haul.
Based in town
West Asheville is five minutes across the river. South Asheville runs down Sweeten Creek Road and Airport Road. Woodfin is up the French Broad. A Haywood Road backyard isn’t a Town Mountain tract, and we quote them as different jobs. Town coverage is on the service areas map. The services hub has the rest of the trade list.
A city lot doesn’t carry a mobilization day from our Asheville base.