About Waterloo Culvert Company

Waterloo Culvert Company is a locally owned excavating contractor working driveway entrances in and around Waterloo, Iowa. We put in new driveway culverts, replace pipe that is rusted through or flattened, clean and repair pipe that is still good, build farm and field entrances, grade approaches, set creek and lane crossings, protect outlets with rock, and handle commercial and subdivision work. Iowa licensing and liability insurance are both in place.

The part of this job that decides everything happens before a machine moves. We stand in the ditch and work out how much water arrives at that point. Acres above it, how steeply they fall, and whether they are row crop, pasture, timber, or roofs. That number sizes the pipe. Then the pipe goes on the ditch flow line, on a shaped granular bed, with backfill compacted in lifts on both sides together, an end section on each end, and angular rock at the outlet on fabric.

Northeast Iowa hands a culvert two problems at once. The ground falls gently, so there is little grade to work with and a pipe laid carelessly holds water instead of moving it. And the ditch is fed by tile as well as by rain, so it keeps running after the sky clears. A pipe chosen off a price sheet does not know either of those things. A pipe chosen off the ditch does.

We also turn work down. A plugged pipe usually needs an hour of cleaning, not a new entrance, and we say so even though cleaning is the smaller ticket. We will not quote a pipe size before the road department has seen the site, because that office sets it. Where a county handles part of this work itself, we tell you which part rather than promising something that is not ours to promise. Saying that costs us a job now and then. It beats building an entrance somebody makes you dig back out.

Call (319) 555-0122 with a question about your entrance, whether or not there is a job in it.