Excavation and land clearing across Horry County, SC.

Horry County has two very different halves and the work we do depends entirely on which one a property sits in. The interior — Conway and Loris and the country between them — is rural and agricultural, with tobacco and timber land that has been worked for generations. The coast, from Myrtle Beach up through North Myrtle Beach, is a continuous strip of rental properties, hotels, golf course communities, and the kind of suburban development that runs on a constant cycle of new construction and rebuilds. The terrain across both halves is flat coastal plain, but the jobs that go on top of it are completely different.

The Grand Strand is in this county — that 60-mile stretch of beach from the NC line down past Pawleys Island that the Myrtle Beach metro is built around. The Intracoastal Waterway runs the full length of it, parallel to the ocean a mile or two inland, and most of the new residential construction is happening between the waterway and the highway. That creates a specific kind of site-prep job: relatively small lots, neighbors close on both sides, restricted access for big equipment, and septic or sewer constraints that vary block by block. We have learned how to work in those conditions.

Most of Horry County is within thirty feet of sea level and the water table is consistently high, especially east of US-17. That has the same effects on site work that it does in coastal Brunswick County across the state line — pond construction is unpredictable year to year, septic perc rates are not great, and any grading project has to be designed so that surface water actually leaves the site instead of pooling. We do drainage correction in this county more than almost any other service.

We are licensed and insured to work in both North Carolina and South Carolina, and Horry County is the only SC county we cover regularly. The state line crossing is not a meaningful obstacle for the work itself — the equipment, the crew, and the methods are the same — but it does mean that for any project that requires permits, the paperwork goes through Horry County rather than through NC channels. We will tell you what to expect on the SC permit side during the site visit so there are no surprises about which government office to talk to. Conway is the county seat and where most of the inspections offices are located.