Methodology

LandClearly uses your property answers to select a clearing method, estimate machine time and apply market day rates. You get a planning range, not a contractor quote. The same answers always produce the same result — nothing is randomized and nothing is generated by a language model.

1. Property inputs considered

• Acreage to be cleared
• What is growing on the land, from grass and light brush to mixed growth and dense woods
• Largest tree diameter on the property
• Terrain and slope
• How equipment can reach and move around the site
• Whether stumps must be removed or may be left
• What should happen to the cut material
• How level and clean the ground must be when work finishes
• What the land is being cleared for

You can calculate without providing a name, address, email or phone number. Contact details are requested only if you choose to ask for quotes.

2. Rule-based routing

Your answers follow explicit rules to choose a clearing approach — brush cutting, forestry mulching, traditional clearing, a combination, or site preparation. Each result lists the reasons in plain English. When the answers describe a property the rules cannot price from those answers, such as mature timber, the result recommends a contractor assessment instead of showing a number.

3. Production and market evidence

Time estimates use documented production rates in acres per day for the relevant machine class and vegetation density. Costs apply market day rates to that productive time. Rates and parameters are versioned, so any past result can be reproduced exactly with the parameter set that produced it.

Evidence behind the model

Published production guidance informs how many acres a machine can clear in a day under different conditions. Market day-rate evidence supplies the cost of that machine time; versioned parameters keep past estimates reproducible. Separately, our audit of 20 published pricing sources shows how public price guides differ in what they include. Those guide figures are context, not an average fed into the estimator. Site conditions and local pricing can still differ from what the model can know.

4. Planning ranges, not quotes

Jobs vary, so results usually show a range. When only a starting point can be supported, the result shows a floor. Costs the model cannot quantify from your answers — permits, disposal or haul-off, long-distance machine transport, unusual site logistics — are listed as exclusions instead of being folded in silently.

5. Planning Confidence

Every result carries a Planning Confidence label rather than a percentage or a score. Confidence reflects how completely the property was described and how well the case fits the evidence behind the model. The model has not been validated against a published body of completed-project outcomes, so no result is labeled more certain than moderate.

6. Limitations

• Regional cost variation is not yet modelled in detail.
• Conditions only visible on site — wet ground, hidden debris, rock — are not known.
• Permitting, environmental and local regulatory costs are outside the model.
• Contractor pricing varies with demand, season and how the job is scheduled.