What's in your soil?

What Is a Soil Report?

A soil report tells you what the ground beneath a property is actually made of and how it behaves. It covers drainage class (how fast water moves through), hydrologic group (how much rainfall runs off versus soaking in), flood risk, depth to bedrock, and depth to the water table. For any address in the United States, we pull this data directly from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service's SSURGO database — the same dataset that engineers, county planners, and real estate professionals rely on.

Every soil in the US has been mapped into map units — areas that share similar characteristics. Each map unit contains one or more soil components (named soil series), and each component has horizons — the distinct layers you'd see if you dug a pit. Our reports show all of this: the map unit name, its component soils, and the physical properties of each layer including sand/silt/clay percentages, pH, and organic matter content.

Why Soil Matters

Soil determines what you can build, what you can grow, and what systems you can install. A property with well-drained loamy soil and deep bedrock is straightforward for construction, gardening, and septic. A property with high clay content, shallow water tables, or flood-prone soils requires expensive engineering, alternative systems, or different plant selections entirely. Knowing this before you buy saves thousands of dollars in surprises.

County-level soil surveys show the big picture — dominant drainage patterns, common soil orders, and general building or septic suitability across a region. Address-level lookups give you the exact soil series, horizon data, and official USDA interpretations for a specific mapped point. Both are free and always will be.