Hydro Excavation provides several benefits and advantages over hand digging or the use of hydraulic-based heavy machinery. The key advantages include:

• Excavation speed & efficiency – the hydro excavation process is much faster than manual digging, allowing what might take days to accomplish manually to be completed in hours.
• Reduction in costs – a smaller work crew is needed to complete a given size job when utilizing a hydrovac truck as compared with manual digging. Combining that smaller crew with the faster speed of the process directly translates into a reduction in excavation costs.
• Reduction in injuries – hydro excavation is a safer process to use for soil removal resulting in fewer injuries to workers and lower risks to other people within the vicinity of the construction area.
• Precision – by utilizing a powerful and narrow stream of high-pressure water to loosen soil, hydro excavation allows for more precise cuts to be made in the dig area. This precision means that there is less soil disturbed than with other excavation methods, and that results in a simpler restoration effort when backfilling the excavation site.
• Clearer work zone with less disruption – since excavation often occurs in heavily trafficked areas, larger crews onsite generally mean more trucks and equipment that can cause interference with road traffic and disrupt normal pedestrian pathways. In addition, traditional excavation usually results in the removed soil from the dig area being staged on-site, taking up additional space, and further disrupting day-to-day activities.
• Non-destructive process – hydro excavation is far safer to use when performing daylighting and unearthing buried utilities than hand digging with picks and shovels or using heavy machinery, both of which can damage existing infrastructure. Some estimates indicate that 75% of all damage in the utility industry is the result of shovel strikes. Reducing the risk of damage avoids downtime and the cost of additional repairs induced by the excavation process. The water jet also serves to clean the buried structures of dirt and debris, which makes performing repairs a simpler task.
• Extended construction season – hydro excavation equipment can be equipped to use hot water to allow breaking up frozen ground, thus enabling construction activity to extend into colder weather months and to take place in northern climates where performing digs with traditional methods would not be possible under those conditions.