Which 3pt attachment to use to smooth this out?

[7mmrum]

My buddy is building a house on a little over 2 acre plot. They have removed the trees needed to build the house, drain field, road, etc. However the soil is very rough, when you are standing out there, one of your two feet maybe as high as 12" up or down from the other. Almost as if you plowed and then disked the soil, and you have large clumps of earth pattern together. The goal is to smooth this out to a flat surface area. I brought my tractor out over the weekend, and begain to back drag with the rear of the FEL pointed at a 45' angle down toward the soil. This seemed to work, however it took me several passes to get an area flat; it didn't seem time efficient.

I would like to know what would maybe speed this process up, I'm thinking a BOX BLADE since the other posts of this implement seem to fit that jobs description, however, I have 95 hours of seat time in my life, so I'm still a newbie when it comes to this. So if you wouldn't mind letting me know what would help out, it would be appreciated. I will attach a few pics to help out with what I'm dealing with. Oh, and total area to smooth out is about 1.5 acres.

 

[7mmrum]

pic2

 

[7mmrum]

pic3

 

[7mmrum]

pic4

 

[MX5000]

Before I saw all the sticks, I said boxblade. After looking at the picture, I said landscape rake. If it were me, I'd go over the whole are with a heavy duty landscape rake and level it out and clean it up. It looks like the soil is all broken up already, so a landscape rake should do a decent job. They're pretty expensive. Is there a rental center that you could rent one?

Howard

 

[Farmwithjunk]

Number of ways to handle that. One would be a box blade and a few hundred hours. A HEAVY disc behind a big tractor would level it some also. But my #1 suggestion? Get someone with a smaller 'dozer to spend a couple hours leveling and firming the soil.

One big problem with finish grading soil that's been worked that deep is it will settle UNEVENLY and end up with low spots later. A 'dozer would help eliminate that.

 

[Egon]

Pick up sticks/stumps etx. Rotatill and make a drag about eight ft wide. Work it over well with the drag and repeat the whole process till the result is satisfactory. Use the loader to skim off obvious high spots and fill in the low spots.

The wider the drag the more even the surface will be. A slight angle to the drag will also help.

Egon /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[RobJ]

I agree with Egon. First get all the help you can find and walk over and pick up all the sticks and trash. Picture a shoulder to shoulder canvas type thing. The more you work it the more they will make their way up to to top. If you have access to a disk then go over it several times at a 3-4" depth. Just trying to break up and level out a bit. They drag it with skids, pipes, whatever. But this just gets it looking good. You will still need to shoot it with a level to get out the high/low spots and figure out where you want you drainage. I built our weekend place on a hill and "eyeballing it" was not very accurate. What "looked" level was actually way out when we shot it.

Good Luck.

 

[flusher]

An inexpensive way: a 5-ft box blade (~$500) and a lot of seat time. Two acres seems small before you start moving dirt around. Then it gets pretty large.

It took me about 2 hours to level out about 1500 square feet (~1/28 acre) on the West side of my house using a 4-ft box blade and my 21 HP B7510HST. No rocks, roots, etc, just dirt. I'm a BB novice which accounts for some of the time needed for that job. You have a bigger tractor that can handle larger implements, so you'll cut the time.

If you want to break up the soil before box blading, you might try a middle-buster plow, another inexpensive implement at ~$150. I have a King Kutter middle buster/subsoiler combo ($135 at Tractor SupplyCo). I recall seeing threads in one of the TBN forums about using middle busters for garden prep. Just think of your 1.5 acres as a large garden.

I have a used Yanmar RS1200 rototiller (48" wide, $300) that I plan to use on about 3/4 acre of landscaping that I'll start in a few weeks. Chop the soil to 3-4 inch depth with the rototiller and then use a drag harrow (a piece of chain link fence attached to a heavy steel pipe) to smooth it out. You can do a TBN search to find a lot of interesting variations on this type of harrow.

 

[Highbeam]

I have been there but with about 2 acres to do. Logger comes in, plucks trees, plucks brush, burns what he doesn't take to the mill. A logger ain't a landscaper but yours did pretty good. You need a boxblade for this job.

First set the rippers all the way down and roll the box forward so that you are basicly raking the soil with the rippers. This will collect the sticks and junk but also start smoothing things. You will quickly pile up tons of sticks and junk until the pile is bumping into your back tires. Raise the box, drop the pile, and repeat until the area is raked of trash. Then either scoop or push the individual piles of dirty trash into a big heap. That heap needs to be out of the way. It will be hard to burn and is the worst part of land clearing. Next roll the box blade to level, lower it till it only cuts the high spots and drive round and round only skimming the high spots. Progressively lower the box until it is level with your tires and your final pass should not cut much. This last step is where gauge wheels would make fine grading look really good but it is not required.

That gets things really smooth. A final pass can be made with the box blade rolled back so the rear blade is acting to smear the ground smooth.

This isn't regrading the whole site for drainage but making it pretty for grass. If you need to grade a slope into a non-sloped lot or have some other profound shaping to do then a dozer can come in after you've cleaned the trash.