Backhoe Can a backhoe attachment do the job?

[fisheye]

Thanks cartod. I am probably being very naive to think I might be able to putter away for a summer and get enough dirt to lay down a laneway and building pad.

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[fisheye]

Thanks for sharing your pond building experience Gary. This is exactly the sort of information I am looking for. I like your idea of using the loader to scoop up the broken up top layer. This would work for the first part of my pond but I think I will be hitting the water table about 2 feet down where I want the pond. I can't see any other way than digging to get down to 9 or 10 feet deep. What I thought I might do is scrape the top layer, dig down as far as I can with a tractor mounted backhoe and then get a highhoe in to finish the job. Again please comment if I am "all wet" in my ideas

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[fisheye]

I totally understand what you are saying tman1020. The first step, before I commit to making a pond to get road material is to dig a test hole to see what is actually down there. I think there may be a layer of clay but don't know how thick or how deep it is. Any experience on how clay would work for a driveway base?

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[wmonroe]

I really like the BH92 I have on my tractor but have no pond digging experience. The backhoe works great for trenching, digging out stumps, digging out large rocks, etc. I have about 70 hours of actual backhoe time on it and I have not been disappointed. The way it mounts is very secure and the backhoe makes a great counterbalance for front loader work since it is so heavy.

 

[mike69440]

I really like the BH92 I have on my tractor but have no pond digging experience. The backhoe works great for trenching, digging out stumps, digging out large rocks, etc. I have about 70 hours of actual backhoe time on it and I have not been disappointed. The way it mounts is very secure and the backhoe makes a great counterbalance for front loader work since it is so heavy.

I have a 10' hoe on my L39. Huge hoe for size of machine. Very handy. But if you want to dig a pond, an excavator is the way to go. i could not imagine diggig the 3 small pond we have (50 to 70 Ft accross) with a small BH. It took for ever to move the 5000 yards of dirt from the pond with the L39 bucket, (Up to 9' deep.)

 

[tman1020]

Clay is good soil in my opinion just depends on how much sand or small gravel content it has if you're digging below the water table it's going to be extremely saturated it will need to sit quite some time before dries out good(like a year or two). Otherwise it's going to be like trying to spread peanut butter. Also the excavator is a excellent idea you will be amazed at how much dirt and how fast a full-size excavator can move. there is a video on YouTube of a man digging a small pond with a small tractor I think it's a kioti CK 20 he videotapes his progress it's nice but looks shallow. The excavator is the tool to use most times for digging a pond you can get much deeper and move the dirt much farther much much much faster. In my opinion the way to do this job is to hire the excavator to come out dig your pond they can do a beautiful job. It will take you most of the summer just to move the dirt where you want it to go and you'll have a deeper pond. Even if they charge you hundred dollars per hour and you hired them for 10 hours you'll be amazed at how much dirt you'll have to move. You could purchase the tractor in the loader & box blade and hold off on the backhoe until you are finished moving all this dirt. 1000 dollars would not be that much to recover in the amount of time it will take you to move that much dirt with a small machine. Just my opinion hope this helps. Good luck and have fun

 

[fisheye]

Thanks for the advice tman1020. I played around today with my MX5000 and bucket and was able to dig about a 4 foot hole the length of the tractor (steep learning curve). I was amazed at what the tractor and bucket could do. The spot I was digging on my property had about a foot of black loam and then the rest was clay with a bit of sand and rock mixed in. it took me about an hour to dig my hole and I probably moved about a truckload of material. I didn't hit water so am encouraged. I felt like a kid in a sandbox. Great fun.

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