Driveway / Leveling / Drainage Questions

[strez]

Hello. I've got a piece of property on which I want to install a 400' driveway and level a gently sloping (10:1 slope) 75' X 150' area of land. The 75' X 150' area is pretty dry, but about 50' of the driveway will go through a very wet, spring-fed piece of land.

I had an excavator come to discuss it this evening. He offered to do the work on a 'time & materials' basis. $65/hr for dozer time (6 ton dozer w/ 6' blade) and $55/hr for backhoe time (for digging the drainage tile ditches).

He estimated no more than 8 days of time to do the work (scrape & pile topsoil, dig down to base surface, bring in "breaker run" and "crusher run" stone to top off the driveway, and leave the 75' X 150' level with no stone covering), though wouldn't say that they were 8-hour days. Assuming 10 hour days, I'm looking at around $5000, plus materials. He estimated 4 tri-axles each of both breaker run and crusher run stone -- no idea what that will cost, assume $150 a load.

The thing that I'm struggling with is that for that price I can buy a backhoe for my TC30. Not sure this is a project I'd like to tackle with my little tractor, however -- seems like too big of a job for the equipment I have.

Any ideas? Does his pricing sound reasonable? Any other approaches you can think of? Think I can buy a decent dozer for $6K or so, do it myself, then sell the dozer when I'm done?

 

[coopers]

IMHO it seems like 8 days is a litlte over kill but maybe getting the materials to the site will take a while, I don't know. If you were to do it yourself, it would be less hastle if you just rented the dozer instead of buying and then selling one. Price doesn't sound too bad.

Blake
WA

 

[Slamfire]

The stone is the cheapest part, hauling it from the quarry to the job site could run up the price considerably. I used two loads of stone on my drive and it cost over $500 to buy the stone and haul it 25 miles for each load.

 

[OkeeDon]

My contractor scraped off the vegetation, dug a 1/4 acre pond, hauled the 2200 cubic yards of spoil around the property, built up and compacted to 30" a 1/4 acre area for my house and a pad for my barn, and raised the level of an 800' x 12' driveway by 12". Cost me almost $7000. I could have done it myself for less, but I didn't figure I was buying the equipment time as much as I was buying his expertise and experience. This is the basis for my entire project.

 

[JerryG]

I maybe missing something here, but I have read this several times. Am I the only one that thinks that is a long time, for the equipment mentioned?

 

[CTyler]

We built a 650' drive on a hill and through a terrace. Also built a up building pad for my 50x64 shop. The pad was about 70x90 built up 1' on one end and 5' on the other. Regraded about 3/4 acre. We scraped of all the vegitation and piled up the topsoil. We had to wrap the terrace back into the hill for the drive and put in a culvert.

We rented a CAT 613? paddle wheel scraper and a CAT 815 sheepfoot with a 10' dozer blade. Rental on the units cost us about 3k plus fuel. We had the drive and terrace portion done in under 2 days.

We both worked on it but I should mention my father in law is a qualified equipment operator. He ran the equip probably 65-70% of the time. 90% of the work was done with the scraper.

 

[WCarlson]

strez,
Take a look at the thread on driveway from scratch. <font color="blue"> driveway</font>. With a 10 to 1 slope I think you can get by for a lot less doing preparations with a box blade and FEL then having the stone delivered by a stone shooter. I did 210' for less than a 5th of your quote for the machinery work alone and when I did mine it was soupy as can be.
Bill

 

[rambler]

All the numbers sound pretty good, other than more days than I would expect! Doing it yourself requires a lot of time, and more than a backhoe. Up to you.

--->Paul