Creating a flat spot

[RayCo]

I start by digging into the hill at the elevation I want the pad to be at with the BH. Then I use the FEL to push it out off the edge, thus doubling my area as I go.

First, nice pictures and nice flat spot!

I'm not sure what your second sentence means. As far as starting by digging into the hill down to where the flat spot should be, I understand. But what are you doing with the loader then? I'm inserting a bad drawing here. This is what my slope looked like after first starting to dig. After this, I moved down the hill and dug more, and so on. Did you do something different involving the loader? (The blue line represents the flat level that needs to be created.)

 

[coreshot]

Sorry for the confusion. What I meant to say is this-I have a road coming from another pad, so i started digging at the level of the road at which point was the front (downhill) side of the pad. As I got deeper into the hill, pushing the loose dirt out extending the front of the pad outward, the road ended up more toward the middle of the pad. So in short, I dug from the front until I got the size of pad I desired. I don't know if this helps or not.

 

[DavidAubke]

Ahhh. A BX24, a big excavation job and nothing but time... must be nice.

I'm not sure what your second sentence means.

If you take the dirt that remains above your blue line and pull it out to the downhill edge of your target area, you buy yourself some extra level ground. Take-from-the-high-add-to-the-low sorta thing. Trouble is the loose dirt will likely settle over time. Maybe the BX24 is heavy enough to compact it.

 

[coreshot]

Ahhh. A BX24, a big excavation job and nothing but time... must be nice.



If you take the dirt that remains above your blue line and pull it out to the downhill edge of your target area, you buy yourself some extra level ground. Take-from-the-high-add-to-the-low sorta thing. Trouble is the loose dirt will likely settle over time. Maybe the BX24 is heavy enough to compact it.

Yup, just like this...

 

[RayCo]

Ah, yes, got it. That was actually what I was hoping to do in this area, but, unfortunately, that wasn't in the requirements document that my wife provided. The options were to put the "fulcrum" at the high spot, the low spot, or the middle, and she chose the low spot because of how it will fit in with some pond that I'll be digging next.

 

[coreshot]

Ah, yes, got it. That was actually what I was hoping to do in this area, but, unfortunately, that wasn't in the requirements document that my wife provided. The options were to put the "fulcrum" at the high spot, the low spot, or the middle, and she chose the low spot because of how it will fit in with some pond that I'll be digging next.

Sounds like she has it all figured out!:laughing: