Looking at renting an excavator...

[Code54]

Awesome - glad you got it all done and learned a lot!

 

[Rustyiron]

Good clean fun!

 

[MikeS_in_GA]

fyi... it was right at $4k for the rental / insurance / tax / fees / more fees /another fee / delivery / and pick up. There are so many add on fees you should never go with the 'sticker' price quote. All the fees added up to ~25% of the total bill.

 

[mike69440]

Thanks everyone.

It's all done...

Ended up with a JD130, so that's a little bigger than we were expecting (close to 30k#). I wish I could have gotten a 40k# machine. The ground is so hard that it was difficult breaking the surface of the ground in many places. The teeth would just drag over the clay. Once you broke through, you could start digging. The worst stump, took about 3 hours. We had to dig down nearly 8 feet on 3 sides before we could get it to let loose. Did I mention how hard the ground is? lol

The hole in the dam was above the water line. We are in a very bad drought here, so the pond is low. The hole was worse than we thought, so that added some time to it.

The T-590 bobcat was a beast. I'm really thinking about getting rid of my tractor and getting a tracked loader, but I imagine the difference in price is way more than I can afford now.

My week rental ended with 39.7 hours on the ex and 37.5 hours on the bobcat. The dump trailer got very little use. Good thing that was borrowed and not rented. I think I only got 9 or 10 loads with it for the week.

We had a lot of fun and learned a lot.

oh yeah... hauling fuel with 5 gallon cans really sucks!

Now looking at a long arm machine to dredge out the pond...

$4 Grand,

Think I keep my old excavator.

Little trick when you dig out 3 sides of a tree to push it over, Place a medium sized log opposite the side you are pushing from and it will lift the stump out of the ground as the tree goes over.

I bet a stump ripper attachment would have helped.

 

[Code54]

Little trick when you dig out 3 sides of a tree to push it over, Place a medium sized log opposite the side you are pushing from and it will lift the stump out of the ground as the tree goes over.

Never tried that - I am going to give it a shot - thanks for posting a neat tip