How much dirt have you seen moved by hand?

[TheMadOne]

Could a BX fit into the back yard? Rent one and use it to transfer the dirt. Or maybe two if they want to get it done in one shot. Try to explain that they're asking for 500ish 5 gallon buckets full of dirt.

 

[Steppenwolfe]

We have some friends that bought a new house in town. They need about 20 yards of topsoil for their backyard.

There is no way to dump the dirt in the back yard due to fences and a narrow alley.

I have a dump truck and a mountain of topsoil. They want me to dump it in their front yard and say they wheel barrow it back there. I think they are nuts as this will be around 250 wheelbarrow loads.

I want to help them but I don't want to put an insurmountable pile of dirt in front of their brand new house and then have them be upset about it. I tried explaining the volume and amount of work to them but I don't think it is registering.

No offense, but your friends are obviously challenged when it comes to doing the math. Chances are, a 20 yard pile of topsoil will be there for three years. That is a lot of hand shoveling.

 

[TheMan419]

Mini Skid Steers | Ditch Witch

This should help them. They need one of these.

 

[MossRoad]

1 cubic yard of dirt is 27 cubic feet.
20 cubic yards of dirt is 540 cubic feet.

1 cord of firewood is 4 x 4 x 8, which = 128 cubic feet.

540 cubic feet divided by 128 cubic feet is 4.2 cords.

They're talking about moving a pile of dirt equivalent to the same space as only 4 cords of wood.

Granted, dirt is heavier than wood, but geeze fellas, its not that big of a pile of dirt.

This is a standard 4 cubic foot wheelbarrow.


540/4=135 trips. Its not that much.

If each trip takes 5 minutes its only about 11 hours of work.

Get two shovels and two people to fill the barrow and take turns pushing it back there and it could be done in a weekend.

Three or four people and two-three wheelbarrows and its done in day.

 

[Glocker]

Toro Dingo or the Bobcat copy .

 

[s219]

I spread about 30 yards of topsoil with shovel and wheelbarrow at my first home, because I was young and dumb. It took a week or so, few hours each day and all day on weekends. My wrists were in rough shape for weeks after that, and haven't really been right since. That was about 16 years ago. Yeah, it's doable but it's hard work and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Sure would have loved to have a tractor back then. Boy was I young and dumb.

 

[Oldoak]

1 cubic yard of dirt is 27 cubic feet.
20 cubic yards of dirt is 540 cubic feet.

1 cord of firewood is 4 x 4 x 8, which = 128 cubic feet.

540 cubic feet divided by 128 cubic feet is 4.2 cords.

They're talking about moving a pile of dirt equivalent to the same space as only 4 cords of wood.

Granted, dirt is heavier than wood, but geeze fellas, its not that big of a pile of dirt.

This is a standard 4 cubic foot wheelbarrow.
View attachment 504178

540/4=135 trips. Its not that much.

If each trip takes 5 minutes its only about 11 hours of work.

Get two shovels and two people to fill the barrow and take turns pushing it back there and it could be done in a weekend.

Three or four people and two-three wheelbarrows and its done in day.

Yep, but most people today don't know what manual labor is.

If they can't download an App for it, they think it can't be done. :laughing:

 

[4570Man]

I'd let them have at it. It's certainly possible, but it's not likely to happen in a day though. If I was trying to do it I'd haul it in my Mule and load it with my backhoe. Even if I loaded it in a wheelbarrow with the backhoe that'd be a big labor savings.

 

[MossRoad]

When I was a kid, my dad dug out a hole for a basement by hand with a wheelbarrow, shovel and ramps. It was 20X24 by about 7' deep, as I recall. He was putting an addition onto our house. The 5 of us kids all slept in one room. He wanted to add a "dormitory", as he called it. :laughing: It was two bedrooms and a bathroom on the ground level and two bedrooms and a study on the lower level. There was also a hand-dug pit patio off the two lower bedrooms, that was about 15X8 by 3' deep he dug by hand as well. I was about 2-3 years old at the time. My 11 year old sister did about half of the pickax work for him while he loaded and hauled!

We've all wussed out. :laughing:

So, we ended up with a huge pile of dirt next to the house from that. He compacted it and built an observatory on top of the pile. It was a yard barn with a retractable roof, and inside were several telescopes, one of which was a 5' x 6" reflector that he built himself.

Heck, he built his whole house himself with just his cousin for labor, with the exception of the concrete and brick work.

This pile of dirt is just manual labor that isn't that large or too hard for a couple people to tackle in a couple weekends.

 

[Code54]

Yep - rent a dingo, mini skid steer and they can make short work of it and not kill themselves for weeks on end.