bobcat B300

[gaudet]

I have an Earth force EF4, which is the same as the B300. I would like to buy a larger bucket for snow removal this year. I live in Halifax, NS and we usuallly get between 40 and 100 inchs of snow per year.
I am wondering how I can calculate how large of a bucket i can use. I need to be able to push as well as stack snow and I don`t want to damage my mashine. I currently have a 72`bucket and it worked fine for the limited snow removale I did last year.
Thanks in abvance

 

[westcliffe01]

Gaudet, if memory serves, your EF4 is rated for a 2 ton lift at the bucket. Fresh snow has 8% of the density of water. This means that fresh snow is approximately 20x lighter than dirt.

Since bucket volume is the cube of 3 dimensions, if we take the cube root of 20 it will give an idea how much larger the bucket dimensions can be, disregarding the weight of the bucket itself. The answer is 2.7 So to account for the material used in the bucket, it could be approximately double as large in each dimension as your existing one.

Since snow is so light, it is not neccersary to use extremely heavy material for such a bucket. A lot of the bucket could probably be 1/8" material with some protection for the working edges and beefire at the back for the mount. Sounds like a project...