Boxblading a new ditch

Highbeam · Aug 5, 2006

I have clay soils, grass, and a valley and I live in Washington. It is very important to prevent standing water in this situation. The valley has a deep and manmade discharge point and the overall drop across the valley floor is about 6 feet in 450. I grabbed a laser level and decided to shoot for 1% slope with a minimum of 0.5%. I maintained this grade every 50 feet and assumed that I could eye ball between 50 foot marks. It turns out that our eyeballs are not very good at setting grade so the laser level was extremely useful.

Photo 1 is the valley floor from above while I start scratching in a ditch.

Photo 2 and 3 are mid way through the job. I cranked the box blade all the way to one side and pulled the rippers out of action. I cut one side of the ditch to depth and then came back for the next. Note the tippage. You need to be comfortable with major leaning to dig a deep ditch with the box.

Photo 4 is the finished job from downstream with a nice slash pile in the background pulled and stacked by me. The box was set level and used to pull the spoils out. No loader work today.

Photo 5 is from the brush pile looking across the ditch. I was able to use the trench spoils to fill in low spots created by settlement after removing stumps.

Note the color change in the trench. The black topsoil is sitting on top of grey clay. The clay layer should be pretty impermeable and the water will sit on top. My hope is that water will scoot along the top of the clay to my ditch and then out. The clay ditch was very hard and smeared into a nice looking trough.

I am also hoping to use a subsoiler as a mole plow to cut water paths perpendicular to the ditch to help water move to the ditch.

Thanks for looking.

Highbeam · Aug 5, 2006

That slash pile is over 100 feet long, 30 feet wide and at least 8 feet high. It was not created in one day but over the past couple of months.

ratter · Aug 5, 2006

That is some beautiful property you have there! How many trips with the blade did it take?

Highbeam · Aug 5, 2006

Not too many trips. Including figuring out the level and degrassing the area it was only about an eight hour job and about 5 gallons of fuel. The engine wasn't taxed and I ran at 2000 rpm most of the time. My body is sore from the constant getting on and off of the tractor though. The 5' box would fill up on that one side and then I would veer out of the ditch and dump the spoils. Since I worked in 50 foot sections the spoils were pretty evenly spread out. I really expected a lot more material to come out since the ditch is about a foot to 1.5 feet deep from existing grade. We have no rocks so the cutting was smooth.

ratter · Aug 5, 2006

How did you remove the grass? Scarifiers?

bugstruck · Aug 5, 2006

Very good looking work. I don't think I could have done that well on my best day.

Highbeam · Aug 6, 2006

Thanks guys. The grass is just finishing its second year of growth so while it is densely grassed the sod isn't very thick. Maybe a few inches. The first thing I did was paint a line and then with a level box and rippers down I sliced up the grass being careful not to pick up any more than I had to. I don't want a big pile of sod and would rather just make little chunks that I can spread out into the surrounding grass. I took a few trips slicing up the sod and then made a haul off of the chunks that wouldn't give up. That junk is in the burn pile.

I forgot to mention that I did suffer a pair of blisters on my palm from the three point hitch lever. I was constantly fiddling with it.

dmftoy1 · Aug 6, 2006

Nice post! Perfect timing as I have a similiar project that I have to do here shortly . . .luckily my ditch will only need to be 75 feet long!!

Have a good one,
Dave

3RRL · Aug 6, 2006

Joe,
Great post. You know I consider myself a boxblade whiz (self proclaimed of course, haha) but your swath looks awsome. You sure got some pretty country up there...great pictures. I noticed too...no rocks at all? That must be nice. That swath is pretty smooth and void of dips...great job. Just goes to show you what you can do with a boxblade and a good operator. How much dirt did you move, do you reckon?
Besides the 5 gallons of fuel, how many cool ones? What kind of boxblade do you have, I forgot?

Highbeam · Aug 7, 2006

Every now and then I'll pop out a humdinger rock like a basketball but for the most part you can sink a post anywhere you bloody want to. All my previous homes were the typical northwest glacial soils with lots of rocks and a bit of dirt holding it together but this property is much different. No idea on the amount of dirt I moved since most of it was cast aside and then spread out and not really excavated. I brought my little blue lunch cooler which only holds six beverages and they were all cold but not all of the adult variety. Of course I had downed my thermos of coffee pretty early on. Weather was toasty, in the 80s, and lots of dust.

That boxblade is a frontier BB2060 which is a fairly stout unit with a fixed rear blade. This is the first job that I've taken the rippers totally out of action for. Yes it's JD green but it still does good work.

If the rest of this year's jobs go this smoothly then I will be a happy camper over the winter.