Digging a trench on an incline

asylum575 · May 15, 2009

I agree with Dodgeman, wow that was tough, since I'm a Chevy guy. I guess we'll both be Ford guys soon, but I digress.

I have to dig a drainage trench for a french drain and was thinking about starting at the low end where it sees daylight and work may way up to the wet area. Last time I dug in the wet area I dug a trench about 40 ft long two feet deep and it was full of water in a couple of hours. THATS ALOT OF WATER TO KEEP UP WITH. If you start on the high side that water will keep on coming and you're digging out mud the whole way.

Egon · May 16, 2009

But what if you are digging in hard dry clay? Wouldn't the water help soften up the clay and make it easier to dig??

Emptying the bucket may be another problem though.

lakeside · Jun 1, 2009

Well I dug the trench with the FEL on the down side and had no problems. The B26 is really a tough machine and using the curl function really made the job easier. I did tend to pull the machine a bit when I caught on to a rock but with the backhoe pointed uphill, the weight of the tractor really held everything steady. I did have to clean out a drain on the same hill and the only way to to so was to have the backhoe on the downhill side. Wow, any slight hangup and the backhoe pulled the tractor downhill. There was no danger of tipping but it showed the difference between digging down an incline versus digging upwards.

Thanks for all the great tips.

MarkV · Jun 1, 2009

Glad it worked out. That is a tough job to take on while learning a backhoe. Don't know if it has been mentioned but adding ballast to the rear tires made a huge difference on my B21 when it came to hillsides.

MarkV