digging out basement

[Jerome]

I need to dig out my basement this coming summer and need some way to get the dirt out of the window and into a truck trailer or something. would an old grain auger work or is there something better?

 

[ToadHill]

Maybe a hay elevator if you can get it into the basement.

 

[BucketHoe]

Jerome,

Find a company that is reasonably local to your property that has a large Truck Mounted Vac-All. Check with them if they have any adapters that can reduce the snout on the Vac-All from the normal 8 or 10" diameter to something in the 3 or 4" range.

Depending how close you can get the truck backed up to your basement, get a hose that can attach to the adapter and reach all of the basement you want to dig out. Get an electric jack hammer and as fast as one person can break the soil up with the jack hammer, another person can suck it up and send it into the truck.

I would think that would be easier than shoveling and loading it on to a conveyor.

BucketHoe

 

[john_bud]

BucketHoe has a cool idea. Never seen one done that way. Used to work for a guy that wanted a full basement. He used about a dozen 5gal buckets and a shovel and one winter he dug it out by hand and toted the spoils up the steps and out the door. Hundred or so trips a day for the entire winter. He was in GOOD shape by the end of the winter!

jb

 

[Jerome]

John-bud that is exactly what I do not want to do. I though of the hay elevator but they will not fit, the vacuum truck sounds like a good idea. Do you think a duct cleaning truck would work?

 

[MrJimi]

Not knowing what you have, how about lots of kids and each a 5 gallon bucket like a bucket brigade You would be done in no time
Jim

 

[Whitey]

We recently finished a commercial project that included the demolition of a below grade level and we rented a rubber belted conveyor that we sat in the stair well and it put the debris in a pile that was eaisly loaded into a dump with a skid steer.

 

[6sunset6]

When I was 5 my grandfather started with 5 gal buckets , My father continued and I finished. just under 20 years. When I started I could not lift the 5 gal can, when I was wrestling in college I could carry 2 full of bankrun, when I finished I could just about carry 1 again. Then of course all the cement had to go back down. We used the bank run we dug out in the concrete. That was 40 years ago.
My father liked to tell me that if I spent as much time digging as I did talking about a conveyor I would have finished in half the time.
I don't think a vac truck is going to do it. High school kids for the summer and 5 gal buckets.That's how those B DRY guys do it. They trench around the inside of a foundation to cut off water infiltration.

 

[rtdiggr]

I need to dig out my basement this coming summer and need some way to get the dirt out of the window and into a truck trailer or something. would an old grain auger work or is there something better?

Call Mike Holmes and his cheap temp labour in. sorry i couldn't resist.

Shane

 

[turnkey4099]

I don't think the hay elevator or grain augers will work. I would expect them to by shot in about an hour.

Harry K

 

[BucketHoe]

6sunset6,

You mentioned that you did not think a vac truck would do it. Have you ever seen how much dirt a Vac All will suck out of an excavation area?

I don't know how a duct cleaning truck would do since they are not made to suck dirt, stone, ashphalt and anything else in the ground, but I can tell you a truck mounted Vac All will suck anything he has in that basement into the truck.

BucketHoe

 

[6sunset6]

Maybe if it really loose and the cellar is not very deep.. It's just that it is only atmosperic pressure pushing and a lot of solids. It will not be cheap either and someone will have to keep up with a pickaxe. It will not pull it solid off a wall. My .02.

 

[KYErik]

I have heard of people making a 4 ft hole in the foundation/footer on a non load bearing wall and driving a small bobcat under the house from the outside.

It would need to dig a ramp down from the outside, but maybe a backhoe could help with that part.

 

[biggerten]

I have heard of people making a 4 ft hole in the foundation/footer on a non load bearing wall and driving a small bobcat under the house from the outside.

It would need to dig a ramp down from the outside, but maybe a backhoe could help with that part.

When I was a kid we did the ramp thing, shoveled the dirt onto an old car hood and Dad pulled the car hood to a low spot in the field with the tractor.

The ramp ended up being our coal bin.

 

[ronjhall]

With lots of help from 2 sons that wanted cars. We (well they) dug out our basement. We pulled all the dirt out through a 4' wide hole cut into foundation. This hole became a walk in entrance. Had a slip scraper that we pulled out of the basement with long chain attached to tractor. The slip scraper worked better than a hood because because it could load itself. Anything would be better than hauling dirt out with 5 gallon buckets.

 

[ChuckinNH]

A couple of non related items come to mind, one is the older gutter cleaners found in dairy barns, and the second is the chip handling attachments for modern CNC machines. Perhaps a used machine dealer would have something available. Just kind of an off the top of my head thing.....

 

[2manyrocks]

There is an article in the April/May 1993 edition of Fine Homebuilding magazine where a contractor made a ramp and excavated underneath a house with a skid loader. It was only a limited excavation for a wine cellar. it was also a concrete grade beam foundation that would carry enough load for him to dig out enough access for the skid loader.

You may not not be lucky enough to have that kind of foundation to work with. If you contacted a house mover, he could install steel beams to carry your house while you dig out from under it with a machine.

Drywall buckets would be painfully slow unless you have a lot of helpers, but there are situations where that's what you do.

 

[schmism]

my uncle dug his... has rented a belt converor that sits in the outside basement stairs. he gets one long enough to shoot the material right into the bed of a pickup.

they hand dig it (er chip it... its hard pan) load it into a wheelbarrow, and cart it to the converor

 

[firefighter9208]

I need to dig out my basement this coming summer and need some way to get the dirt out of the window and into a truck trailer or something. would an old grain auger work or is there something better?

Maybe this will help ARA Online

Chris

 

[CurlyDave]

How many cubic feet of material have to be removed?

I have done a job like this and it took about 3 months for one guy to remove about 1500 cubic feet of hard adobe clay with pick shovel and 5-gallon buckets. Most of the spoils went uphill, which did not speed the process up at all.

This is just over 100 cubic feet/man-week, working 25 to 40 hours/week.

If I ever had to do it again, I think I could increase productivity significantly, maybe almost double it by:

1. using an electric jackhammer with a clay spade to break up the hard-packed dirt, instead of a pick,

2. getting a larger number of buckets (I only had 5 or 6), and

3. using a larger crew. There is a significant amount of time wasted in moving from breaking up dirt to shoveling into buckets to carrying buckets.

Two workers with an electric jackhammer, 20 buckets, and you supervising can probably move 300-400 cubic feet of dirt in a week.