Dirt Scoop

[J_J]

Circular pond of 200 ft diameter. 20 ft deep in center. Cone shape.

So if the radius of a pond was 100 ft, and the center was 20 ft deep, then the volume would be 628,000 cu ft, divided by 27 for cu yds, = 23259 cu yds, divided by 3 = 7753 cu yds. The other pond volume was 9614 cu yds. Still would take a long time.

 

[Verticaltrx]

I would say that the majority of ponds (at least the 6 we've built) are built by building a dam across a low area or small valley. Far fewer cubic yards of soil to move that way versus digging a big pit in the ground. I guess in some parts of the country that's not very feasible however.

Regardless, here are a couple examples of ponds built with small dirt scoops, as shown by two of the major mfg's of the time:

Ferguson soil scoop:
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a379/ploughNman/FERSCP03.jpg

Dearborn soil scoop:
1st page:http://www.ntractorclub.com/eds_stuff/ford%20tractors/Miscellaneous%20iNfo/ad%20brochure%20-%201951%20-%20'Power%20for%20Production'/page%2006%20-%20how%20it%20can%20be%20used.jpg
2nd page:
http://www.ntractorclub.com/eds_stuff/ford%20tractors/Miscellaneous%20iNfo/ad%20brochure%20-%201951%20-%20'Power%20for%20Production'/page%2007%20-%20how%20it%20can%20be%20used.jpg

I don't currently have a dirt scoop but I would like to get one eventually. It would be nice to use in tandem with my FEL when transporting material a long distance.

 

[rtimgray]

Verticaltrx-you beat me to it. I echo your comment. I'm sure that there are ponds that are completely dug in low spots, but most of them that I have seen consist of digging a little and piling it up across a low spot in a valley (or "holler") so that it will contain runoff water. On the right location, you could easily create a 2 acre pond and probably not move 1/4 to 1/2 the dirt necessary to dig it completely.

 

[Dargo]

A pond 208 x 208, or 1 acre, at 6 ft deep, contains about 259584 cu ft of dirt, or 9614.22 cu yds. Using a 1 yd scoop, at 1 scoop every 15 min, 4 yds per hour, 8 hr day, = 32yds per day. This operation will take about 300 days to complete.

My roughly 2 acre pond required moving just over 70,000 cubic yards of dirt an average distance of 800 feet. The slip scoop I had was made by Ferguson and the old tag on it said 1/10 cubic yard. So, based on your earlier calculations, a guy would move closer to 3.5 cubic yards of dirt in a long day. Assuming no bad weather, that would take about 20,000 days of work (bad weather would slow production during that day). At that rate, if a guy worked 8 hours per day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks per year and never took off any, he'd finish the pond I have in about 55 years. Remember, that doesn't count the grading work done with the 70,000 cubic yards of dirt moved either. That would take another few years of work.

Also, as all along, being realistic, one tractor would likely not be up for the task; especially without being able to miss a single day of work. To make any progress at all in digging a ditch with the one I had, I had to plow the area to be scooped first. I still have the old plow. It's a 2 bottom 14" plow and I was using my father in law's 8n tractor at the time.

When I got serious and dug my pond with the appropriate equipment, without any doubt, 1 full square yard of the heavy clay soil weighed right at 3000 pounds. If you could fit a 1 yard scoop on an 8n, I just can't imagine it being able to handle that weight either. Once into the wet clay, I'd say that much weight would get the tractor stuck every load, destroy the hydraulics on the tractor and get a guy dizzy running circles around the pond trying to climb out since power would also be an issue.

As I've said all along; most anything is possible. However, using the correct tool for the job makes all the difference in the world. So, yes, technically if a fella had a fleet of tractors, he could dig my pond in about one full lifetime. Again, being realistic, I seriously doubt any guy would spend his entire life digging a pond. He'd have no life, no family, have to be independently rich (not able to work and have to keep fixing tractors and buying replacement tractors) and one healthy fella. If that's your sole mission in life, have at it. Be sure to post pictures of all the progress.

 

[J_J]

I agree with you. I have two scoops, but I don't think I will try and dig a pond with my tractor. I had a deal for a pond, trading the dirt removed for the labor in digging the pond. but guy retired.

 

[Verticaltrx]

My roughly 2 acre pond required moving just over 70,000 cubic yards of dirt an average distance of 800 feet. The slip scoop I had was made by Ferguson and the old tag on it said 1/10 cubic yard. So, based on your earlier calculations, a guy would move closer to 3.5 cubic yards of dirt in a long day. Assuming no bad weather, that would take about 20,000 days of work (bad weather would slow production during that day). At that rate, if a guy worked 8 hours per day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks per year and never took off any, he'd finish the pond I have in about 55 years. Remember, that doesn't count the grading work done with the 70,000 cubic yards of dirt moved either. That would take another few years of work.

Also, as all along, being realistic, one tractor would likely not be up for the task; especially without being able to miss a single day of work. To make any progress at all in digging a ditch with the one I had, I had to plow the area to be scooped first. I still have the old plow. It's a 2 bottom 14" plow and I was using my father in law's 8n tractor at the time.

When I got serious and dug my pond with the appropriate equipment, without any doubt, 1 full square yard of the heavy clay soil weighed right at 3000 pounds. If you could fit a 1 yard scoop on an 8n, I just can't imagine it being able to handle that weight either. Once into the wet clay, I'd say that much weight would get the tractor stuck every load, destroy the hydraulics on the tractor and get a guy dizzy running circles around the pond trying to climb out since power would also be an issue.

As I've said all along; most anything is possible. However, using the correct tool for the job makes all the difference in the world. So, yes, technically if a fella had a fleet of tractors, he could dig my pond in about one full lifetime. Again, being realistic, I seriously doubt any guy would spend his entire life digging a pond. He'd have no life, no family, have to be independently rich (not able to work and have to keep fixing tractors and buying replacement tractors) and one healthy fella. If that's your sole mission in life, have at it. Be sure to post pictures of all the progress.

As I stated before, just because your pond required that much soil to be moved does not mean they all do. The most recent pond we built on our farm is 2ac and 26' deep at the dam. It was built in a valley and only required about 10,000 yards of soil to be moved. That is still a lot, and I would not want to move that much with a tractor scoop. Every project is different and you can't apply such broad generalizations to what can and can not be done. BTW, the heaped capacity on most dirt scoops is around 7cu. ft. or 1/4 yd.

 

[clemsonfor]

My roughly 2 acre pond required moving just over 70,000 cubic yards of dirt an average distance of 800 feet. The slip scoop I had was made by Ferguson and the old tag on it said 1/10 cubic yard. So, based on your earlier calculations, a guy would move closer to 3.5 cubic yards of dirt in a long day. Assuming no bad weather, that would take about 20,000 days of work (bad weather would slow production during that day). At that rate, if a guy worked 8 hours per day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks per year and never took off any, he'd finish the pond I have in about 55 years. Remember, that doesn't count the grading work done with the 70,000 cubic yards of dirt moved either. That would take another few years of work.

Also, as all along, being realistic, one tractor would likely not be up for the task; especially without being able to miss a single day of work. To make any progress at all in digging a ditch with the one I had, I had to plow the area to be scooped first. I still have the old plow. It's a 2 bottom 14" plow and I was using my father in law's 8n tractor at the time.

When I got serious and dug my pond with the appropriate equipment, without any doubt, 1 full square yard of the heavy clay soil weighed right at 3000 pounds. If you could fit a 1 yard scoop on an 8n, I just can't imagine it being able to handle that weight either. Once into the wet clay, I'd say that much weight would get the tractor stuck every load, destroy the hydraulics on the tractor and get a guy dizzy running circles around the pond trying to climb out since power would also be an issue.

As I've said all along; most anything is possible. However, using the correct tool for the job makes all the difference in the world. So, yes, technically if a fella had a fleet of tractors, he could dig my pond in about one full lifetime. Again, being realistic, I seriously doubt any guy would spend his entire life digging a pond. He'd have no life, no family, have to be independently rich (not able to work and have to keep fixing tractors and buying replacement tractors) and one healthy fella. If that's your sole mission in life, have at it. Be sure to post pictures of all the progress.

Come on everyone knows farmers work more like 12-14 hours so that 55years would be closer to 30 years to finish. :laughing:

 

[Dargo]

BTW, the heaped capacity on most dirt scoops is around 7cu. ft. or 1/4 yd.

"According to the 1980 edition of Architectural Graphics Standards, clay that is damp earthen mud with good clay content weighs 115 pounds per cu. ft.".

Any scoop that big is going to weigh several hundred pounds itself. Just how long do you think a smallish, 20 something hp, old tractor will handle about a thousand pounds per scoop?? According to most literature, an old 8n tractor (when NEW) had a 3 pt lift capacity of about 800 to 1000 pounds.

Again, it's just these numbers and facts that keep getting in the way. I'm all for making do with what you have, but I'm also all for not destroying what you have by trying to make it do what it was never designed to do. Besides father time, physics my friend, physics.

If you haven't figured it out, I spent years trying to figure out how to build a decent sized pond without simply wasting time or destroying equipment. The name "pond scoop" was derived from it's ability to dig a divot in the ground big enough to water cattle etc. If you want to prove me wrong, have at it. Get you whatever size scoop you think is made and start digging. Take pictures for all of us as you do it. I doubt any of us would still be alive by the time a nice 2 acre lake with an average depth of 7' is done. That is the size of my pond and that is what some here are saying can be dug with a slip scoop. It just ain't happening. As I said, those numbers and math just get in the way.

 

[3gun]

We are off topic, but let me try; using the pond I dug as an example.

100 feet x 70 feet x 4 feet* = 28000 yards of dirt

*The pond is mostly 5 to 6 feet deep but the sides are sloped and the pond is an oval not a rectangle so we will call it an average of 4 feet.

I have the large KK scoop, that is about 36 x 12, but I can pile dirt up well past the top, so I guesstimate its 1/2 yard per load.

So 28000 yards dirt x 2 scoops per yard = 56000 dirt scoop loads.

How fast I could dump a load varied depending mostly on how far from the pond I dumped it. Let's say 5 minutes average.

So that's 56000 loads x 5 minutes = 280000 minutes divided by 60 = 4666.6 hours.

If I made a math mistake, witch is possible, please point it out.

I have less then 400 hours total on my L3400.

The pond has been, sitting there with between 4 and 5 foot of water in it for a year, it was dug with a pond scoop by me working on weekends and occasionally a few hours after work in less then two months.

I do not know why but all of our math estimates are way way off.

I would not try to dig a pond the size of Dargo's, but based on my first hand experience digging my small pond, digging a pond 4 or 5 times the size of my small pond in a reasonable amount of time would be far from impossible.

 

[crashz]

Yes - you made a math mistake. You calculated the volume of soil removed in cubic feet, but called it cubic yards. Take the 28,000 cuft and divide by 27 (cuft/cuyd) and you have 1037 cubic yards of soil.

Assuming your scoop is 36" wide (3 ft), 24" deep (2 ft) and has 12" sides (1 ft), it has a struck capacity of 6 cubic feet or 0.222 cubic yards. 1037 cuyd/ 0.222 cuyd = 4672 loads

BTW - the weight of a full scoop (struck, not mounded) assuming a density of 112 lbs per cubic foot (= 3000lbs / cubic yard) is 667 lbs.

Assumed 5 min per load = 23356 mins or 389.3 hours.

With the assumtions above, I'm assuming all you have done with you Kubota is dig a pond! Actually with all of the assumptions above, this estimate is really rough. Obviously a small change in cycle time will have a dramatic effect on soil moved or hours expended.

 

[3gun]

Thanks crashz, with my mistakes corrected the math estimate is much closer to the approximately 75 hours I spent digging this pond.

After giving it some more thought there are a lot of variables I did not take in to account in estimating the amount of dirt that I moved, one was that The pond was dug in a low spot, I used a lot of the dirt to build up the ground around it, so about one foot of depth was achieved by rising the ground not digging deeper. Also the rounded shape of the pond likely lowered the amount of dirt removed more then I estimated.

Probably underestimated the amount of dirt moved per scoop, The first two feet or so of dirt was full of organic matter, very light and easily piled high in the scoop, so about 30% of the scoops were almost a full yard.

I still believe digging a good size pond is possible with a pond scoop, but its going to take some time.

Let me try again.

7890 SQ. FEET* x 3 feet** = 23670 cu. Feet divided by 27 = 876 cu. Yards

* Found real area using online tool.

**The pond is mostly 5 feet deep but the sides are sloped and the ground was built up about 1 foot so we will call it an average of 3 feet.

I have the large KK scoop, that is about 36 x 12, but I can pile dirt up well past the top, so I guesstimate its three quarters of a yard per load.

So 876 yards dirt divided by .75 cu yards = 1168 dirt scoop loads.

How fast I could dump a load varied depending mostly on how far from the pond I dumped it. Let’s say 4 minutes average.

So that’s 876 loads x 4 minutes = 4672 minutes average divided by 60 = 78 hours.

Now it works

 

[djradz]

I think the larger KK dirt scoop is only 30" wide and yes, about 36" long. As you note, you can however pile it higher than the 12" sides. Therefore, I think your estimate for how much you can move per load is high. With mine, I always figured I was moving something closer to 1/4 of a yard per load. There is no way you could have moved 3/4 of a yard (36 x 36 x 27) per load. Instead, I figure (heaped) I (and likely you) can move about (36 x 30 x 18) = 19,440 sq in or 42% of a yard per load.

Nonetheless, I'm still confident a small pond could be dug in a reasonable timeframe. Yes, a hoe or dragline would be much preferable, but I've seen some very substantial ponds dug here on TBN, with nothing more than an FEL. Again, someone could claim there is a better way, but I think in both the scoop and FEL cases, if the expectations are reasonable and suited to the task, over time, a substantial project could result.

 

[Dargo]

There is no way you could have moved 3/4 of a yard (36 x 36 x 27) per load.

Like I've said before, that math and physics get in the way. His tractor 3 pt. hitch could not pick up 3/4 yard of dirt even if the scoop weighed zero pounds. Like some others, I've now lost interest in making corrections. I'm certain the Hoover Dam could have been built with an 8n; at least based on some claims.

You guys can keep on figuring out how it can be done, but here are a few "problems" with digging an acre or two pond with a slip scoop:

- Nobody counts for any time to fill the scoop. In packed soil, this doesn't happen in zero time.

- Traction to fill scoop once soil is moist.

- Traction and additional power needed to climb out of hole dug

- Travel time to where the soil is to be dumped.

- Time to dump soil at new location

- Time to spread soil at new location

- Tremendous over estimates on amount of dirt that can be moved with a slip scraper in one day

- Down time for maintenance and repairs

- Replacement tractors for worn out tractors

- Gross underestimates of the weight of the dirt

- Rocks, roots and other obstructions that slow progress

- Shallow grades make for quick growth of weed, scum and highly susceptible to periods of drought

- etc., etc., etc; just call any professional excavator. Yup, for a pond a slip scoop beats a spade and wheelbarrow. Sort of like a bicycle beats walking across country, but flying in a jet sure beats that bicycle. Have fun guys and go at it. Trust me, I wanted a cheaper way and asked hundreds of people. That's how the math and physics thing got into the equation. I wasn't smart enough to figure out myself that, sure, some things can be done with the wrong tools; but at some point they just aren't worth doing. Good luck to ya. I'd offer to give you my scraper, but as I said earlier, I gave it away after I bought my first tractor with an FEL.

 

[Bluelick]

A very interesting conversation. One small point to add. When I had my pond built (1 acre, 14 feet max depth) it took two D6 dozers less than four days in rough terrain. The first day was one dozer just clearing trees. It was fun to watch. But that's just an aside.

What I learned in my research (and my interest in knowing the volume of the water impounded) was that a rule of thumb in figuring the volume of a pond is that the average depth is calculated as being about 40% of the maximum depth. If we used that figure, some of the volume numbers here for various sized ponds might be high.

I also learned, watching those two dozers, that the skill of the operators makes a big difference in how much dirt gets moved. They were very good, I've watched others. I also saw how two dozers well coordinated could move more than twice of what one could move. Almost a dance.

 

[J_J]

Cu yds is cu yds, and in a straight sided situation, the figures are correct, and a perfect cone shaped pond is correct. . The center depth tapering to the sides is hard to figure, because it probably is not a cone shape. The center of the pond may have a quarter of the pond flat and deep. Those scoops, even with stacking, probably will be no more than a third of a yard. A cu yd meaning 27 cu ft. Scoop bottom, 36 in x 36 in x 12 in equal 1/3 yd. A scoop and dump, in 4 min no way. Maybe if you take a running start and drop the scoop, lift and go dump. I think some of you are underestimating what volume is. It might be fun, but it ain't easy.

That pond at 14 ft deep with an avg of 40%, equals about 8972 cu yd of dirt.