Ditching job

[fishdrivel]

The property owners is going to have us build an earthen berm behind their stone grist mill to help redirect future flood waters. My plan is to use tractor with high cap loader bucket to shuttle dirt about 1/2 mile to earthen berm

I'm going to give a couple of unsolicited recommendations.
1) talk to your insurance agent. Drainage and redirecting are 2 of the easiest ways to end up in court. If water floods a field it is an act of God. If the redirected water floods anything, that is a liability.
2)consider a road grader. It will make quick, clean work out of this.
3)I have watched many a time, a contractor carrying a bucket-load at a time. Tremendous waste of time! Load the soil into a truck or even an earthmover? Time your drive route x 2, calculate soil to be moved and yards per bucket.

 

[crashz]

If your renting, get a bit bigger machine. 15ft of workable reach is more like an 8-10 ton machine. Bigger will make it easier. Especially if you work from one side only.

Definitely think about a track truck / off-road dump. We have had a few jobs lately where we would use a 3.5CY frontend loader to shuttle material short distances and its brutally slow. Not to mention, sloppy. Loading a loader bucket with an excavator is good in theory, but only small quantities.

 

[Hay Dude]

I would consider renting a dump truck to do the half mile run. Contact a local dump truck/gravel company and see how much to rent a solo truck and driver by the hour. It would save a lot of wear and tear on your machine. When I retired, I think a solo was $125 and a truck and pup was $150 but you could load the crap out of them with no scales or road travel to worry about.

A street dump truck? It would get stuck. Fields are mushy until June and even then it’s risky. Even empty it would get stuck. The water table is very high with the river nearby.

One of the off road dumps wouldnt get stuck, but would it be worth another $3000 for a week rental versus using my farm tractor for “free” and taking longer?

 

[Hay Dude]

Is the large amount of vegetation going to be an issue?

Great question. Better to do a pass with mostly vegetation, then do a deeper pass mostly dirt? That would take longer.
Or pile dirt near berm, wait a year or 2 and come back to build berm? Berm is part of the job, but it could be worded that it would be built once spoil pile vegetation degrades?

 

[fishdrivel]

Great question. Better to do a pass with mostly vegetation, then do a deeper pass mostly dirt? That would take longer.
Or pile dirt near berm, wait a year or 2 and come back to build berm? Berm is part of the job, but it could be worded that it would be built once spoil pile vegetation degrades?

Your spoil pile vegetation would grow. Take 2 passes.

Build a house at the jobsite. You will be there for a long time driving that tractor back and forth!

 

[Hay Dude]

So the tractor travel time is a concern, but I will say the tractor can cover the 1/2 mile pretty fast. It’ll go 15+ no problem with a full bucket and Kubota shockless ride control turned on. Faster on empty return trip.
The customers driveway is stone and we can use it for about 75% of the travel distance from ditch to spoil pile or berm.
The problem is what the mini ex operator does while waiting for the tractor to make its round trip, which I calculate to be about 5-7 minutes.

 

[ovrszd]

Whats the purpose of the berm?

 

[ovrszd]

So the tractor travel time is a concern, but I will say the tractor can cover the 1/2 mile pretty fast. It’ll go 15+ no problem with a full bucket and Kubota shockless ride control turned on.
The customers driveway is stone and we can use it for about 75% of the travel distance from ditch to spoil pile or berm.
The problem is what the mini ex operator does while waiting for the tractor to make its round trip, which I calculate to be about 5-7 minutes.

Round up and say a trip every 12 minutes. 2 cubic yards at a time. 10 cubic yards per hour. That's a dump truck load every 90 minutes. That's painful to even say.

 

[Hay Dude]

I could keep ditching, accumulate a small pile and the tractor/loader operator could scoop it, but more messy than one bucket dumping into the other.

 

[ovrszd]

A dump truck load every 80 minutes.

 

[crashz]

Your excavator should continue to ditch and throw it up-stream as he goes. Never stop moving that machine. He can build piles in the ditch ahead of himself to load into the bucket (truck!). Keep working the far edge and pull the piles to the near edge.

What about a hay wagon or manure spreader? You you load a spreader (I know nothing about these btw) and use it like a walking floor dump trailer? Trying to think outside the box a little.

 

[fishdrivel]

So the tractor travel time is a concern, but I will say the tractor can cover the 1/2 mile pretty fast. It’ll go 15+ no problem with a full bucket and Kubota shockless ride control turned on.
The customers driveway is stone and we can use it for about 75% of the travel distance from ditch to spoil pile or berm.
The problem is what the mini ex operator does while waiting for the tractor to make its round trip, which I calculate to be about 5-7 minutes.

What about the dirt spilled on stone driveway?
Are you going to travel fast with a full bucket?

One of the things I taught my young contractor friends is to do the math. It is not terribly hard to calculate the soil removed which will be at least 10% more in the bucket. You won't have a full bucket either. Take your tractor and time loading, travel, dumping, returning. Do the math. It may surprise you.

Go find a contractor. Ask him for a bid for the work.
Might get a surprise!

 

[Hay Dude]

Your excavator should continue to ditch and throw it up-stream as he goes. Never stop moving that machine. He can build piles in the ditch ahead of himself to load into the bucket (truck!). Keep working the far edge and pull the piles to the near edge.

What about a hay wagon or manure spreader? You you load a spreader (I know nothing about these btw) and use it like a walking floor dump trailer? Trying to think outside the box a little.

Yeah cool ideas, but a spreader has beaters that would throw spoil and make a mess.

**Thinking about a dump trailer behind my AG tractor?**

fishdrible: I did a “time scenario” and figure it’ll take 15-20 minutes from ditching 3 buckets into loader bucket, driving loader to spoil pile and returning. So that’s only 3-4 loader buckets per hour, or 24-32 loader buckets per 8 hour day. Or 120-160 loader buckets in a week.

 

[crashz]

This may be a stupid idea as well, but it did work for an addition that was built in a tight area. My father dug a foundation for a friend and the friend wanted to use the fill in the back of his lot. The run was too long for a loader, to rough and soggy for a 10 wheeler, but the friend a had a 4x4 1-ton dump. We had two. So with an army of 1-ton dump trucks, we moved about 350CY of soil in a couple days. They were a little overloaded, but it worked.

 

[fishdrivel]

Yeah cool ideas, but a spreader has beaters that would throw spoil and make a mess.

**Thinking about a dump trailer behind my AG tractor?**

fishdrible: I did a “time scenario” and figure it’ll take 15-20 minutes from ditching 3 buckets into loader bucket, driving loader to spoil pile and returning. So that’s only 3-4 loader buckets per hour, or 24-32 loader buckets per 8 hour day. Or 120-160 loader buckets in a week.

You are going to be very tired!

 

[crashz]

I figured a manure spreader was more complicated that a simple chain conveyor.

Yeah, That big Kubota should tow quite a trailer. Something with float tires would be best so that you don't sink it when loaded and tear up the ground when turning.

 

[Hay Dude]

You are going to be very tired!

That’s actually an easy day compared to most. Probably more stressful than physically tiring, but yeah.

 

[Hay Dude]

I figured a manure spreader was more complicated that a simple chain conveyor.

Yeah, That big Kubota should tow quite a trailer. Something with float tires would be best so that you don't sink it when loaded and tear up the ground when turning.

I could rent mats, but we’d need so many it would get real costly.

 

[fishdrivel]

I figured a manure spreader was more complicated that a simple chain conveyor.

Yeah, That big Kubota should tow quite a trailer. Something with float tires would be best so that you don't sink it when loaded and tear up the ground when turning.

Will not be able to drive very fast with a loaded trailer behind the tractor.

 

[Hay Dude]

Looks perfect size, low compaction, but slow looking