Excavation

[Larry950]

Cany anyone help with thoughts about doing my own excavation for 3 bedroom home on 9 Acres of pasture I have. Will be buying tractor for use in maintaining property for horses. Will need loader, mower, some tillage. I was thinking that possibly I could use tractor to excavate for the basement for my home. Any thoughts on tractor size and anyone done similar?

 

[BMW]

I'm thinking you will want to leave that to a professional unless you really know what you're doing. House foundation footers need to dug correctly (ie. square, level and all that crap) or you'll spend more money on concrete making it right than you'll save. At least around here building inspectors are pretty picky about stuff like that.

Later
Mark

 

[Climber]

Having just been through the house building process, I second what BMW said. The excavators came with a couple of cats, and had the whole thing done in one (long) day. The soil in my area is pretty rocky, and there is NO way a utility tractor could have done the job.

My advice would be to buy a tractor for what you want to do 95% of the time, and hire out the big jobs.

Good luck,

--Chris

 

[Tags]

If you have any experience on a machine, I would suggest renting a good size excavator, somewhere around a 28000lb class machine (that is generally deemed a 120,i.e. John Deere 120) that should do you just fine......but if you are not to "machine savvy" talk to people in your town and get some names of reputable excavation contractors.Hire them to do the "major" digging and backfilling and you do the smaller more time consuming jobs(drainage,landscaping,and utility trenches) A good compact tractor/tlb could handle all the smaller jobs just fine.

 

[frank_f15]

i will just add my recomendation that u follow the 3 post prior to mine./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[JimMorrissey]

Larry950,

The guys are right about the tractor. I know, cuz I tried it myself. It takes a loooong time to dig a hole big enough for a foundation. Personally, I would rent a excavator for a week or so if you feel you can pull it off, and save yourself some large $$. A JD120 is a big machine, but no more difficult than a smaller one to operate. I'm just about to rent a JD80 which is about 16,000lbs. My soils are easy to dig gravel and it should do just fine. If you have lots of large rocks, I'd say go with the 120 for a few more dollars. --Just make sure you do some research on site layout before you start to dig and potentially screw things up. It's not rocket science, but you do need to do some reading and talking to folks who have done it themselves before you start. Good Luck.

Jim

 

[Andyfr]

I'm with the others on this. When we built I had the philosophy that if I could do the job required to a better standard for less money and in a reasonable amount of time then I would do it, if not then get the pro's in. When we were pricing for jobs I got the contractor to come and have a look. We are on a steep and rocky site but he studied the terrain and then gave me a price. Even if I had been skilled in using the machine I wouldn't have done the job for that price. He got the job and we had no complaints at all about the work.

Regards