Leveling an area for an AG pool.

dsb5610 · Aug 6, 2006

5030tinkerer said:
Wow! I am AMAZED at the quality of that excavation work in your picture. That is near art quality.

How in the world did you ever get the sod out so incredibly cleanly?

5030tinkerer,

From that picture it looks like I drove the Toolcat in the yard and cut a level circle. Wish it was that easy.

I started by driving a stake in the ground, tied a 10' piece of construction line to it, walked in a circle spraying paint. Once I had the boundry marked
I shaved off the sod I could get with the Toolcat working from the lowest side and then used an edging tool (half-moon spade) to cut the edges of the circle. You can see some of the sod piled in a long row at the edge of the garden area behind the Toolcat. Then I did rough grading with the Toolcat.
Once the rough grade was cut I tilled the high areas, used the Toolcat to shave it off, till some more, shave and so on.

dsb

Farwell · Aug 6, 2006

Have you thought about getting a bunch of sand and set the pool up above the existing grade. That way no digging, just leveling and shaping the sand to the pool bottom. This may be cheaper than renting equipment to do the digging. Just a thought.
Farwell

MossRoad · Aug 6, 2006

Farwell said:
Have you thought about getting a bunch of sand and set the pool up above the existing grade. That way no digging, just leveling and shaping the sand to the pool bottom. This may be cheaper than renting equipment to do the digging. Just a thought.
Farwell

You can't leave any sod under the sand. It will do one of two things...
1. rot away and leave divots under the bottom of the pool where it collapses.
2. a woody root will try to grow up, as in, through, the liner.

AndyMA · Aug 7, 2006

I'll go back to the original question oviously knowing that it is rather late in this discussion. I have both 8' box blades and an old 8' rear blade. The rear blade cuts fine if you angle it properly and add some weight. Tie/Chain about 500-600 pounds of concrete or steel to it and you'll be suprosed how it cuts.

andy

bloody_peasant · Aug 28, 2006

Ok, thought I would give an update on how my work has went so far.

I finally got the pool and started some real work yesterday after a couple of false starts, a vacation, and several other projects creeping in. My kids are about to throttle me by now

This is pretty hard clay, not real unlevel, maybe 8" max from the high end is all I need to dig off, existing sod. I have a small MF 1010 (~1300lb) tractor, no additional weights, turf tires, 2WD (diff lock), and a 4' rear blade with no extra weights and no TNT.

I can report that I am having pretty good success, although its definitely taking me longer than if I had something with scarifiers or if I had a FEL

.

Yesterday in about 3 hours time I was able to scrap off all the remaining sod and excavate about 2.5 - 3 yards of dirt, load it up into my little trailer with my manual FEL (aka shovel) and fill in low spots around the yard.

I still have some leveling to do, but I think in another 3 hours or so I will be to the point where I will be fine tuning.

Things I have found out with this experiment:
1. A rear blade definitely can cut hard clay and remove/move a lot of soil. In fact I find traction to be my biggest limitation and I often have to lift the blade up after its dug in too deep.
2. I messed around with different tilts and found that just slightly more aggressive than pure vertical works great. Too aggressive digs in too deep for me and I sit and spin. Pure vertical doesn't dig in enough.
3. With the proper tilt I turn the blade at an angle and it cuts in at the one point as I turn and will actually flip the dirt almost like a plow. I've seen it dig in and flip dirt up to 2" thick on one pass. Anything deeper than that and I spin.
4. Dry soil is a lot easier than wet soil. I tried wetting the soil a couple of times before I went on vacation and had only marginal success. Yesterday I left it bone dry and had really good success. I think its a couple of things, when the clay is wet it is softer but it sticks more, but when dry it crumbles and breaks off. Also when dry I get better traction.