Leveling land

[kacole]

I've got a few acres. About 7 or so that I need to level out . I need to move a fair amount of dirt from the top side to the bottom side. What do i need to do this. I've got a kubota mx5100. 50 hp tractor with a front end loader. I started off with a very cheap and half tore up box scrape and it wasn't very successful. I feel like I'm working myself to death. With the way its tore up i cant adjust my top link out far enough to make the rippers dig. It just rides along the top. I have access to a regular scrape blade. Should I go and get it? Should I buy HD box scrape? How much dirt can be moved with a box scrape without it being just painful ? Is there another implement I can buy ( without breaking the bank) that will do better

 

[Jchonline]

First, it is going to take a very long time with a tractor. Second, probably the best is a very heavy box blade (CAT2). You need to tear up the dirt, then drag it closer to the new location. How is the ground hardness this time of year? It may be easier when the ground is softer.

To make sure you are truly level, you need some type of transit or leveling device (I like lasers) to check your grade.

Ideally, you should probably have this done by the pros. Seven acres is a large area to level with a tractor.
If it were me, I would rent a tracked skid steer weight around 5 tons for the weekend and see how far I got. If not much further, hire it out. A dump truck, a big excavator, and a SS will make quick work of the job.

 

[bcp]

If you remove 1 foot from 3 acres, then place it on the 4 acres, that's a little less than 5000 cubic yards to move, if my math is correct.

Are you young enough to ever finish this job?

Bruce

 

[jeff9366]

A Box Blade is enclosed on three sides for transporting dirt short distances. This seems to be your tractor application. You would want a Box Blade 84" wide. If you do not have Two pairs of hydraulic ports at the rear of your tractor consider Rollover Box Blades. (ROBB)

A rear/angle blade is more for grading. It does not transport dirt quite as well. You would want a rear/angle blade eight feet wide.

Either will serve.

For moving dirt you want an implement with max pounds per unit of width, preferably Category II.

Moist soil is a lot easier to detach than dry soil.

 

[Oldoak]

------------------With the way its tore up i cant adjust my top link out far enough to make the rippers dig. It just rides along the top.-------------------

I would purchase a longer top link for more adjustment. Fairly cheap at Tractor Supply.

---------------------------------Ideally, you should probably have this done by the pros. Seven acres is a large area to level with a tractor. If it were me, I would rent a tracked skid steer weight around 5 tons for the weekend and see how far I got. If not much further, hire it out. A dump truck, a big excavator, and a SS will make quick work of the job.

I agree, but not entirely. I believe hiring the job out to someone with a bulldozer would be the best way to go. One day's work and done.

 

[kacole]

I am young but don't want to spend the rest of my life on it. Not in a huge hurry. Just being cheap I guess. If I could buy something and do it myself then I still got an implement out of it. Dirt is in pretty good shape as far as hardness goes. Not hard to run my grapple down into it 6" or so. May try to look into the bobcat rental.

 

[kacole]

Not even wanting it level perfectly. Just graded to a smooth slope

 

[Code54]

Rent a dozer - mostly not that bad for a weeks rental. No damage to your eqpt and done in no time - go back and dress it up with the tractor.

 

[countrybumpkin]

Buy a dirt pan if you really want to do it yourself.

Something like a small durabuilt would work good for your size tractor.

Product - Dirt Pan

 

[sixdogs]

I do this all the time. Get a rototiller and make two slow passes to make the dirt like potting soil. Then hire a guy with a bulldozer that's good and have him push things around and smooth it out. It will be over before you know it and leave lots of time to have fun doing other things.

 

[rangerfredbob]

I flattened out about 1.5 acres at my house a couple years ago, I just have a 26hp Kubota and old used implements that are mostly too big for the tractor... anyway, I have an old 8' wide I think pull disc and worked the whole area I wanted to smooth out then used my box scraper (no teeth, it's an old dump type, I don't use that function) to drag the dirt around from the high spots into the low spots. Now I'm extremely slowly working on my pond getting it deeper and easier to take care of, it dries out in the summer at this point and is only ~2' deep right now but when it was dry I used the disc then piled up the dirt with the scraper before moving it with the bucket.

 

[wcampbell47]

I've got a few acres. About 7 or so that I need to level out . I need to move a fair amount of dirt from the top side to the bottom side. What do i need to do this. I've got a kubota mx5100. 50 hp tractor with a front end loader. I started off with a very cheap and half tore up box scrape and it wasn't very successful. I feel like I'm working myself to death. With the way its tore up i cant adjust my top link out far enough to make the rippers dig. It just rides along the top. I have access to a regular scrape blade. Should I go and get it? Should I buy HD box scrape? How much dirt can be moved with a box scrape without it being just painful ? Is there another implement I can buy ( without breaking the bank) that will do better

I have done dirt work with tractors several years now. Two years ago bought a 60hp compact tracked loader. So much faster with the CTL. Before buying I rented one for the weekend to make sure I knew what I was doing. Rent something like a Kubota 75 hp which would work well. You could do all the heavy lifting with it and clean up with the tractor. I moved 15 truck loads dirt one hundred yards in one weekend. For smoothing and leveling with the tractor forget a box blade and go with a land plane. Far superior results.

 

[Egon]

Use the loader bucket. Work in narrow strips from high to low. Basically an end doze type situation.

If the area is worked up first and then on an ongoing basis the dirt will cut, push and spread much easier making it easier to spread and establish a grade.

If you really want a smooth even graded area get someone in with a Cat 16 grader.

 

[bdog]

You have left one key factor out of the problem. How much dirt are you wanting to move? You said “ I need to move a fair amount of dirt from the top side to the bottom side” How much higher is the top side than the bottom? If it is more than a few inches a 50 hp might take years to do it.

I am guessing your difference in elevation is several feet and you are wanting to move tens of thousands of yards of dirt likely 500’. This is a huge undertaking and you need more than a compact tractor. Depending on the distance you are moving the dirt you either need a dozer, a pan, or an excavator and dump trucks.

 

[TheMadOne]

If all you want to do is even out the slope, try a ratchet rake or a ROBB. If you actually want to flatten a hillside?

First things first, get a survey done to see what that would do to the runoff. 7 acres of grading is no joke. You may be on your way to making an accidental pond, or getting sued by a neighbor for ruining the area's drainage. After that, it's probably heavy equipment time. Dozers are designed to do basically what you want. For 7 acres and essentially destroying a hill I imagine an excavating company would break out the bigish guns. No D10s, but maybe a D7 or D8. That's the level of job you're asking about.

If you insist on doing it yourself, and with the MX, see if anyone makes a mini dirt pan. Then expect to work on it for a long time.

 

[jeff9366]

COMPACT TRACTORS AND DIRT PANS: https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums...craper-dirt-pan-towed.html?highlight=dirt+pan

 

[Overtaxed]

It's time for the big guns. 7ac is the size of a small subdivision. They cut them regularly around me and my area isn't that hilly, most of the land looks "pretty flat" before they start. I'm sure it's single digit feet from high to low point. And they typically have a huge Cat (D9/10) in there doing the work for a few days. It's a tremendous amount of dirt you're talking about. Just to help visualize it, I have an area that I had to rock in around my barn. The cleared area is about 200X150 with a 60X60 barn in the middle of it. They had to bring in 20 tri-axle dump truck loads of crush and run to make a dent in it. And it took a long time to spread out that much rock (which spreads real easy) with a 60HP tractor and an 8' box blade. Over the entire area, I might have 2-3in of stone. The area I was dealing with is orders of magnitude smaller than yours, the material didn't need to be "cut", my tractor and blade are bigger, and it was still a pretty darn big job (days of tractor work to get it nice and level). You're just not getting this done with a smaller tractor and any amount of time that's not on a geologic scale.

The only exception, if you're just looking to smooth out the area (NOT level it), that's a job I'd take on with a tractor. It'll still take a lot of time, but a good box blade or land plane with rippers, you could knock that out. But leveling it is a different story entirely, depending on how much fall you're trying to correct, you could literally be talking about 1000's of dump trucks of dirt. And you need to rip it all up and move it 100's of feet? Bulldozer. BIG bulldozer. That's the right tool for that job.

 

[MRCONCDID]

Its a time or money Question, short on time? = rent a dozier
Short on money?
I like to cut the ground with a couple of good passes with a hairer (disc) then load scrape up a full front bucket then drop the box blade, pull/haul as much as you can this way working in long straight lines. the full bucket will give you traction to pull more in the box blade if your 4x4.
So disc up a large area and haul that amount to the new location, then disc another you can work down the same amount based on what your disc will cut ( around 6 to 12 inches )
then use a land rake to really fine tune the grade of the land.

Keep in mind
Moving this much dirt, you may need to think about water run off, do you need to add a ditch?, a berm?, a swell? where is all the water going to go once the land has been moved?

Get some ear buds and listen to some tunes, this sounds like an great all weekend tractor job.
MrC.

 

[Tennsawdust]

That could easily be a huge job that would require commercial equipment. If you are only smoothing things out and think a tractor can do it then get a middle buster and use it to break up the dirt then move it with your loader. Your loader isn't really suited for heavy digging, but if you loosen it up it can move the dirt. As mentioned by others, a land plane is the ticket for leveling the ground after you get the dirt roughly where you want it.

 

[LouNY]

One thing no one has mentioned yet, if you scrape the top layers of dirt off the high ground and deposit it on your low ground.
You are taking your top soil and burying it, then you will be covering it up with sub soil. Unless all you desire is to grow weeds,
you actually need to row your top soil out of the way both on your high and low ground, move your subsoils to level then respread
your topsoils. By this time your ground will be so compacted it will need subsoiling and tillage to be plantable.
A large crawler or tractor with a dirt can would be the better way to go.