Moving Dirt

[EddieWalker]

For the last week or so, I've been moving dirt. First I had to take out some trees, then build up a nice pile of dirt. This dirt is for building up low areas where my roads are going in. I have one particular spot that is very low that I need to fill in.

Yesterday, my Mom and the kids climbed the hill. The kids love playing on it and Mom got a kick out of watching them. Steph heard there squeels and laughter, so she decided to take some pictures of them, and then some of me working.

First picture is of what's left of the hill after a week of hauling dirt from it. My Mom and son are on top of it.

Second picture shows my daughter and son sliding down the side of the hill where I'm not working. They are not allowed to go anywhere close to that part of the hill. Friday night is pizza night, so the kids took the pizza boxes to use as sleds.

Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

Steph took these pictures and I thought they were kind of interesting. She was standing on top of the hill for some of them and on the ground for others, which gives them a slightly different perspective.

First picture is of me in my dump truck driving up to the dirt hill. The trees on the ground are seperated by species and burn piles. In the distance are my cedars, on the left are a few good oaks, on the right is one of my burn piles, and up front is a mixed mess of debri mixed with dirt.

Second picture shows me on my backhoe. I've parked the dump truck and now I'm getting a bucket of dirt. My loader holds 1.13 yards.

Third picture shows me dumping the dirt into the dump truck. This is one of those great shots that she caught.

Fourth picture is from the ground and shows me dumping another bucket full of dirt from ground level.

Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

My dumptruck has a five yard bed, but with the 2x10 sideboards, I can get another yard in there for six yards per load.

First picture is of my dumptruck with a load of dirt on the way to the low area.

Second picture shows my dump piles in the low area. It's very difficult to show, but towards the middle of the piles on the left hand side is where the road will eventually be. You can see to the right how much more I need to build it up. I have three 20 foot culverts connected end to end across the bottom of this area. This used to be a major drainage area on my land. With the lake, my pond and the changes I've made in creating my pasture, there isn't very much water that goes this way anymore.

Third pictures shows me backing up into position.

Fourth picture shows me dumping the load.

Once I get about a thousand yards there, I'll take the dozer and start spreading and shaping. We've also been getting small amounts or rain every few days, so that will help with compaction.

Eddie

 

[ultrarunner]

Eddie, are you doing anything special to compact the dirt for the road?

 

[Doc_Bob]

Great pics. Wish I had a dump truck. And a TLB.
Bob

 

[Thomas]

Mornin Eddie.
I gotta say it...That ain't working...good equipment,clean dirt pile,cool temps good way to spend the day.

 

[EddieWalker]

Hey Curt,

Compaction is always a concern for me when building up an area. Building pads are the most important, but roads need it too. This is a long term project and since I wont be paving over it any time soon, this is my plan.

I'm putting down the dirt over a wide area. Then I'll spread it out with the dozer. It weighs 40,000 pounds, but since it's on tracks, it's not very good at compaction. After I spread out the dirt and make it flat, I'll continue to build it up by driving the dump truck over it with a full load. My guess is that another hundred trips over the first layer with the tires always making new tracks will really help with compaction. But I also realize it wont get it all the way either.

Then I'll spread the next layer out with the dozer, and start building up the third layer. This should be the last layer. The lowest spot will need to come up about ten feet, give or take a foot, so there's a massive amoutn of dirt that I'll need. If it takes a fourth layer, than I'll just keep repeating the process.

This road is the entrance to my long term sites that I'm working on. It will be driven over constantly with all sorts of equipment. By the time I'm ready to pave it, I should be well past any compaction issues.

Eddie

 

[Birdhunter1]

Not to ruin the childs fun Eddie but them playing on that dirt pile is aweful dangerous. I've herad several stories of truck drivers getting out of the truck next to the limestone pile only to have the piles slide and suffocate them. If that dirt pile slid your child could be buried and you'd have no clue.

 

[Renze]

I agree with Birdhunter, i can hear my mother tell me every few years or so, about when she was 4 years old and she played with other kids at an excavation site, when the vertical wall of dirt, collapsed and covered her. one of the older girls, about 10 years old, kept her mind clear and dug away the dirt around my mothers face so she could breathe.
then she ran to the farm to call the farmer, to dig my mother out.
It's just funny when you think about it, if that 10 year old girl freaked out like the other kids and ran away (most kids would do) my mother would have sufficated and i wouldnt be here either...

 

[mike69440]

Consider it only a suggestion.

Also you might want to knock down the "Cliffs" on the pole and check out the pile before you let the kids play with supervision.

PS, that dirt looks like real easy digging. Want some Ledge?

 

[EddieWalker]

What's "ledge?" I've never heard the term used for anything other than the side of a cliff.

Eddie

 

[mike69440]

On average, if you dig down less than 5-6' in New Hampshire, you hit ledge. Some parts of the state the ledge is bare exposed Rock. Other parts the rock is very deep from 10,000 years of erosion and is covered with till. The Ice Age glaciers ripped the loose rock and topsoil off mountains, down to solid ledge. I am sitting on a 600 to 900 ft thick piece of granite. I will be spending over $10,000 to harvest a 50' X120' X 8' deep piece of rock to be blasted into useable sized chunks to furnish 1000 to 1200 Cu Yds of road building material.

Also left over will be a lot of "Landscaping rocks"

 

[EddieWalker]

It sure is different there than here. So far I've found one rock too big for me to pick up by hand. I have something called iron ore that is like crumbly concrete with small rocks in it. Lots of small pebbles and the ocasional rock that might be fist sized. I think I've come across half a dozen that big in four years!!! Mostly it's all clay. Red clay on top, then it's changes colors depending on what part of my land your on. The trees tell the story the best. Pine trees are where the grey clay is under the red clay. The oaks and broadleaf trees are where you find yellow clay under the red clay. In the creek botoms and flood plane, you find brown clay under the red stuff. Did I mention there is lots of red clay here? hahahaha

Thanks for the explination. If I had rock, or "ledge" to deal with, I don't think I could do very much with the land. It would be just too much effort and expense. Clay is nice because it digs real easy, but compacts just as easy and holds it shape really good. If I build up the land for a road, it stays there.

The Army built up those shooting positions for the rifle range in 1942. The biggest one is still there in almost perfect condition. It's 600 feet long, 20 feet wide across the top and at one point, it's 45 feet in the air. After 64 years of all sorts of weather, tropical storms and hurricanes, there is almost no evidence of erosion!!! I love clay. hahahaha

Eddie

 

[3RRL]

Eddie,
Very interesting. That's got to be a great feeling to have Mom and Steph and the kids out there when you are working. That red dirt and those green trees make for a beautiful contrast. Great photos man....life is good.

 

[jinman]

Eddie, how did you get that pile of dirt so high? It seems to be much higher than your loader's bucket. Did you push up the pile with the dozer?

 

[Dargo]

When I dug my lake, about 2 acres, I had to excavate and move about 23,000 cubic yards of dirt. I just had a low spot and a natural spring that kept that spot wet year round so I decided to quit fighting it and just put in a lake. Anyway, building my lake really just consisted of digging a huge 2 acre hole in the ground; except for the island my wife wanted. My deepest point is 21', and I have an average depth of 6.5'; so I have relatively steep sides to prevent weed growth.

The first dump truck I had was an old single axle with a 5.5 yard bed on it. It was a '67 chevy with a 327ci engine in it. Man, it was honestly a beast! With a heaping load on it I could easily spin the tires backing up the hill to dump! I flat wore it out, painted it with a roller and some Rural King equipment paint and got every dollar back out of it due to it's strong running engine. It only had 12k miles on it when I bought it at an auction from an estate of a farmer who'd died. I replaced it with a newer tandem axle dump with a 11 yard bed on it. It was nicer for being able to haul more, but it did not have near the power and would not back up some of the hills with a load.

I also put over 2000 hours on a Cat 955 high lift in the 3 years I worked on the lake. I had several issues I had to repair myself; usually as it sat in 6" of water in the bottom of the lake. You know, like having to drop the belly pan to get to the front hydraulic pump etc. Anyway, I only got it stuck once, and that sucked, when I was digging the lake. I ended up renting a JD 790 excavator and an additional tandem axle truck for 2 weeks and hiring my dad and brother in law to drive them to finish my lake and get the depth I wanted. Other than that 2 week time period, I was the sole worker on the project. I suppose that is why it took me 3 years working after work.

How big is your lake going to be? From your pics it appears as if your lake will be larger but not as deep? It must be nice digging in dry soil and not wet clay being constantly fed by a spring. I'm jealous!

 

[have_blue]

When I dug my lake, about 2 acres, I had to excavate and move about 23,000 cubic yards of dirt. ... I suppose that is why it took me 3 years working after work.

Sounds like my situation. I've been working on my 1.5a pond for 4 years. My dirt gets so hard that the dozer blade (JD650H) won't even cut it. All it does is shine it up. Oh well, I just got 7" of rain, so I can dig easily again.

 

[EddieWalker]

Rob,

Thanks. It was a nice suprise to see my Mom up on the hill playing with the kids. She's in her 60's now and likes to pretend she's an old woman, but then she pulls a stunt like this and climbs up there for several hours and her complaints about her age sort of disapear. hahahaha

Jim,

My Dad just loves to run the dozer, unfortunatly, his skills with a blade limit what I'll let him do. Knocking over trees or digging dirt piles are two projects well whithin his comfort range. This mound of dirt was 600 feet long, but only about ten feet tall. There was some evidience of others in the past taking some of it, but that had to be around 20 years ago by the age of the trees that had grown over it. While I was hauling dirt out of my lake with the dump truck and TLB, I had my dad take out those trees with the dozer. We seperate them into piles depending on there usefullness, value and east of burning. Once that was done, he started digging and building up the pile with the dozer. Sorry, but I didn't get any pictures of it. He didn't finish and there's still a pretty good amount of dirt still to move, so maybe when Ron gets here, I'll see if he wants to run the dozer and move some dirt!!!!

Dargo,

I never realized you spent three years building your lake. I don rembember some of your posts about breaking down and having to work on it while in the water and how cold it was out. In fact, that's one of the thoughts that always run through my mind when I hit a wet spot and have that instant panic attack that I really screwed up, just before I break free. I've been stuck one time with the dozer and hope to never, ever repeat the experience.

I never calculated how much dirt I moved on my lake since most of it was with the dozer. Back and forth with the dozer as I dug it and built up the dam. The dam is over 900 feet long and much wider than it needs to be. For me, it was important for the dam to look as natural as possible with gently slopes and sort of wander along the waters edge.

My surface area calculated to 4.3 acres with a max depth of 12 feet with the rest of it at 8 feet except for a few shallow areas I put in for plants to grow and fish to spawn.

This project is related to the lake as it will be part of a funnel I'm createing by clearing a pasture and changing the slope and drainage. The dirt pile was a large berm the army built that went across where my pasture is. It also sent water off to the side of my land and away from where I can use the run off to add water to my lake.

Bob,

The first dozer I had out here was a JD450 G that I'd run for a local contractor. He mostly does house pads and private road repairs, so the small dozer is handy for it's ease of getting around to job sites. It was also totally useless for land clearing and digging in clay. It was too light and underpowered to break the surface of hard clay and could only smooth out alread dug material. I did just like you described with it. Push the blade down and slide along the top of the surface leaving a nice shiny trail behind me without digging out any dirt. Even when tilting the blade, the corners would catch and spin it on it's tracks before doing any digging.

When I decided to buy a dozer, I wanted one with over 100 hp as I figures that would be large enough to do what I wanted. Of course, like I'm sure you know, to find one in half decent shape will cost allot of money. I kept looking at bigger and bigger machines that were older and older until I came across the one I bought. At 40,000 pounds and 168 hp, it's got enough size to do what I want it to. I still have problems digging on occasion and have to really take a much smaller cut, or hit the ground from a differnt angle or direction to get a particularlly hard spot. My Dad had this happen while digging out the dirt pile in this thread. He doesn't have the patience or ability to finese the blade, so he gave up and used the backhoe to break up that really hard area.

I've seen pictures you've posted of your dozer and would just love to operate something that nice. It must be a dream to have a cab on it to be comfortable, and know that it wont' break down on you at least once a week. hahaha

7 inches is about what I got all summer. We received 1 1/2 inches from that storm over the weekend, but could see on the radar how heavy it was for you guys. You must have been dead center in the middle of that one!!!!

Luckily that storm was enough for the county to lift the burn ban, so now I'll be able to start burning some of those trees in the pictures, plus my other burn piles.

Eddie

 

[Tim_in_IA]

Eddie that picture with the kids sliding down the pile is worth 1000 words! Oh and you have a headlight out on the truck

 

[have_blue]

Rob,
across the one I bought. At 40,000 pounds and 168 hp, it's got enough size to do what I want it to.

Hey Eddie,

Man, I would LOVE to sit on a big dozer like yours! The little JD is 21,000 pounds and 90hp. I thought the short blade (104") would be great for digging the hard baked stuff, but no go! If I start a groove and get down past the crust, I can really move some dirt. But because the pond is a hole in the ground, I have to keep it sloped so I can keep it pumped out.

That's some beautiful red dirt. Mine is sort of uh, calico. If I had a sheer vertical face of dirt that high, it would surely collapse!