Need advice on landscaping task.

Gary_in_Indiana · Sep 28, 2004

I have a barn which was built as a stable and in it's last years of use the owners simply pushed what was inside on the floor out the doors. The good news is that it's long since composted completely. The bad news is that I now have to deal with the resulting problems. Here's what I have now.

The floor in what was the riding arena has been lowered and the areas outside of the two walls with the doors have been raised. The result is a drainage problem on a large scale.

To address this I started tearing through the sod (to use the term loosely) yesterday so that I might begin to move some of the dirt around and re-contour the ground around the building to create proper drainage.

As soon as I started with scarifiers ripping the ground I encountered problems. Apparently this building replace one that burned years ago and I found pieces of charred lumber, chunks of concrete, pieces of pipe, hurricane straps and all sorts of general garbage.

I certainly expected rocks and a few other items but this is way more than I ever thought I'd see. I'm looking for any suggestions as to how I might deal with all of this. Should I just waive the white flag and hire a bulldozer or is there something I can use to deal with this? I have a box blade, a subsoiler and a tiller but I'm afraid to even think about using my tiller in there for fear of what I might hit even after I tear it up with the other implements. What do you guys think?

Thanks in advance for your help with this one. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Junkman · Sep 28, 2004

Put on the tooth bar and go to work moving the mess. Stack it up in one corner and when you have time, drop it over a sifter made of chain link fencing. That should filter out most of the problems enough that you can re use the material. What come out of the pile, stack in another pile until you need some fill... then dig a hole and bury it and use the dirt that comes out of the hole to cover over the junk. If you don't have a tooth bar, you should.... best investment you will make since buying the tractor...

Henro · Sep 28, 2004

Gary,

After you get your first front flat, if you do, then consider foam filling the front tires. I was dealing with a lot of junk mixed with earth (much broken glass, and everything else you can imagine (no bathtub though) and it appears that the fronts puncture rather easily, while the rears in my case have not been a problem.

The guy where I got the fronts filled said fronts on tractors with loaders seem to puncture easily when running over unknown trash, for what that is worth... /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

If you have the time and interest to do it yourself, why not try and see how it goes. You can always throw in the towel if you start finding things under there that your tractor is not able to deal with...

I say go for it and then give up, rather than give up without trying first! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

SPIKER · Sep 28, 2004

I agree with Junkman & henro:

try it first with a good box blade with scarfers down, if you bend or damage the box blade some then you get some welding skills built up and if you don't have a welder then you have a GOOD excuse to get the CFO to let you buy one! /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif I would follow JM's advice on clearing the stuff. everything else being equal you may want to rent a bobcat with a ground grooming attachment, (forget its name looks like a pipe with a bunch of carbide spikes welded on and rotates opposite of the natural movement of the bobcat.) anyhow they will pulverize just about anythign and no worry about flats as it's probably already got filled tires for a rental machine...

Mark M /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Gary_in_Indiana · Sep 28, 2004

I like the idea of the chain link fence piece as a screen for some of this stuff. I was out there today and found electrical outlet boxes, door hinges, more chain and metal plates used to assemble engineered trusses along with some good sized pieces of lumber charred one at least one end or side. I'm guessing I've uncovered the remnants of an earlier building destroyed by fire.

I spent a couple hours this morning just using the scarifiers on my box blade with the top link as short as possible and determined one thing. This is a job requiring more than one person. Tomorrow I'm going to go over it again with a couple people following me picking things up that I unearth. I think that could be money very well spent as I don't know any other way to get this cleaned up other than manually.

Would something like a landscape rake be a tool to use before I resort to having someone follow me around? Since I don't have a CFO, I'm able to buy or rent one if I want to. I just don't know if it's the tool for the job or not. Any thoughts?

DannyD · Sep 28, 2004

This sounds like something I would love to get my backhoe into. I have pulled some pretty tough things out with it so far, and the seat time would be great.

aardvark · Sep 28, 2004

I'm not sure a landscape rake will pull up what you want. When I was using mine, it would pull small stuff along the ground real well, but the large items that were stuck in the ground (large branches, pieces of 4x4, etc) it would just climb over instead of dragging them along.

Junkman · Sep 28, 2004

( Since I don't have a CFO, I'm able to buy or rent one if I want to. )

If you like, I will send you mine.... you can have her for free, but there are no returns... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

A landscape rake isn't going to do this. It needs to be dug out with either a loader or a back hoe. Since you already have the loader, use it. If you don't have a tooth bar, I would make that purchase first. I believe that if you figure out where the edge of the problem area is, and work your way in from the edge, that you should be able to clean it up yourself. You might need to purchase some material to put back in its place, but that is going to cost a lot less than to have someone bring in a machine to do the work.

Gary_in_Indiana · Sep 30, 2004

'This sounds like soiething I would love to get my backhoe into. I have pulled some pretty tough things out with it so far, and the seat time would be great. " 

Danny,

If you look at my thread in the 'Ddere Owning/Operating' forum you%ll see that I just broke my trabtor today so you'd be mmre than welcome if you vant to make a rmad trip up I-69* I'll find out tomorrow if my broken axle housing can be repaired or has to be replaced. In either case, I think I'm looking at more than a few days down time. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif /fnrums/images/graemlins/m`d.gif

Needless to say, if you're serious, you and your tractor would be mgre than welcome. Just send me a PM and let me know. If it's truly not convenient for you, I'll certainly understand. <img src5"/forums/images-graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

DannyD · Sep 30, 2004

Just checked the lottery home page, sorry to say but I have to work today. You have a project that most of us (as you know) would love to tackle.

what broke the axle housing /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Egon · Sep 30, 2004

Gary:

Why not just use the bucket to strip and pile. Start at an level that would be below finished grade and just keep nibbling away at that level.

As suggested build a grizzly to dump on and separate out the junk. There will be hand work involved no matter how.

Egon

Gary_in_Indiana · Sep 30, 2004

"What broke the axle housing?" 

I'm still of the opinion it is the result of a bad decision on Deere's part to use cast aluminum as a material for that part of the housing which also has the lobes to which my lower three point arms attach. You can read all about it in the John Deere Owning/Operating forum if you'd like.

jmc · Sep 30, 2004

Sounds like a perfect compact tractor project unless you're in a hurry. Personally, I'd use it to get over the hump of buying a root rake with grapple.

Where is Ft. Wayne? Is it anywhere near Churubusco?

GareyD · Oct 1, 2004

I used a root rake/grapple to clean up and old hog barn that had burned and fallen down when I bought this place....it took care of all the material larger than about 4 inch square...then I used the loader to run the rest of it over a screen as suggested above....the grapple has become one of my favorite attachments...I like being able to just "pick" things up /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

That old black ground made the best lawn in my yard /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

See attached

GareyD

Gary_in_Indiana · Oct 1, 2004

"Where is Ft. Wayne? Is it anywhere near Churubusco?" 

Given the relative sizes of the two, I'd say you have that question backwards. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Actually, Fort Wayne is the second largest city in Indiana (behind Indianapolis) and is located in the NE corner of the state. It is an hour South of Michigan (I-69) and half and hour West of Ohio (US 24... or US 30... or US 14...).

Churubusco is no more than fifteen or twenty minutes away (NW) straight out US 33. It's yet another town on the original Lincoln Highway. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif While known as simply 'Busco' to a lot of folks around here, Churubusco celebrates it's history as 'Turtle Town, USA' every summer with it's annual 'Turtle Days Festival' there. Gotta love small town America. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

jmc · Oct 1, 2004

Gary,

I should have used on of those yellow faces. Our family ran the hardware store(Western Auto) in Churubusco for about 30 yrs. I sweep a lot of dirt onto the Lincoln Highway. After Dad retired the new owners had to close it eventually because people didn't mind driving to FW to shop at the new discount stores. Then they had to drive to FW for everything. Don't know if there was any economy in that.

John

Phred · Oct 2, 2004

Gary,

I have been working on a some what similar problem for a while. Basically in my case it was a concrete pad about ~100'-200' by 30-40'ft. The problem was it was pourly done as a temporary pad for trailers. The result is that in some places it was 1" thick and in others 4".
So my solution was a bobcat mounted jack hammer. One weekend of hard work and I had it all broken up. I then used a dozer to pile it up into a long windrow like pile.

Here is where my problem shares some of the same aspects as yours. This pile turned out to A) be a lot of material and B) be very hard to load.
The chunks and debry were hard to get a bucket full with my tractor.

So I switched to a skidsteer loader. This was marginally better. At least I could see what the bucket was doing and manuver to get a good bucket full from the pile.
The problem then was that the wheeled skidsteer lost traction way before it got a bucket load.

The ultimately soultion turned out to be a tracked skidsteer loader. I rented this unit for a weekend and now the pile is almost gone. The tracked loader could power into a pile and come up with a full bucket almost every time.

My approach is to use the skidsteer to load a dump trailer that I tow with my tractor. I own the dump trailer so I wired it up to allow me to dump from inside the cab. I just leave the tail gate off, load it up with the skidsteer, then tow the trailer to an area that needs some erosion control and dump it.
With some practice I could load and dump a full trailer in 20-30 min flat. The problem for me is I need a lot of trailer loads to get ride of this pile.

So my suggestion to you would be to try and get a tracked skidsteer for a weekend. One negative is that the tracked skisteers, not just a wheeled unit with tracks added, are a good deal more heavy to tow. Probably at least 7500 lbs for the loader by itself.
One other plus is no flats.

Fred