Need advice on landscaping task.

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

<font color="blue"> "What broke the axle housing?" </font>

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

<font color="blue"> "Where is Ft. Wayne? Is it anywhere near Churubusco?" </font>

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