Posthole Driver Confusion and questions

[Birdhunter1]

The PD8 will work fine for just about any ground, try to drive them when the ground is good and wet and it makes life easier and your post are rock solid. As for the tractor I run my 55 hp utility tractor at just above idle which at that rpm has less flow and psi than they recommend and it works just fine. I don't know why they post up the specs they do, it doesn't take much in the form of hydraulics to make this thing work but you must have a return directly to the sump and not through a remote or it will not work, but as to hydraulic supply you're pushing a 3/4" rod about 3-4 feet up with maybe 500 lbs of weight total.

 

[ruffdog]

I helped the neighbor put in a few rows of posts years back. He used his Deere 644 wheel loader with the bucket full of gravel. He backed down the fence line and would push in the post while we held them plumb. We did about 2-3 per minute.

 

[ruffdog]

These use no springs or hydraulic return lines:

Hammer SM4 | Danuser

 

[Barnbuilder]

Rent a skid steer and auger.

 

[LouNY]

My wife and I want to put in a pasture for her horse. This pasture will consist of 160 posts. Our soil is right in the middle between sandy and clay but contains rocks (we live on the side of a mountain/hill). We got a quote from a local person for just 80 posts and they will want 3500$ to drive them so my guess is 160 would be close to $6000!!! For that amount we are now considering buying our own post driver but it would appear our tractor may not have the right hydraulics to run them. specs are as follows:
Hydraulics:
Type: open center
Valves: up to 3
Pump flow: 9.5 gpm [36.0 lpm]
Steering flow: 4.9 gpm [18.5 lpm]


The two models we were looking at were the Kencove PD80 and PD100. The PD80 is like the Shaver HD8 and the PD100 is like the HD10. Specs are virtually identical and so are requirements for hydraulics. From the forum threads I have read, it sounds like if we tried to use the PD100, it would take the hammer longer to lift up but the driving force would be the same BUT when we called Kencove they said 9.5gpm would not be enough to lift it...so im confused. We would prefer to get the harder hitting one because of our soil conditions but we don't want to buy something our tractor couldn't run. Please, any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. thanks!

Did you ever get your fence project going?
What did you end up with?

Here are a couple of pictures of our setup;

We have it mounted on a SSQA plate and are using a rear remote for the hydraulic supply.
My nephew and I put in about 30 posts the other day in a couple of hours,
the ground is soft from all the rain we have had.
The posts are sharpened Locusts being driven into stoney ground.

As far as the hydraulic capacity we are only running the tractor at 12-1400 rpm while driving posts.