"Pumping" gravel uphill?

ChronicCodez · Jul 5, 2011

Hey I've been censored! Well...****

toy · Jul 6, 2011

My brother dug out a basement by hand a long time ago and he built a conveyor belt to carry out the dirt. He used an old front tine tiller and took the tines off and hooked a pipe to it and used it to drive the conveyor. I don't remember what he used for the rollers but I know that every thing he used was elcheapo. He even made a tail piece to throw the dirt and rocks on and he caught the dirt at the top of the belt in a craftsman cart that he pulled with his riding lawnmower to dump the dirt.

powerpace · Nov 19, 2011

It still amazes me that people pay for gravel by the pound. In the PNW it is by volume. When you figure how much gravel you need it is done by volume. Delivered by a 5 or 10 yard dump. Paid for by the pound doe's not make sense. The Mafia still exists on the East coast is my guess. I just paid $15.00 per yard for 3/4 washed in Douglas County, OR.
To help with the problem, pump the water uphill or pay the extra dollars and make it easy on the environment and youself.

bcp · Nov 20, 2011

powerpace said:
It still amazes me that people pay for gravel by the pound. In the PNW it is by volume.

Around here consumer/retail places charge by the cubic yard, no scale. Quarries charge by the ton as weighed on their scale.

Bruce

rambler · Nov 21, 2011

zmoz said:
Now imagine with me for a second...if I have some sort of auger attached to the end of the gravel pipe. If I continue to feed gravel into that, it should, in theory force it's way all the way up the hill....no? I'm thinking basically an auger that would fit tightly (but still spin) inside the bottom of a 4" pipe.

Or would the auger need to extend all the way up the hill?

This is one of the most impractical but entertaining threads I've ever read.

Your bubble up screw press idea will _not_ work. Nope, never. Not. The gravel will pack up about a foot - probably less - from the end of the auger inside the pipe, and stop any more movement. Period. Won't work.

A screw auger extended all the way to the top would work, tho you would need much bigger than 4 inches to move material 3/4 inch in size. You'd bind up a small auger with such big particles. Us farmers use augers all the time to move grain, you'd need what, 12 inch or bigger pipe to make this work out? Just a guess, but you have a scale of the size pieces you are moving, to the cross section of the pipe, and no way will 3/4 feed through a 4 inch auger. It would need to be a 'robust' auger to move gravel 40 feet without shearing off, or punching through the tube, as well.....

--->Paul

porky69 · Nov 23, 2011

It still amazes me that people pay for gravel by the pound. In the PNW it is by volume. When you figure how much gravel you need it is done by volume. Delivered by a 5 or 10 yard dump. Paid for by the pound doe's not make sense.

One of our local gravel/rock/brick suppliers sells by the yard or by the ton, and wouldn't you know it when you buy $50 worth of rock you get the same physical amount whether you buy it by the ton or by the yard.

wrooster · Nov 23, 2011

powerpace said:
It still amazes me that people pay for gravel by the pound. In the PNW it is by volume. When you figure how much gravel you need it is done by volume. Delivered by a 5 or 10 yard dump. Paid for by the pound doe's not make sense. The Mafia still exists on the East coast is my guess.

Good grief.

Gravel and other stone products are sold by the ton because there is a certified scale involved, versus the cubic "yard" you got because the front end loader guy (who is making $9.50/hr) said that a heaped loader bucket "is a yard". The reason that these places sell by the yard is that they are too cheap to install a proper scale, and they are making more margin (=money) selling product by the "yard".

How have you measured how much you are actually getting, and do you know how much you are getting ripped off by?

In any project, one figures out how much is needed by volume, then you look up what that translates to in weight (there is a site called Google which can assist you with this), and then you buy by weight. It's really not too hard. If you are having difficulty with the concept or the math, perhaps an east coast Mafia guy could help you figure it out.

Wrooster