Dirt Moving Rent or subcontract some bulldozing

[Aviatordave]

Hey Folks,

Anybody have some advice on clearing a small parcel of land to prep for a pole barn?
I live in a pretty heavily wooded area and am planning on building a 40x40 pole barn this summer if I can get the land cleared of trees and make it level. It's already pretty level already but not perfect. It wouldn't take a lot of dirt moving but I'm not sure how deep it will have to be graded after getting the tree stumps out. The trees aren't that big. Most are about 6" - 10" in diameter. I'm either going to go out with the chainsaw and spend a few weekends cutting and then rent a dozer to level the ground and push/pull out the stumps or contract some or all of it out. It'll depend on the costs involved.

I just dropped by the local heavy equipment rental place and inquired about a dozer. The smallest they have is a Catapillar D5 for about $800 bucks for a day. ($585 for the day, $100 to drop off and $100 to pick up.) I think that's WAY more machine than I need. (It's a beast with a 10' blade) I only need to clear about 3600 square feet of land, not acres and acres. After learning about the cost to rent I found myself thinking about getting some quotes from a contractor. I would also have to get my home owners insurance to cover the dozer for the day before the rental company would move forward with a contract. No idea what the insurance would cost me.

I know you can knock trees over with a dozer and clear land pretty quick, (especially with a D5!) but I also don't want the trees piled up and pushed off to the side. I'm going to be putting in a wood boiler to heat the floor of the pole barn and am planning on cutting up the trees for use with this later. (need to let it start seasoning now.)

Anyway, with those details in mind, has anybody gone though some similar motions? I haven't gotten any price quotes yet. The trees in the area I'm planning aren't very dense. What kind of money have others spent to prep some wooded land for a pole barn? Would like to get an idea of cost ranges so when I get some quotes I can have a better idea of whether the contractor is in the ball bark or not.

Thanks in advance,
-Dave

P.S. When I started this post, I was thinking that this was the right forum from a 'to operate or not operate a bulldozer' standpoint. After reading what I've typed . . . Not so sure it's in the right spot . . .

 

[GPintheMitten]

Not sure but I would talk to contractors and see I you dropping the trees and moving them with your tractor would save money. See how much of the trunk they want left. You might also see if you rented a small backhoe to remove the stumps would that be enough cheaper to be worth it. You can probably get a mini excavator or small backhoe for $200 for the day.

If you are going to need fill brought in you may find it cheaper to job out the dozer and fill work together rather than trying to do it yourself.

It will be interesting to see what others say

 

[mud23609]

I cleared a area 300 by 300 last year and had a guy come in with a d-5 and pop the stumps along with leveling the area (2 foot difference) and stripping the top soil. I am also in red clay which is a bear to push.

Cost me 1100 bucks and took 11 hours of machine time. Well worth the money. I would guess you could have a guy in and out in a day in your situation.

 

[Stick895]

Plus in re renting how good are you with a dozer vs. a guy that does it for a living?

 

[Verticaltrx]

Taking out trees or stumping with a dozer is not something for someone who is inexperienced, even if they are small. There are lots of things to go wrong including tearing up the machine (A modern D5 with a 6-way blade is more of a dirt work/grading machine.) If you do insist on renting a machine I would go with an excavator or backhoe.

 

[john_bud]

Remember that you will need to clear out an area about twice that size to get a good pad with correct drainage. That gives room for a gentle slope to slough off the water. Depending on slope, that may not be enough on some edges. And you don't want trees able to fall on the building or send roots over, etc etc.

I cleared off a pad for a 36x48 building then added 10' lean-to sides for protection from snow melt a year later. Last year we had enough snow to mound up over 7' high against the building where it slid off the roof. The area I cleared and leveled was about 70 x 100ft. I wish I had sacrificed more trees to make it wider and filled it higher initially. It's a LOT harder to do after the building is up

It took about 100 hours total seat time with a kubota 3410 / fel / box blade / backblade and a second old ford TLB to get the fill dirt. We're blessed with good fill material on site. That was including cutting and stumping out a dozen trees in the 8-16" range. They take a LOT of digging to get out! A borrowed professional laser for setting grade was instrumental. It showed my "level" site area was over 3 ft side to side and front to back. Then after letting the pad set for a month, there were plenty of areas that needed filling from settling. Probably 20 yards to regain level on top of the 5-600 yards of fill dug, moved, dumped, spread and smoothed. And that's on top of the 100 yards of top soil that was tilled, dug, removed, piled to get to a solid base.

My "cost" was about 1-1.5 gal of fuel per machine hour plus other operational costs, oil grease etc PLUS all the time and sweat. A competent dozer operator could have probably done it all to rough grade in a day and a half with a D5-D6 size machine. But his fuel use would still be about the same number of gallons as those bid rascal's drink deep. If we had to buy and truck in clean fill, it would have been a LOT more $.

 

[JRobyn]

When we cleared for the new house, I also initially thought that I would at least cut the trees first. Then I cut about a dozen. Then I got a quote from a local dozer operator who I knew from previous work was very good and reasonably priced. I think he wound up charging us about $2500 to clear both our area (about 2 acres) plus another 4 acres or so for my FIL. Took most of two days to do it all. His expertise made the work go unbelievably fast. He took out all the trees whole, including stumps/roots and piled them VERY tight for burning. Also got him to clear/grade a road through the woods to the back side of the homesite. I would have liked to save many of the trees for firewood, but in the final analysis it was just too high of a price in terms of time and labor - we have plenty of other acreage to harvest firewood from. No regrets; money well spent.

- Jay

 

[jeff9366]

Go with a professional dozer operator. A dozer can really make a mess in unexperienced hands, plus it is unlikely you can grade your building site properly.

 

[tcartwri]

Backhoe and operator will make short work of that.

 

[Gary Fowler]

A backhoe/excavator is what you need to remove the trees and roots. You could even use it to dig out hills if needed for sloping, but you said the area was "pretty level" so you may not need to do anything other than take out the trees/roots.
I see you have a BX, if you have a box blade for it, you can then use that to level the ground. Even if you don't have a BB, use the money that you would spend on a dozer to buy one. It will be slow but much cheaper than using a dozer. Just keep making pass after pass dragging as much dirt as you can with the little BX and it will eventually work down the area. If you aren't in a big hurry, that is the way to go, cheaper and fun to do plus the satisfaction of doing it yourself.