York Rake Waste

[TC18guy]

Howdy all. We built a new house 1-1/2 years ago and I just planted the front yard of my 2 acres last fall. Behind my barn I've got about 8 yards of material I've picked up from the york rake. It looks to be good material for mulch or compost but it is filled with rocks. I'm thinking of building a structure (maybe with 4x4's & chain link fence) as a sifter where I could use the FEL to dump material on top, let the material filter through, and basically pick the larger stones off the top. Has anybody here done anything like this or have any suggestions for a way to recycle this stuff? This pile is probably only 1/2 of what I will have when I'm done.

 

[Cdash]

What I have seen before (notice that I said seen, not used) are frames built up with Bar Grating, or expanded metal as the sifter. Your fence may work, but I can imagine it being quite saggy. If you use bar grating, and set it at a 30 degree angle or so, your captured waste will roll off or be not to hard to push/pull off.

 

[TC18guy]

Thanks for the suggestion. I don't have anything like that lying around here, but I will think of some ways to stiffen it up.

 

[gerard]

I made what you're describing out of some 4x 4 and 2x4's. Kind of looks like a lacrosse net. Made it wide enough to scoop the sifted material from the back with the loader. It's light enough I can move it around with the loader. I used 1x2 welded wire mesh for the sifter. It's pretty fine and if I were to do it again I'd probably go with a little bigger mesh. This gives you really nice screened top soil but the dirt has to be dry and not clumpy or it wont fall through. Your chain link fence would work fine if you stretched it tight and then secured it all the way around. Trick is to dump the material from as high as you can but as slow as you can to give it time to fall through. If you CAN get a rigid screen like a heavy welded wire type it will work better and the material will slide off and through better.

 

[dmccarty]

TC18Guy,

I have THOUGHT about doing this and one day I'm sure I will
since I have the same problem. The one idea that I had was
to support the wire fencing I was going to use with 2x4 on
edge and make an angled platform. My thought was that
if I made the wire rigid enough it would not sag and if the
angle was just right, not to high and not to low, the rocks
and such might roll off the platform.

I also wanted to built a cross member on the back side of the
platform. The cross member would have to be high enough
to be easily seen from the tractor seat. I want to be able
to grab ahold of the cross member so I could dump any
material with the FEL/4n1 bucket as the "filter" got clogged
up.

One thing I did not think of was to use pipes or bars instead
of fence material. The bars/pipes would be nice since I can
see how I could build the frame so that I could change the
size of the grid depending on material.... Hmmmm...

Anyway I have thought about it but this is far down on my
To Do list. But I think I'll be doing this in the next year or so.
I want to filter all of the stones I have from the driveway
construction and what I'll get when we break ground on the
house. I want to use the stones/rocks to put under the eaves
of the house to break the fall of the rain water running off the
roof. No gutters on the new house. I hate gutters....

Later,
Dan

 

[Boone]

You could probably get some scrap chainlink fence from a company that installs fences around your place for free. Get some flat bars for the ends of the fence material, and maybe some cable tensioners to pull the fencing taunt. Try to get 9 gauge chain link instead of the lighter stuff.