Nothing like doing a job twice we took on this footing after another company figured out the rock was harder than they could handle they dug the entire footing out and exposed all the rock that was above grade at the concrete companies request and leave it for the guy that contracted the pad because he was responsible for the hard dig. needless to say he couldnt do it and after a few other companies referred us they asked us to do the job
the footing is 10 foot wide with a 2 foot deep keyway we had to hammer all of the key and about a foot in most places in the rest of the footing and the only way to really set up was to backfill all 400 foot and start over 2 weeks later with a 2000 pound hammer and it was good
Hopefully they remember who saved their bacon next time. Great pics.
Here is another house that we have been working on when they built the pad they didn't have to put retaining walls in against the high wall but the pad company didn't cut a ditch for drainage around back so we worked our way in so we could hammer out the rock and make it have drainage it was tight you couldn't drive around the corner you had to pull yourself around. Another fun job no one wants
the top picture has our 2 hammers in it the 1100 pound is laying on the ground and the 2000 pound is on the 446 the bottom picture is dad and the 1100 pound hammer
Looks great! Good for you sneaking in there and getting that done. That kind of work is never easy, but always feels good when you get it done. I always find that no one (builder) never really appreciates the skill and determination it takes to get a job like that completed after the fact when it was soooooo easy to do it the first time....
Here are more of retaining wall footings for a custom house the pictures do not do justice for the pile of dirt I really like jobs like this they are a good challenge to dig the footings right put steps in and move dirt to make the job accesable for everyone to work it you really have to see what you want before you start at certain points we had to triple cast dirt to get it out of the way
The hole the rock is in is 5 foot deep the 315 did not have enough weight in the back to pick it up I had to roll it out of the hole to get the blade behind it to carry it up the hill the tricky part was it that rock got away from me there was nothing to stop it from going through the culdesac below I would of hammered it but we didn't need the big hammer for this section of the job and on that day dad took his backhoe to dig another job so we made do
More footings the top picture is for the stem wall of the house the rest are retaing wall with a 18 inch by 1 foot keys at in the bottom
Impressive !!
Some great pics and neat jobs Az. Some hard digging but it looks good!
AZiron nice work! I love to see how others do it around the country. Your landscape and working conditions are so different than what we have to deal with in AL. Really like that 314 with the blade, I'd like to have one in the "fleet".
Thanks for the compliments AZ is definitely different from your part of the world in my opinion rock is easy i can always get a bigger hammer ( of course there are exceptions like when you can feel a 4000lbs hammer bounce back and 2 days later you only gone 10 foot) but mud is not something i deal with unless we make it lol. CM if you only knew what an extension of your hand that blade is the 315 really is a good machine now if the could design the cab so a big guy can get in and out without tripping it would be a lot better that was about the only thing that was a pain every time i jumped out to shoot grade i couldnt just slide out because the arm rest and joystick wont move out of the way but it swings well and has decent power and beileve me we put that to the test with the dinosaur eggs we were digging out on that job
Another fun one the pool company ripped out the sewer line and of course by the time the builder let the plumber into fix it everyone else already had there stuff in the ground I didn't get pics of the sewer tap but it was 8ft deep and under a bunch of pool pipe but the fun part of this job was I had to dig at an eighth of fall per foot because I had to dig all the way around the pool to get to the ally there was about 8 inches to spare when I got to the tap
We didn't set the pipe just dug and backfilled
Just the backfill work this is a catch pond for tail water from the irrigation the pipe we backfilled was for the pump back system the pump company will set a lift pump up and the water will get pumped back up to the ditch at the top of the field
nice work looks good those new cabs on those 314 and up on the zero swing are a pain to get into we have a 314 and 2 321 with those cabs on them I'm a big also it sucks getting in and out of them a lot. Are those your videos on you tube
thanks no those are not my videos that guys channel had a different name before
nothing like spending a week hammering rock for a retaining wall footing got this job on referral from another company that hates doing rock jobs so we do all there hard digs. actually this would have been a much better job had the homeowner not been involved the concrete company is supper nice and tells you exactly what they want and to adjust the steps accordingly. the homeowner is retired from a big framing outfit nice guy but knows absolutely nothing about dirt concrete or masonry. he argued with all the steps the footing width and everything else it seemed like. the other thing that was weird was the engineer called out the plans for the house footing to be over excavated 6 inches and then compacted because he said since half the pad is on natural and the other half i built up he was worried about everything settling equally. i will say this if they have settling there problem wont be that its equal LOL. the other thing that suprised me was that the steps in the plans were not declared in increments that work with block so we had to adjust that. we used to dig for a concrete company years ago the owner taught me a lot about concrete and block work so when we dig we make our steps in increments divisible by 4 so the block guys dont have to trim block and the concrete guys dont have to adjust the footing up with extra mud to work better for block. it pays to know what the trades following you need so they dont have a mess to deal with
this was a fun one to dig the only hard part was digging with one outrigger up you cant go to fast like that the other is our stuff at the house the kw is dads with a 3406e and a 15 speed that truck is nice sounds even better than it looks but you have to know how to drive it to get in a lot of places we have put it the international is mine its got an ism and a 10 speed and with the short trailer on it i have gone in some really tight spots witch is really handy i was surprised by this but that cummins gives the old cat a run for her money running up some of them hills but there is about 10000 pounds differnce between both trucks
the top was just a sewer tap for a new house all day job for 45 mins of work but i am not complaining we swung all the dirt in a 10 wheeler and slurried to back fill i had to wait like 4 hours for the slurry so i could set the road plates the bottom we got a call from and underground company looking for a hammer apparently there were none for rent immediately available in the valley so we went over and did it they poured the manhole box for a storm drain a foot to high so they had to take it all out and redo it i was surprised to find number 5 re bar and 3 foot thick walls glad i took the 2000lbs hammer
Has anybody heard if this is a normal engineering practice published anywhere, or did he just think this up himself? In framing the concrete guy would usually lay out the j-bolts that way, so that they were at the proper intervals, not landing under studs and double them up where bottom plates would splice. However, he frequently got to drinking on the job at 6am and then they would be all wrong and we would have to cut and drill new ones, never ending source of fun.
i have never heard of over exing a footing to fill it back and compact it so its the same as an engineered pad but i found out later that the engineer who detailed the house was in training so i figure he was just to smart on paper for his own good architects and engineers make me laugh cause they make these extensive details and then tell the owner its nothing to put an rv garage in the side of that mountain and then you tell the owner to dig out do pad and backfill the walls for his garage will be over 50 thousand just in dirt work and they always say well the architect said it wouldnt take much. az has a lot of issues with expansive soil especially if the pad company screws up so all track houses now are built as post tension slabs to eliminate settling. but there were some big class actions over the years do to expansive soil so engineers tend to overcompensate witch has cost unfathomable amounts of money over the years. we dug footings on a school were half the footing were in solid rock and the other half were in the fill zone of the pad. the footings in the fill zone had to be excavated to natural and filled back with abc all the way to bottom of footing there were spots that were 13 feet deep 4 foot wide and filled back to just 2 foot deep. all that so there was no chance of liability for settling. what did that cost?
the first 2 pics are of a septic tank hole i was 2 days into it and not half done when i took the pics and the builder pulled the plug said we were to expensive i just laughed at him i was loaded up before he could get his pickup out of the driveway. the rock in that area is some really hard stuff in spots 2000lbs hammers may not scratch it when i was in high school me and my grandpa did a septic around the corner it took two weeks to hammer for the tank and to get to were the leach field would go the bottom pic is footings for apartments these jobs are always a train wreck you never know what plumbing or conduit you will rip up nothing is ever deep enough and its never where its supposed to be the last 4 jobs i have been on with this concrete company the plumbers beat theme there so we always have to work around all the vents and risers. moving your dirt out of the floor is a joke usually your best off to gopher dig it out of the building to were you have room to pick it up
good size custom house has about 6 bathrooms all were 7 foot deep coming out of the house to the garage level its a good thing finish floor was 9 feet above the curb and 12 feet above the sewer tap home builders and there fences there is never room to work at least the deere has a really good parking brake cause digging through cleech with your outriggers up is slow going doing it on a slope is what i call adventure digging
Looks like hard digging... How do you like the Deere vs. the Cats?
The deere swings faster it has way better feeling in the controls as far as feed back and the cat dealer was becoming a pain to deal with that said there are a lot of things about the cab design and layout on the deere I would change the biggest 2 is the back window and the rops design you can't get the window out of the way no matter where you put it and the split post rops make visibility a little tricky sometimes
I really am not a fan of the new backhoes that cat or deere is making maybe I am bias but cat had solid machines when they made the c and the d series they perform well had great visibility and hold together. Dad consulted to cat on b c and d series backhoes so maybe I am bias but I can crawl on a 12000 hr 416 c and swing more dirt in a day than I can with any new backhoe I have tried so far
I did some work in eastern Pennsylvania last year and noticed that most of their septic system leach fields were above ground mounds because of the hard rock there. It costs so much less to build one above ground than what it costs to hammer one out. These house were out in the country and had plenty of room though.
They would have had to put a pump into get it to the tank they didn't want to and that was a really high end area that house will be over 3 million another 12000 to put a tank in won't be nothing But I would agree it's expensive that will be an alternative system tho there is no perk in that ground it's solid rock
hey take it easy on the plumbers lol it makes my life easier when we go in before the footings cause then I don't have to worry about putting them back and cleaning them but if the plumber did his homework and can do it we always try and stay below footings or go in after their poured and tunnel underneath or sleeve them but if we do go in first I try and lay bury tape and be there when there digging to help identify the pipe as always nice work that looks hard to dig I would get frustrated on that
It's a headache there is pipe in the air in your ditch to dig around it's just a pain but worse is there is always 10 people watching you dig at half throttle telling you to dig faster but that stuff will make an operator out of anybody that sticks with it but probably the worst part is trying to position to dig cause you will have to set up over a vent or riser to get square and then find a place to cast dirt
I hear you it’s hard with a hoe I have done it plenty of times 95% of our rough ins we dig it’s all with a mini and skid steer their easier and more maneuverable on the pad than a hoe especially when jumping ditches and working around other people’s stuff we still use a hoe for that work on occasion
this is by far the rockiest pad i have ever seen it took a week to dig this house it should have only taken 2 days maybe 2 and a half the footings were supposed to be 16in wide most were almost 2 1/2 feet a lot of those rocks were bigger than the bucket and the concrete forman said there mud order was over double just some plumbing on a house and jumping the stem to head out of the house this one is a "remodel" they strip it to slab and add on to the size but permits are cheaper and there is no pad requirement if part of the house remains so to get the new plumbing in they saw cut the floor and we dig it. this is dads hoe he had hammered a footing out from the old floor but with out messing up the floor he couldnt get the corners in the bottom of the ditch so he cleared the big stuff with his bucket and swept it with the coupler otherwise it was to tight
just more footings on this house that we started last April finally doing flat work footings for the house itself and not retaining walls except for the last picture it will be a retaining wall but will also be a stem wall for the house it will come up 5 feet in the second pic were the laser is set up next to the wall is the same place i took pics of that walls footing in post #1 that thing was 10 feet wide with the 2x2 foot keyway it ran that size across almost the entire back of the pad they put 120 yards into just pouring the footing. in the bottom pic is the cassida in the background and the footings for that are in posts#7 and 8 again really big footings (8 feet wide) but finish floor of the cassida was 11 feet above top of footing in the lowest part
just before and after pics in the first 3 use the 2 cactus as reference point there in all the pics the last pic if you look up the hill and see the fence they just started that house one of my customers is doing the concrete so we will see if we get to go up there there is a 25 ton excavator a 4 yard loader and a backhoe up there cutting pad they will be there for 2 months before anything else starts there is a lot of rock to hammer and the house is supposed to sit right at the peak of the ridge
Interesting that the retainer wall is CMU and what appears to be the house foundation wall is concrete.
cm its a mixed bag on these walls but the poured wall in the last pic on post 36 is the garage wall and its holding back the wall above it that said a lot of flat work will have a poured stem thats 4 inches thick and about 18 inches tall top of stem is finish floor other houses will use block to form the outside foundation it varies you only find stems on custom houses all the track houses are post tension now post 34 has pics with a poured stem that used to be the standard on everything but not any more there is a lot of 5 foot poured wall with block stacked on top the poured wall has a crap load of rebar in it and big rebar most lots stick to just block walls they are a lot cheaper to put up but the hill on the lot was a 2 to 1 its and the size of the house takes up most of the disturb-able foot print so it doesnt leave a lot of room for 3 and 4 wall lifts so they beefed up the walls to make them taller
started a pad job for a custom house good size pad house has 10000 under roof and that doesnt include the drive way lot has over 4000 yards of export so it will take a minute to do. got the drive way grubed and trails in for the cactus haulers you have to think ahead just a little so they have a good trail to square up from on a side with no arms then they replant them outside the disturbed boundary the cactus are protected so you cant kill them if you do you have to replace them and they are not cheap the cactus that require a tilt truck for start at 600 bucks just to replant them on the job and no the backhoe is not mine its the cactus guys
cut a spot for the trucks to turn around in and made a bench so we can start hauling dirt next week trying the section in the third pic were the hose runs across is still 4 foot high and that is the first step of the pad there is an upper section that is 4 foot higher it has 11 foot to cut at the highest point to get grade and then the drive way has a 20 foot cut to get to grade at the highest point i put a test hole in the driveway at the highest point after 8 feet it turned to solid rock so there is at least 10 feet worth of rock to hammer out we will be here a little while later this week the surveyor will put the wall corners down for the lower retaining wall so we can get it started so we can finish building the pad
Is this up in Dynamite ? Just curious was admiring the scenery in your images. I used to ship granite from Hackberry down to Surprise for this outfit in Peoria. Sometimes we used to ship direct to the customer... put a lot of rock into Dynamite and that area.
the first pic is north of dynamite by about 6 miles off of carafree its called desert mountain ranch but most that country all looks the same as far as landscape tho desert mountain takes the cake for most ubseen money spent on houses no one lives in and i mean those houses are huge. everything on dynamite is more normal people custom homes until you drop off the hill to Rio Verde then you find a lot of horse people that have a lot of money tied up in arenas and stables that are nicer than anything i own the second pic is at silver leaf off of pima and loop 101 its a lot like desert mountain tho its about half the size and the property is a lot more expensive because its right there next to downtown Scottsdale silver leaf is stupid money to the owner of a large national tire chain is building a house there thats over 30,000 square feet under roof i am just happy they hire us simple folk to do the work
I used to crane load decayed granite boulders out of Hackberry for Grand Sprinkler out of Peoria. We occasionally would deliver job direct up that way. Some very impressive residential work up that way. I agree there are folks up there that had money to burn. We did a couple projects with enormous cranes set up in the street to fly boulders into the backyard over the house..
grand sprinkler is still doing that to i know of one house that has over 100 grand in setting landscape boulders start to finish its kind of hilarious when they roll a 100 ton cane up to a job that had a special pad cut for the crane
broke out a hammer on this job after 2 weeks of moving dirt also brought in another excavator to keep the hammer moving and keep loading trucks there is only about 10 feet of rock to hammer out to get down to grade so that will be at least 2 more weeks nothing like 2 months of dirt work for a house
we also started our apprentice program up i swear we spoil these new guys they get brand new iron to learn on it just isnt fair especially when they get to learn to run the excavator on there first job
had as little fun this week was pretty cool to go see that machine get built I would have more pictures but they frown upon pictures in the factory
Nice machine there. I'm going to have to make a factory trip one day.
The 310 sl hl is one mean backhoe I am really impressed with the performance I have to admit I thought it would be more of a dog and pony show but you can look at literally anything you want on the line and ask anything you want the people are really friendly and seem like they genuinely care
I guess that HL means High Lift because it looks like the bucket is ahead of the front tires farther than normal. I wondered why you didn't get a 410 for that hammer, but I guess if you need a big hammer then you just use your excavator.
The hl stands for heavy lift that 310 has a 410 pump and hp but it's a 310 size it's a little heavier than a normal 310 and has a lot more muscle and it's really fast compared to a 310 sl it's not as bulky as a 410. I have tried 410s there slow and they are just not nimble enough to get into places. As far as hammering goes I see your logic on a 410 for weight but on the other side of that the 310 hp is almost 18000 pounds a 410 doesn't have much more and the hl is about 2000 pounds heavier than the old 416s we run so it's a good fit for the 1100 pound hammers Usually if we have to hammer more than a few hours we bring out the 446 with the 2000lbs hammer I gave the small hammers for convenience more than anything most of the time I don't get more than my 2 hour minimum for hammering because it's just hard enough you can't dig
well this was definitely a good one asu has been remodoling there stadium for the last 2 years in between football season this job has been a cluster aperantly there was a last minute design change on this wall that never made it to the concrete form crew so the wall had to come down. tricky part was all that concrete was poured on friday and the other 2 walls couldn't get damaged. that is the most fine surgery i have ever done with a hammer between bad angles and only one outriger on the ground plus the front bucket was on concrete and had no real bite and getting to set up with low clearance and i had to jump around the pillar GOOD FUN CHALLENGE
Nice work how are you liking the new backhoe it’s a good looking machine
Well that one has not come in yet and it will be dads machine My machine I got 3 months ago for the most part i am pretty satisfied Performance wise there is nothing I have run that's new that will beat it. I think it performs better than a cat especially in your hands deere is full pilot controls cat is all electric hydralic you can't feel small things with cat when your digging The only real gripe I have is deers cab layout need a lot of help
The few times I ran a Deere I didn’t care for it it was underpowered I didn’t like the cab I still can’t get over why they put the fuel tank on the opposite side of the tractor when everything else is on the left. Those cats definitely have a different feel to them that’s all we run as a company at least your busy we’re hooked up running 6 days a week have a great 4th of July
Glad your busy Deere makes 4 versions of a 310 all have a different pump in them so if you run one from a rental company like sunbelt they are really slow and somewhat under powered I bought an hl so it has a load sensing variable pump
another custom house with 4 foot wide retaining wall footings only 3 steps should be a piece of cake right lol so the pad company over excavated the pad to past bottom of footing on the up hill side except they were 6 inches shallow and they missed the envolope of the house by 4 foot in places then were they did fill back they used really nice material but didnt get much compaction on it so that material wouldnt hold shape on the edge of the ditch. with all the corners that were missed it added on to our job of digging the footings by quite a bit when you dig rock out that is 2 foot minus it takes time to find dirt to fill the low spots but we call that job security so it really doesnt matter. the owner of the concrete company already asked me to track all the extra work separate so he can charge the builder for it. the part that really sucks it all the rocks we dig up they take to the fill side and bury them witch means we will be digging them up when the plumbing gets done. i dig for the plumber i already called him and told him to take pictures of what they are covering up so he can go t and m on the digging cause i bet it will take twice as long. i am really not complaining i am going to make a lot more money cause of the builder and pad guys incompetence.
You ever have those moments where it makes no sense how things still work but you just thank God nothing happened yea had one a while back I had no idea that inside dual was like that I needed to change tires on the lowboy cause 5 were getting ify so I figured to change all 8 pulled the first set I came to found this and went crap Found another rim for 80 bucks
Got rock? Then the next morning about 20 minutes in I broke a shank boy that makes for a long day
So I think this is the first house I have ever dug were the sewer tap was inside the house Got some remodel action to these jobs usually turn into a major test in frustration but they pay good cause no one wants to do them for obvious reasons I somehow lost the pics I had of the mini ex digging inside the house
Bought a mini ex a few months ago I never had any idea it would get used that much it's been getting 40 plus hours a month when we decided to look at one we were hoping for 10 to 15 hours a month that thing is handy as a shirt pocket The biggest challenge with it so far is somehow jr here decided that it was his excavator if that machine is around he is climbing all over it
Looks good that sucks about the rim my boy jumps at every chance he gets to get on a tractor you don’t realize how handy a mini is til you get one we bought two cat 303.5 last spring and just bought a new cat 304 mini they all have the hydraulic quick coupler on them like the big ones it makes it a lot easier
I never thought I had the use for a mini but it sure works good on remodel jobs we take the rops off to drive it into houses It will never replace what the backhoe does but it is nice to be able to cover those jobs for my customers keeps other people from horning in
Been doing a fair bit of hammering this month it's always a good thing to find some rock
This is a duplex so there are 2 sewer taps one is in the driveway the other is 40 feet up the road behind the first dumpster and then the water service is behind the second dumpster. For some reason the track developer left about 9 loads of dirt on the lot pushed up on the edge were the sewer was so before we could dig to the tap we spent half a day moving dirt out of the way and then all the dumpsters normally I would not mess with the dumpsters but they were happy to pay for me to do it so why not jobs like these are just dollar signs because of others oversights
More of the same house lot of rock and it was hard rock in my opinion white granite ranks up to the top couple hardest rock I have encountered it's not the hardest but it took 4 days to hammer from the house to the sewer tap witch was only 60 to 70 feet Dad broke a shank I was kinda surprised it was the middle one but when you get in rock that comes out in big chunks like that it wedges a lot
Wow, that rock looks like it it's frustrating to hammer. It's funny that shank broke there, usually they break at the pin hole for the tooth....
The frustrating thing with rock is what it will do to your schedule it can put you a week behind I have three different excavating companys calling me when they get into rock because they dont want to deal with it It can be kinda irritating when your matches out on a hammer but you can't get a bigger machine in but you have to be careful not burn yo your point then it helps to have a bucket of water around in those situations
Had some interesting weather at the end of February some of you will probably laugh but this guy is not accustomed to working in snow The only real pain was by mid morning the 8 plus inches was melting pretty fast and it just made things a sloppy mess I tried to tell the plumber it would be better to wait but he was adamant about digging
Just a retaining wall footing not really anything special except that it was in the middle of a wash not sure how the county approved that It would have really been an easy job but the builder tried to build a pad before they built the retaining walls so to lay out the footings I had to pull the dirt out that the pad company pushed into the wash and then I had to double dip the spoils to get it up the bank and make a walk way so they can bring in rebar the block guy really caught the short end of this one they have to haul in block by hand It's been raining a lot lately so the ground water in the wash is really high the morning after I dug the footings had 3 inches of water that rose up out of the ground
Yep... that material just hates water.
did a lot of commercial work this year I typically enjoy commercial footings especially things like the big grade beam me and dad tag teemed the grade beam dug all that in one 10 hour day with 2 machines it's about 7 feet deep the loader couldn't keep up with the dirt
That's one heck of a footing in the last pick. What kind of structure is going on top of that?
We also did a lot of custom home footings to this last year here is some highlights I really like what these jobs do for a guys skill level you spend 2 weeks hanging into some of these slopes digging and there is not a commercial job around that you cant figure out I like the challenge it keeps you sharp unfortunately once in a while you get over confident I almost lost a machine on one of them the pictures really dont do justice on how much to the limit some of them are The slopes aren't really the killer most of the time it's the dirt you generate that you run out of room for on these jobs and pad companies are getting lower quality so they do as little as possible or in some cases work against you what it boils down to is you have to establish a boundary because as i learned it came close to eating my lunch
Sheer wall for a precast parking garage it is what the ramp anchors to 3 story garage what we found surprising was there was no casons all spread footings some thick ones to like 2 feet thick with concrete that grade beam was 4 foot thick with a lot nember 12 and 16 rebar watching the rod busters made me confident in my career choice there were also a few spread footings that were so close together they became one big hole I wish I had pics but it was dark when it was done it had 3 different elevations
Awesome thread. Thanks for sharing!
Hammering for fence footings on some track could only get one outrigger down they wait till the house is mostly done to put the fence up but the rock was to hard for a mini that 2000lbs hammer took a minute Also heavy hauling some new iron in the last pic jr got his new backhoe
Oh boy is work hard actually some of my favorite pics
Looking good - hate we missed you and the better 1/2 in Vegas.
Yea well such is life I had been all stressed out the week before we left cause work is staking up and we were thinking about only going for one night but on monday everyone canceled for rain and it was still raining last night so for probably the only time ever that I left town nothing was affected by me leaving On another note it's still forecasted to rain Tuesday so it wont even dry out and start again so there goes another week
Well they shut Conex down on Friday so we would've only had one day. Tell me about rain.. We have received 3' of rain so far this year. Jan, Feb and now Mar have all been washes - pun intended. Work is stacking up but no one is moving any structural dirt. https://www.al.com/news/2020/02/just-how-much-rain-has-alabama-gotten.html
I feel your pain we had around 2inches this week with probably another coming
Its always surprising how slopes show up in pictures. They really don't look as bad in pictures as they are in person. But if you kind of line up the slopes with foundation lines or other clues in the pictures, you can see how steep they really are. Your housing sites look similar to many of our lake home sites= front door at ground level, and three stories on the other side of the house 30' away.
It's just the high end homes that are this way but it's fun
Spec house dig for Plumbing on the downhill side of a road so we dug up the sewer tap before we dug the house sewer tap was 3 foot higher than finish floor Plubmerhas to put an ejector pump on the house that's what I have pictures of and it all solid rock so it was a good day I had not posted any pics of the kw with new paint and the new to us lowboy
Been doing a lot of commercial concrete lot of spread footings and the three pics are an elevator pit with 4 speed footings on the corner everyone was a different elevation all ended up being in the same hole 2 there were 7 feet deep had to bench them to not bad for 1 days digging That job looks like it will keep us busy for at least another month
Nice and dry makes for nice square holes. We've been kind of rainy here, all you would make is muddy swirls around the rocks.
sub soil surgery .
Yea the pictures dont show it but that ground is a lot of clay witch is kinda rare here and boy is it claudy once you get through the crust it's not bad but we did some shallow stuff there and the over break on it was terrible Usually I am in rock or sand with rock and they dont dig so pretty
Nice job, looks like you used a cookie cutter!
Nice work!
Thanks
Nothing is more aggravating than damage done that was at somebody else's hand Was doing some early Saturday morning iron shuffling when a belly dump merged in front of me on the freeway he was only doing 50 when I was doing 70 and I couldn't move over so I backed off only to figure out he was hauling pea gravel and it was leaking out of the trap onto the road and it blasted my truck The really painful part is the paint job on this truck is 6 months old and is chipped in 3 spots now the windshield is cratered and it was replaced with the paint and worst of all it ate the windshield of the backhoe On another note that is the third window in the deeres that I have lost to road debris so I am making a window cover or loading backwards
Can't have nothing nice..... Sorry for your damage. The KW glass shouldn't be too pricy, I think I had one put in for under $100. But I bet that deere glass is $$$.
That sucks! It looks like the Deere's glass has a slight curve to it which might make it a dealer item. We have a truck and equip glass shop close to our yard that does great work and match anything flat..
The deere window is 600 bucks and I am now getting comfortable doing them lol Those windows break cause they are curved if they were flat I doubt I would have the problem my dealer has one in stock I know I am not the only one with the problem
Was a pretty good week here had a call come in for a canopy footing in solid rock specs said 7 feet deep and it was hard from the word go a friend referred us on this job he started it and threw in the towel with his 1000 lbs hammer we rolled in with 2000lbs hammer still took 2 days to do 3 holes 7 foot deep they were paving the parking lot so no way to get a bigger hammer in for quite a while so the 446 deliver the bacon again I will say this I have been on harder stuff but with bigger tools that was a job I think we had 18 hours of hammer billed that rock didn't really chunk it just came out like baby powder you couldn't break a chunk off The last pic is a repair job on a fire line for a sprinkler outfit the transite pipe has been there at least 40 years a tree root lifted it at a coupling made it leak
Your local tarp/canvas shop should be able to make padded windshield covers to order.
Nice - love some UG fire line work. Fire line work is one of my super's forte'.
That sprinkler company has some big accounts for service work they do a lot of patch jobs like that good bread and butter they are a friend of mines customer I just get the overflow but its work and nothing pays like weekend repair work
One of our crews started a small C900 fire line today with hydrant and building lead in.
Per your suggestion I am bringing this over from CM's thread: I think NPK makes good hammers. I was also considering one of those when I bought my 5,500# hammer. I looked at your thread and one of the small hammers you had looked pretty old. Not judging by scratches/cosmetics but by the lower casting (where lower bushing would be housed). It almost looks like it is from the "Art-Deco" era. New hammers are expensive (see Cm's last post) and if you can keep that older hammer running well I see no reason to replace it. A new one won't bring you any more per hour. I started out with a 416B. The last TLB that I bought is a '97 416C. I bought both new and I still have the 416C. It has about 13,000 hours on it now. I almost bought a hammer for my 416. If I were still in CA I am sure I would be running one. Back when my '97 416C was new I was a bit fearful of what a hammer would do to my pride and joy. Funny thing is I was invited by CAT to go to Peoria and demo the prototype D model 420. While I was being debriefed (by the guy who was responsible for TLBs at CAT) I asked what CAT found to be the attachment that put the most stress on a backhoe. I thought (for sure) that he would say a hammer but he did not. He said that their research indicated that a compaction wheel was the most stressful. I moved to CO before I bought a hammer and ironically I had already been running a compaction wheel (on and off) for a few years. My girlfriend's brother owns a Kobelco 210. He is an owner/operator and I think he said that he has a bit over 10,000 hours in it. He claims that he has had no major issues with it and currently doesn't have any plans to replace it. Your thread showed your dad sitting in a Hitachi 210 with an Okada hammer on it and you did not mention either in your reply. Was that a rental? As I mentioned in my last post I have something similar in my neighborhood. The "b*****d rock" here is a mixture that the geotech guys call "sandy limestone". What point design do you usually run on your tools? Do you notice that one type works better than any other? I have been running chisel points on mine. It doesn't take long before they are "blunts". I just had one re-chiseld (cut to factory spec by a water-jet cutter) and am anxious to see how it does. I plan to use it tomorrow. Another irony is that the MFR recommends blunt tip for bedrock. I'm not sure if I agree-which is why I'm inquiring. A new tool for my hammer is only about $1,300 (for OEM). If we run the hammer long enough to wear out a tool I should have also generated enough revenue so that I won't worry about buying another. I bought the hammer and crusher to specialize in rock jobs (as they can be lucrative) so I don't shy away from them either.
I have only had 2 npk hammer failure s if you want to call them that one was a 10x so 4000lbs category on our kobelco rock was so hard the hammer was bouncing back after 4 days to get through a section we were probably a day from being done and a stay bolt broke and fell out the other one I personally dropped off a trailer about 2 feet and it wiped out the nitrogen seal so npk is the only hammer we buy As far as worn yea they get into the rock and it leaves its mark small hammers get shoved in places they dont fit but foundation wise there's years of life left in them cause what you see is not a wear item
We rented that Hitachi really good machine the hammer not so much it hit pretty good but I have never seen vibration like that injected into a machine the hop in the boom rams was atrocious that hammer had blade dampeners inside it and was solid mounted to the holster bad design that was a 4000lbs hammer. If I were buying a new excavator hitachi is the only thing I would really look at and as for hammers I will keep buying used npk parts are cheap Kobelco seems to be a decent machine service here for one doesnt exist the machine we had was old and about shot when we got all we used it for was hammering and we babyed it. In fact dad and grandpa went to the auction that day looking at 2 7x hammers there they bought the one that didn't run for pennies and there were like 35 excavators there and the cats were going in the low 20s this was in 1998 if I remember right well they got down to off brands and no one was bidding so dad took his pick of about 6 bought that machine taxes and all 5400 bucks that machine broke down one time on us ever plugged fuel filter it had some quirks and it was tired the outfit that bought it from us killed it in 3 weeks and 200 hours hydraulic got hot pump seized and it supposedly trashed the engine
The c and the b series were just solid my c has 12000 hours a friend of mine is still pushing his b with 30500 hours it no joke one boom 2 pumps and a lot of hoses motor has never been touched besides water pump and turbo so anyone that tells me perkins sucks I laugh at but I have a 446 b and the only thing that will kill it is stupidity that thing is just solid and it has never left me stranded but we maintain it well admittedly tho I dont think the c series can be run as far as the b series were. The truly amazing thing I find with backhoes in general tho is how underrated they are to people I could not imagine a better tool for our market we chase a backhoe is up against its limit of versatility about 3 percent of the time and a good imagination will get you around that I do own a mini ex for things but no excavator of any size will replace my backhoes
Water jets are nice for sharpening I know of 2 outfits that do it with a band saw but it takes time with bigger hammers it's hard to keep a point on in really hard rock so a blunt point might be what your stuck with npk gave us an experimental point that was carbide center that thing was awesome it finally wore out not sure if they make them or not A sharp point is not really necessary it will help in certain applications but a blunted almost flat point doesnt work well on about anything with rock they are good for concrete floors
We are accumulating equipment like a disease around here took delivery of that 314 this morning it looks a little rough but with some TLC we will have her wipped into shape price was right and it only has 5000 hours a d that thing is tight The hydravac was slightly pawned off on me from a friend that had it but decided he didn't want it no more got an upcoming job at the local fuel farm that need both particularly the vac there is one point that has 12 lines in about 30 feet so it made sense to acquire it
Nice additions to the family AZ. That vac excavator trailer is interesting, vacuum excavation is something I have been kicking around as an additional business. Looking forward to see how it works out for you.
I will let you know on the vacume I have about 5 customer that are happy to have another option I am not sure if it's a service I want to sell retail or as support for our exacting needs for now until we figure out what we are actually doing instead of being a bunch of kids witha garden hose it's just for us I cant beat what I got that trailer for but the scary thing was I looked at the job said I will sub the vac work and I was talking to my friend and said I dont want to do vac work the following afternoon we drug it home that happened way to fast Both machines have a punch list of repairs the vac has just been simple stuff and cleaning up the 314 could have went straight to a job but there was a couple of things that needed addressed so I dont worry about them mainly in the cab the ac has a bad hose and since it was 110 here today that's getting fixed also have to put my 1/2 yard wain Roy coupler on it But I never realized how much of a pain the 314 is to wrench on I need to take a class on being a contortionist just work on it
Put the 314 thru its paces this week really happy with it so far tried it out on an elevator pit and then today we demoed asphalt for a rail spur next week we cut the grade for the spur 314 does have a problem tho something with the pump is causing it to load up and pull down the engine but it will get the oil hot pretty fast if you spur it pretty hard we think its something with the controller I think it comes down to this machine has set to much at 15 years old and 5000 hours it has not run steady ever but i think it's been parked most of the last year or 2
It happened again another cave in made the local news last night 2 men lost there lives due to severe negligence At a housing tract on the west side of town 2 guys from the underground company were sent to add a sewer tap that was missed when the subdivision was developed a few months ago this is at least the 7th one that was missed I have come to learn The plumbing company dug an 8 by 8 by 10 foot deep hole per there contract to find the sewer tap that was not there so they turned the job over to the builder who brought the underground guys back to fix there work so they went looking for the tap under the sidewalk by mid morning they had tunneled at least 6 to 9 feet I was told under the sidewalk and street about 8 foot deep when the ditch collapsed traping both men No shoring of any kind no benching no nothing and 2 men paid for it I guess it irritates me because we have to fight with builders who tell me we dont need shoring and then outfits do this kinda stuff and get away with it till they dont and it gives us excavation contractors a bad name
After demoing asphalt we dug sub grade for a rail spur at the local tank farm I love jobs like this had trucks going as fast as we could load them almost a 100 yards an hour with the 314 I was pretty impressed Also broke out the vac to do some locating on the same job but for a pipeline we have been doing the dirt work for have a crew working nights doing a street crossing 16 foot deep
Small conduit job nothing crazy just all rock and grade is is way low had to slurry up the transformer pad 2 feet to make finished grade witch is a real pain but a friend had some timber strand forms and it saved the day otherwise another day and some dollars
What's all that peaky clean material you're placing over those conduits??? Around here whenever I have to uncover conduits, or any other service line for that matter,they seem to be covered with fill full of rocks the size of bowling balls and the making tape is directly on top of the pipe.....incredibly helpful....
I hardly ever find marking tape but if its bigger than 3 inch minus material we screen it shade pipe no questions I have only ever had to repair a conduit once
That's so sad to hear. I don't care what we get done in a day, as long as we all get to go home at the end of the day.
Looking good AZ. I've done a few transformer pads over the years. Looks to be the same spec as here - 2 primary conduits, 1 prime and one spare and a single secondary to the building. Question - Is the grade getting filled over those conduits or are they that shallow? Primary here has to be 42" to top of pipe from finished grade. I think secondary is 36". Side note on stupid regulations here in AL. We can run primary conduits and pull boxes for miles but you have to be a licensed electrician to run the secondary to the building. We can stub the secondary out of the transformer pad but thats it. How is the vac trailer working out? What's the learning curve?
This happened last year here. We were working on a Duluth Trading Co store less than a mile away. https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/...JnQ0L5dMGu3QRdblcgdT7xJLKaql5lUZ3FCnNdR2Y7cIg Landscaper took on a collapsed storm drain project they had no business dealing with. 8' deep in saturated, heavy clay with no sloping, benching or shoring. The rumor is the "contractor" didn't want to cut and remove more of the driveway because they didn't have it in their bid. Two men lost their lives over incompetence and money. Inexcusable.
There not that shallow the picture you see is actually phone conduit that are shallow on needs 18 inches they are sitting on solid rock a storm drain and water line but grade is about a foot higher The primary is only 1 pipe on this job the secondary is 2 we can run all the conduit we want but cant do anything with gear or wire I sub to the electrician so we did all the site light runs thru the parking lot The vac trailer has been a steeper learning curve than I would have guessed but the principal is really simple In reality I have learned a lot watching badger on this crossing every night our little trailer is good for pot holes and helping the mini or backhoe dig around pipe otherwise we call for a vac truck tank capacity is not what makes your production water volume and pressure is what makes quick work or painfully slow work
Badger has it down. Power Co was replacing the power poles on our road and Badger was performing all the pole excavations. Wife and I stood out in the driveway and watched the entire process after first letting the guys know we weren't the typical homeowners, in the construction business and interested in the concept. My wife has seriously wanted to get into the vac truck business since that day.
They are charging us 260 an hour for there service coming and going plus dump fees and refill My vac trailer has a 3.5 gpm pump badger has 10 to 12 gpm pump that's what makes them productive the number one thing I see is like anything else people they have really good guys and also not so good guys But I have already dreamed up a system to mount on an old lowboy we dont use the trucks are ridiculous expensive tgats why badger builds there own and pattended them I give it 5 more years and everyone who is anyone will have a vacume and it will get competitive there are 4 companies here that are serious in the service badger is the biggest
Is there an hourly minimum?
I think its 3 They have about 20 to 25 trucks here and they are overworked there crew worked all night they were out of hours on there e log in the truck and headed to a day shift on a Saturday with no hours of service left
Not sure how many they have here but I've driven by their yard and there were 8-10 trucks. Interesting business no doubt.
It sure beats running a shovel the buissness is not hard really the worst part is last minute availability I would bet 80 percent of there buissness is scheduled within 3 days of work The biggest draw back is a muddy ditch and all material becomes 100 percent export in most cases dumping on site requires room and the ability to contain the slurry and dry it out Also it becomes a challenge to maintain a dimensional ditch at 10 to 15 feet deep for shoring its doable just time consuming
All of the contractors that do utility work seem to have at least one vac trailer. I've wondered how well a vac unit mounted on a small tracked carrier and hauled around in a dump trailer would work. We have a lot of backyard utility easements in town and I've watched them fight getting a trailer unit close enough to do the potholes.
Get longer hoses the vac trucks can layout 250 foot of 6 inch if your trailer was set up right I bet 200 feet of 3 inch is doable provided it's not all up hill
Hey @AzIron this is about 200' from access. Can I borrow your trailer? Even got a 4kV buried line. Lucky me.
At least the water is OK.
And storm sewer. Got it all done with just a bit of a scare finding a direct-bury broadband line at 4.5' deep.
Just an arizona sunrise and some digging at one of the highest elevations in the entire valley the only thing farther north up the mountain is forest service
Just a sewer line good and deep at 14 foot in blue granite that rock is hard after 60 feet to go to make the tie in after 2 days and a rolled up point I made 12 feet and it was getting harder they didn't like my price to rent a 4000lbs hammer so they had another guy do it he spent 2 and a half weeks to get it done and he almost gave up No worries they can have it I am busy anyway
Been working on kinder morgan property all summer on an ethanol line like I posted up thread about there pretty ruly about things taking pictures is one so when the inspector not around I sneak a few All I am doing is excavating and shoring no install of pipe it's been interesting to say the least the contractor I am subbed to is from north Carolina I think this is the first job they have ever done this size and they are learning a lot on the fly but it's been good work for us
Moved this pipe bridge over from the lay down yard and was asked if we would swing it in place I said we would try I suggested a crane instead cause we were near our limit of height and reach after 30 minutes of trying but we had to shorten the rigging to much for it to be managed by tag line and myself the welding contractor and kinder Morgan inspector agreed a crane was going to complete the job
Nice work AZ. The 314 is earning it's keep.
That 314 has only been to the yard 4 times since june 1st witch is surprising really I will never do that good on another machine again we had it bought 3 days after finding it beat out 2 other guys to get got it to Phoenix spent a week doing some stuff and then it went to work and has stayed consistent for a 15 year old machine I have only put 1500 bucks it after purchase
those 314 are a nice size machine we have one but with an offset boom on it and it is heavy and its slow cat had it for 5 months trying to figure out the hydraulics and why they were slow i wish ours did not have the offset boom and i think its gray market machine since cat did not seem to know to much about it by chance does yours have a grade control feature on it ours has one to where you can program how deep to go and it wont let you dig any deeper and it has a height alarm on it but no one can figure out how to program it and make it work. the work your doing is awesome
Mine is a c series it's pretty much mechanical the only electronics is the throttle control
More pipeline work we had to have badger hydro vac most of it 14 foot deep 6 lines and to sets of tracks in 87 feet the railroad required a schedule 80 sleeve for the pipe we set it all at once I was not able to get any good pics as I was running the excavator then slurry backfill all said it was 5 days from start to finish on the track shut down and we were able to reopen the tracks 6 hours ahead of deadline so it was a big success
Basement dig no room for a ramp or a big crane either so we did it with the mini turned hard so a friend brought his machine and hammer to help out just a normal day fun fact crane company would not hook up happy to supply the rigging but wouldn't attach it
ours is a c series also they are a handy machine that tank farm look like a fun job
We have worked down there for years seems like we go a year without being there and then someone ends up there a lot but this is the biggest project we have done there got a few other things coming up down there to that we will need the 314 for so it's a good place When we went shopping for the 314 I either wanted a 135 or a 314 and I like the 314 for simplicity the c series is awesome cause it's got no emission controls but we looked for a year before we had the right job and machine show up at the same time
5.5 million gallon fuel tank for circle k pad is a little overkill cut down 7 feet and compact in 1 foot lifts took 3 full days to dig but there is a fire line needs to be moved cause it's under one edge all said with fluff factor we moved about 3000 to 3200 yards
Fire line that is in the way the ductless iron is being replaced and its moving 30 feet away around the new tank if you look in the tank hole you can see were we skirted the fire line its inside by about 15 foot so we have to wait for it to move it is only for fire foam but it has to be operational so it cant be cut till its replaced but we got the change order for the digging
Started backfilling pad today rented a komatsu 380 really impressed with it is going really fast having a grade tractor going to keep things evened up really speeds up loader production to move dirt and compact it The tests for the first 2 lifts came in at 105 percent compaction so I think its kicking ass
So we have ended our time on the ethonal line this was the last bit of work we helped with this week the brain damage has gotten to extreme the superintendent quit 2 months ago and we are one of 3 subs on the job along with the generals 2 guys it's been miserable to say the least especially since the owner of the gc is trying to run things from another state no one is really in charge so everyone is making decisions at the last minute that changes everything
Really is nice to slurry put the plates on and close the books on this one it has been an interesting job tho learned a lot
Got a new machine just before Christmas I kinda like it the 3 year old definitely approves seems to be filling a gap we had so money well spent
a friend sent this the other day that's the factory tach meter in his 416 b and he still pushing it every day
This was a fun little job footings for a retaining wall they were already dug 3 feet deep but the structure engineer said they needed to be below a wash about 50 ft away so I got the 911 call to come give it a shot it was the first job for a new customer But fortunately most of it was wide enough to walk the 314 in and it was not near as hard as I expected we only had to hammer the corners that I couldn't line up on so that was a new experience I have never been in cleach that we were able to dig 10ft deep in without hammering forever
Just some weld porn and good scenery
Tell us about the SA200? For the large tanks, do you need to build a berm around them tall enough to contain it if it fails? They have to do that here.
That sa 200 is an 86 model I do believe dad had it before I came along le as rned to weld with that machine smoothest welder I have ever used and really I think the only problem we have ever had with it was about 3 years ago the the throttle control magnet corroded and need replaced As far as containment berms go the new or redeveloped areas at the tank farm get concrete or block walls built around them because it has a smaller foot print and can be 8ft tall
An SA200 would certainly make learning welding a lot easier. There's a few refineries close to where I live that had to build berms around existing tanks when the berm requirements were put in place. I think it made for some big contracts for the companies building them.
I got a slight education to welding when I was about 10 and I used the miller bobcat on the service truck I thought I could weld up to that point
Retaining wall footings that double as scower wall along a wash 11 foot wide an average of 9 foot deep will be 12 foot at the deepest point Footing will be 16 in hes thick and top of footing will be about 3 foot below center of the wash I think it's over kill but that wash runs excess of 250 cfs and the wall will be in the bank of it so Those steps are not supposed to be there but they are solid granite boulders and they are not going to hammer out short of bring in a rock drill to pattern them to break so the inspector and engineer said Dowl into the rock with rebar since the boulders are in the water side of the footing It took a week to dig 120 ish feet I got about 2 days left all said it's about 700 yards we dug out about 180 to 200 to go maybe a little less but we have to throw everything twice to get it out of the way and the pile will just barely fit when we are done
That looks like a fun one lol. What part of town is that in?
Dynamite rd and Pima
More pictures from this morning wrapping up this job there was no dirt pile when we started took a little over a week to do so it went pretty good considering I was a little disappointed with the benches on my edge but we dug them around the solid we found so it's a win on to the next one
Started this one about a month ago building an rv court required a 6 foot tall retaining wall a friend referred the job to me everyone's to busy to take the job that is versed in hill side and like 4 other companies turned it down mainly cause it's small and complicated
Went back this week and graded the pad out did most of it with the 35 that machine is really growing on me The biggest thing that needed addressed was the power service to the panel it ran through the new driveway that was getting cut almost 3 feet so we relocated it about 6 foot deep from existing grade the current line was direct burial and only about 2 feet to 3 feet deep in the process we ripped out the sewer line funny part was it was broke when they put the power service in the first time cause it came apart at a fernco coupling witch I reused so the homeowner wasn't put out I bet i cut and graded close to 200 yards of dirt in about a day and a half
Do you not end up disgusting at the end of the day with a open cab? I would think its hot, dry and dusty there?
We have the cab 35G and I am impressed with what it will move, for sure.
The new company i just started for has a 35D with a custome extendable stick that the owners father builds. I have about 3000 hours on a normal 35D and this thing was absolutely amazing. I am pretty excited to use it more.
Personally I don't like cabs on mini's for the work we do. When we need a mini it's a tight spot working around laborers and the cab interferes with visibility and verbal communication. That and we're big guys in an already small open cab mini. Good looking job AZ! It's interesting that the retainer wall is poured block, is that common in your area? Here that would've been a poured wall. We don't see CMU in the residential market very often as most basements and walls are all poured in place.
I have Reynaud's Syndrome and both my toes and fingers turn blue way sooner than a normal person. Big boots and gloves are a non-starter in a little mini, so I asked for a cab. Boss was gracious enough to oblige.
You cant take the cab off to get in the building I can drop the rops on the 35 in 10 minutes with 2 guys plus it about 10 grand more and harder to work on I have run open rops on about every machine you can think of and i have ran just about all those machines with cabs in july when the ac broke as well moral to the story i really like closed cab machines doubt i will ever buy a mini with a closed cab i only have one open rops backhoe out of 4 and it doesnt get used a lot
A 18 inch e stick would be a game changer that said we have the long stick version its 18 inches longer than a standard stick a standard stick with a 2 foot e stick would probably be the tool but it might get a touch heavy
Most retaining walls here are block until structure demands poured wall that said most basements are poured walls but there are not many basements here so block is king it goes up fast and per job is cheaper than wall forms for finished product so block wins
As often as I need to, I can rent a ROPS machine for inside building jobs. I asked and they did 1 in 5 years.
3 jobs since january for the 35 had to take the rops off about every other week for the 17 I have at least 7 different plumbers I dig for that do ti work and starting to find concrete companies needing it to
Cool. They try to avoid that. I tend to dig what I can with the 120.
Most new digs get dug with a backhoe minis only leave the yard for job specific stuff or if I am out of backhoes to send to the job
Small little grading job turned into a nice change pace even if it was only 2 days it was supposed to be a couple hours of work then when I showed up to the job sub grade was high by about a foot and a half so we got our change order before we unloaded What's funny was the surveyor didn't read the physical elevation on there instrument because the cuts on the steks were what the prints said not what the actual cut was with grade being high so we established grade and got cuting 14 loads of dirt later we were done
On the block walls, what is used for strong backs? Here a block wall as that will eventually push off and lean away from dirt loading. Most are dead manned with steel rods/strapping to a plate buried in the soil pile.
My guess would be a wide dead man footing with the wall sitting on the outside edge and the majority of the footing buried behind the wall with a fair amount of rebar turned up into the CMU wall with poured cells. That's the way we do it here. The weight of the backfill sits on the buried footing counterbalancing the force pushing on the wall. Might even have a keyway in the footing to resist sliding forces.
Cm called it most retaking walls around here are this way that particular detail was for 6 foot tall had a 6 foot 4 inch wide footing 12 inches thick with a double mat and number 5 j bars every 8 inches to catch the block the center of wall is 16 inches from the outside edge of footing so there is just under 5 foot on the long side of the footing for the dirt to leverage against No keyway on these details but have done a lot in the past typically keys are on used in spots to lock the footing in so it cant slide into a wash if it's not practical to get it deeper than the wash or in a double wall section where the lower wall is not overly tall but has to hold the load of the upper walls footing cause you cant push the upper wall farther back and flood scour walls
So the lowboy had quite the episode this week front hub had I believe a few stretched lug nuts cause 3 ripped out and the reat snapped witch I have never had happen anything close to before but the tires flew off the front axel on the freeway with a load on and and one got sideways and the rear dual ran over a full tire and rim and launched the trailer pretty good blew the air bags twisted one spring hanger and put a tear in the beam about 16 inches long Spent 4 hours getting it unloaded and blocked up to get it limped into the yard was only 5 miles on surface streets and it was 105 degrees here that afternoon
So the following morning called trail eze asked what there procedure for frame repair was and basically it's all standard material nothing special so we straightened the beam out burned it together and put some channel iron stuffiness in to patch it Pulled the axels off need to replace one spring hanger and new bushings all the way around and since it will never be easier to replace air bags shocks and hoses everything is going back new
This has pilot center hubs? if does your next purchase should be a 3/4" torque wrench. The lugs on these do not take well to overtightening as did the old Budd Lugs.
The big thing for me was I bought the trailer used changed tires once had a real hard time with the hub that came apart but that was 7 months ago I changed tires whoever did the tires before I bought it over tightened it In my life I have changed thousands of hub pilots tires never seen studs break so it's a learning experience and needless to say the other three hubs are getting new studs and nuts
I've seen plenty chowdered up studs or plain busted off when guys go after everything with the 1" gun. I'm the same way, I won't touch it unless we do all of them, cause more then likely somebody got them all, or at least several of them.
I may use a 1" to remove them but they do go on with a 3/4 and NOT hammered to death, allows the torque wrench to actually swing some before clicks(We do our own tires at the local company).
Just a fire line repair came down saturday to expose it and shut it off I was running pretty good ductal looked like swiss cheese we guessed its probably at least 60 years old The building is or was a main post office for downtown I thought the curb stamp was cool its dated 1937 and looks better than some bee curb around the corner
Did this a while back rented a 320 next gen with rubber pads nice machine but not sure I want to own one Anyway the pit is for a press its 9 foot below finish floor to top of concrete so we dug to 10 feet in depth the gc had the piles and lagging done by a shoring contractor piles are 20 feet long they used a 330 with a drill there was only 2 feet of clearance with the roof to do the drill That pit was about 1200 yards of dirt all of it went into dump trucks and was piled on the property next door took about 4 days there were a lot of other details things we dug but they frowned on taking pictures
Being the customer was a concrete company they wanted to slurry backfill the pit but there budget and export problems convinced them to have us backfill with native Only took 2 days and 38 major overloads on the 14 to make it happen I think that poor truck had dirt falling off it every time he pulled in the building In reality this was probably one of the more fascinating jobs I have been in on because of all the detail work and the sequences to make it happen the crew that ran it were top notch and easy to deal with and had ther **** together
Got this phone call on a Saturday machine had been digging footings on the cleanest potato dirt we have been in for a long time at this point we had been on that job a month so the job was not the cause Anyway machine was 4 months out of warranty and this happened definitely a bad casting with 3920 hours on the meter it broke this happened same week deere factory went on strike took a month to get a new dipper I called my sales man he had no machines I could rent but I will give deere a lot of credit they warranted the part and the shipping cost to get it here in full I know my sales man had a big part in that but I was really impressed that item was over 7 grand that took most of sting away of not having the machine for a month
A good salesman can have a lot of pull and is invaluable.
X4 on that.
They probably didn't want to see the failure posted up for all there world to see. I'm guessing they knew it was a failure in workmanship and materials. Failures just out of warranty are the worst kind. Nobody wins and everyone looks bad.
Worst customer service I had was a couple years ago at a Ford dealership and Ford itself.. I took my truck in for a service as part of the service agreement I had purchased. They informed me the valve covers and oil pan was leaking which was a common problem on Eco boost engines. This was just after the warranty ran out (time wise not mileage wise) because of Covid. Recommendations at the time were to stay home unless it was absolutely necessary to go into stores or shops. They had the valve cover gaskets and replaced them on warranty but had to order all the parts to repair the leaking oil pan gasket. There were 2 service bulletins issued for the oil pan leaks. Then they informed me the oil pan leaks weren't covered as it was out of warranty. It was about 2 weeks past the warranty date. The service manager was on holidays and the assistant service manager was worse than useless. She said Ford said no and there was nothing she could do. She gave me a number to call Ford. I had to call a couple times and they said there was nothing they could and my warranty was way over the mileage. It wasn't but the guy then said Ford uses formula to calculate/guess the mileage of a customers vehicle. They estimated I had well over 100,000kms. when the actual mileage was about 91,000kms. which is still under warranty. What a farce. I waited a week until the service manager got back. I called him and he said he had looked at what's going on and it made no sense to him why Ford would cover the valve covers but not the oil pan. He called someone at Ford that he's known for awhile and they agreed the oil pan should be covered under warranty and got it approved. Interesting is the police F150's oil pans were covered under a recall. Oil pan leaks on regular customers vehicles aren't considered a safety issue which requires a recall if it involves large numbers of vehicles. Really amazing to me is when I called to speak to the service manager, the asst. service manager answered the phone. She said great news we got your oil pan covered under warranty. She had absolutely nothing to do with it and was quite rude to me saying Ford said no and there's nothing I can do. The dealership has lost my business strictly because if her. My friend is a mechanic there and he even said she's a piece of work. The only reason she works there is because her father is a mechanic there.
I have had both ends of the scale with service departments, the bad was so bad I ended up dragging the service manager over his desk and outside to the car.. and the good was a KIA with 7 year warranty that even after the 7 years they did "warranty" work to a leaky air conditioning pipe because " that shouldn't have happened".
So it's been a long while since I posted and man have we been busy Really I have hardly any good pictures of work cause we have been doing jobs that are all confidential let's just say don't say data center. And because of that I have really gotten out of the habit of taking pictures but lots of new equipment keeps showing up Both of these showed up at the end of last year I waited 11 months for that backhoe to show up exactly 1 year later it has 1100 hrs I guess we really needed it and the komatsu has been one of the most surprising investments I have made as soon as I bought that more work appeared for it been really handy for digging Plumbing on tilt ups especially the 200 thousand plus sq ft with 1000 ft long runs exiting the building at 13 ft to 15 ft deep The loader came along with the bigger excavator that 220 would bury 2 backhoes moving dirt I bought a 314 in 2020 and it is hands down the handiest machine for commercial work with everything going on right now I needed another one so I made a deal on this machine thru the cat dealer and I signed another contract that week that required us to put guaranteed iron on a job so I ended up buying a second one that same but it was a little older being a c model and was a good deal so we going to make the original 314 the backup machine but in 2 and a half months it hasn't been back to the yard and the 2 newer ones are out on jobs as well
We started doing fine grade for concrete last fall and got serious about it this spring it seems to contribute well with digging footings and backfilling for sub grade so after a few years of saying no I figured out we could make money at it so I bought a levels best box and a skid steer I am pretty pleased with this move tho there is a crap load of hand work and I am lazzy This is what happens when no one wants to drive 2 and a half hrs back to get iron you figure out how to make it work and man was there a lot more weight than you think on there
That looks like a handy trailer. Having more work is always a good problem to have.
It seems like quite a jump from when last I checked in to this thread. IIRC you were banging rocks on customs. Now it looks like you working big commercial stuff. I've never been one to operate out of fear, but I've heard many people in this industry warn me about growing too fast. Obviously the debt service is easy as long as things stay busy. The term "feast or famine" comes to mind. I hope that you continue feasting. Funny that you mentioned that the workload jumped with the purchase of the 220. The same thing happened to me. I had been a backhoe guy for quite a long time. They were the primary tool of my employment. A Cat 416B was my first purchase. Backhoes are the "Swiss Army knife" of heavy equipment. When I bought my first excavator, it really opened up what I could possibly do. Sure, it was a much larger purchase than a backhoe was, but the amount of work that one can do with one is much greater as well. With each larger machine I've purchased, the work for it came, and my business grew.
To be honest debt is still something I hate the only thing I have purchased on the list that got fianced was the backhoe only cause it was brand new the rest was paid cash. With interest rates the way they are I refuse to finance used equipment at this point but I get the point The biggest reason I went head long into some more excavators was I needed them for a job and because of outlandish schedule demands I can't have downtime plus this particular job that we have going keeps getting bit off in pretty sizable chunks and the master plan will keep us busy till end of next year and with the money that's been invested by the client to get this far they probably won't stop As for what we used to do i still do customs and rock got a couple of those going right now a few of my commercial customers have really grown and that's one thing that pushed us up was we kinda grew with them The only other big change was we bought a vac truck this year I will post on that later tonight its quite the saga
Rreally didn't see those purchase coming and I was really not sure I wanted in this line of work but the vac trailer I have kept getting us in trouble with little jobs that it could just barely do for one reason or another Followed by the local vac services are really sticking it to people I got charged 4 grand for a 10 hr day last April and the forman for the vac service kinda told me in a lot of words call somone else he doesn't care they are extorting us cause they can so in that regard I have 4 customers that were hearing the same thing so it prompted me to start looking and it was old used up piles for 150 grand plus or brand new at 500 plus and a 9 to 10 month wait neither option was appealing so we searched hard found this in North Dakota and brought it back. With all the data center work we are doing I needed one anyway we are having to guarantee numbers for vac work owning a truck seems a lot less risky to guarantee a cost for I really like the truck it's really stout the verdict is still out on electronics tho that stuff doesn't seem all that simple and it has a few quirks but I think it's as much or more about learning the truck and how to operate it surprisingly there is quite an art into doing that work
A single stack Mack with a vacuum on the back! That girl is chonk! Wow.
Surprisingly gets around really good it's just not very fast the crew went to calling it the beluga
That's a nice looking rig. I can't stand any of the vac outfits here, on the hydro-ex side or the environmental side, what kills me is for the prices they charge and a lot of time show up with busted equipment or not enough hose or leaking hose or don't show on time.
I rest my case
Are mass in motion but handy as hell. In this day and age of buried everything are the cats meow as to close quarters trenching.
I passed on an old truck right before the COVID that needed some tank work and a bit of body harness work, I really should have snagged it and parked it in the yard and tinkered on it and had the boys give it the 5 gallon overhaul.
. She does resemble a beluga.
AZ what exactly does that mean?
Pretty certain Necessity to utilize a Vac Truck for excavation investigation prior to hard digging, his having a Truck makes that simple as to no need to contract out.
CM1995, He can’t comment as per the NDA, but I can. That’s where they store all your personal data they steal from your cell phone, google searches, credit card statements, every 4473 you ever completed. And everything Alexis is listening too, your smart TV that’s watching you and the microphone in your new Ford Mustang. Lol. I’m mostly serious.
It's a cost control no service will offer a locked in price for pot holes or slot trenching its all by the hour at whatever pace the guy they send out is working at and you have a 3 hour site specific and id badge requirments on most of these facilities so a guy like myself has to carry a real cost for what's is reasonable and if we run into something completely unforseen that's obviously a Change order but if we are having a bad day materials a little tight or the gc does a bad job of coordinating the job witch never happens right But really if I blew the estimate and have more time invested than expected I lose a whole lot less money owning the truck than I would if I was paying a vac service by the hour to be there The companies whose name is square and see through is a real pain to work for like not fun at all but the work is also at a massive premium to deal with them so even an idiot like myself can make money at it
How about subbing out your vac truck once your guys get the hang of it, sounds like there will be a demand for that service among other contractors as well.
Nuke I worked at was dependent of a Vac Truck contractor, the operators were badged for duty with Guards standing nearby. Found massive errors on the yard prints as the abandoned in place construction days materials were never adequately marked.
That's what I figured. Totally see how the first pricing would be difficult to put a number on. I'm with you I hate rental and if we are using something on a regular basis I want to own it regardless of what it is.
LOL! I know what a data center is.
My friend has 4 vac trucks that go around $125/hr 2 hr minimum, but he hauls water lol a little different than sucking and hauling dirt.
the integral part of a vac truck is a dump site that is convenient and can handle contaminated materials. If I were in the business I would have a centrally located piece of land, and dump 95% of what comes out of the ground that is very clean. Then reload and use where ever. When you get on a suspected dirty job, then you pay for getting rid of that. It can be where old fuel tanks are, or industry.
You got an extra million laying around it takes about 2 acres to dry that crap out for 2 trucks running everyday and the constancy of the material dried out varries from gravel to silt there is massive segregation In a dream world that would be awesome but in reality our metropolis is so dam big centrally located is still a 25 mile drive sometimes so with traffic over an hour 1 way
I remember reading an article in one of the trade magazines where a vac company had tanks on roll-offs the vacs would fill on large jobs. Thought that was pretty slick for a big job. One roll off and a couple of tanks could keep the vac trucking running constant.
Maybe there is something to rent somewhere. If you're busy enough, $300 an hour running 4 hours a work day = 1200 x 5 x4 = $24,000 a month in driving and wearing out the truck. Your site so you get to collect the fee too. I pay $600 to dump a truck, flat rate no matter how much. I have them dump at my little postage stamp when I know what comes out and it is a small load.
$600 per load? Is that trash or just dirt? $75 per load here for dirt, concrete, etc. No trash.
It pencils out great in theory but it's a big need for cash and multiple trucks and a solid service buissness none of witch I posses at the moment. I have seen them they work great for certain things mainly volume not day service. A lot of jobs we do we can dump on site so using a secondary can and truck is really expensive on that regard there is no one size fits all. I never wanted to be in this line of work necessity dictated it we make it work time will tell if we scale a service off it or just take care of ourselves. This line of work is the most capital intensive and maintance intensive idea I have ever done yea you can make a lot of money but to run 4 trucks full time you need 5 trucks almost 6 a fairly set up shop a good mechanic someone on the phone 12 to 14 hours a day and probably 10 guys plus solid relationships with your dealer witch can be sketchy depending on the brand Just nozzles can run upwards of 400 bucks and you can destroy one in 10 minutes being dumb not to mention filters are over a grand and it doesn't take much to destroy those either Trucks right now are close to 600 after taxes Digging dirt is a lot less risky and a lot easier nut to crack and the other really big thing is I have yet to look at a truck that can scale legal half loaded according to our local rules
^ guys are overweight all the time. I follow them through the scales now and then at Dickson.
Vac truck dump out with all the water and yadda yadda.
Just used a vac truck the other day; it was a 1400 minimum up to 4 hours; 275 an hour after. Forget how much to dump but he dumped on site. Other guy was 8 hour minimum 400 an hour. Both guys have multiple trucks and work in industrial cleaning and maintenance. The guy I used had 3 or 4 trucks with 3 more on order. All purchased new and he has his own mechanic who was onsite, so I assume they just patched this truck back up. Owner himself was running it was well. Everything AZiron said about what it required to really be in the biz resonantes with what I gleaned talking to the owner onsite. Very big investment.
@AzIron That is a good lookin load, you must be a certified lowbed driver!
Let's not get carried away there maybe one of these days I will quit being cheap and buy a 16 tire that's real lowboyin I could definitely use a shorter truck some days if the wheel base was 2 feet shorter it would spoil me
My figure is to be in the vac bizz to compete with badger you need about 1 mil in cash with really good credit or have 5 million laying around that you want to burn if your not going the credit route it's a dam serious line of work to be in and it is not a fun job in July when it's 115 degrees and 60 to 70 percent humidity and did I mention tyvek sucks
This is some of the most fun and aggrevating digging you can do in one hole The bottom of the pier cap is 8 foot below grade so to make it safe to get rebar tied and clean the gravel off the pier you have to bench it out and they will form up the footing around the pier cap Obviously the pier was drilled and poured then topped off with pea gravel before we dug the footing so then we can dig out the footing and over ex the bench and not bend any rebar in the process The reason we use gravel is that it is easier to shovelout of the rebar than dirt the pier cap is about 8 inches wider than the pier so a 1 foot bucket is the smallest bucket to use and is ridiculously slow to use around the rebar
I wondered about that when you first got that truck. I like my trailer being right behind the cab, I'm not in it long enough to care how it rides, I just need to make it around a corner. The w900's don't turn real great anyways, and the wheelbase doesn't help. Good to see you staying busy. There is a guy here in town now with a hydrovac, but he's got a underground boring business that they travel all over the country with. I think they also primarily got it for their own use.
We have had that truck since I was in Jr high that's the rig I learned to lowboy in back in dads hay day he had a flip tail and a 35 ton detach and to many end dumps anyway that truck replaced the old 900 b with a 195 inch wheel base with a 5 and a 4 in it that thing was a boat anchor driving down the road gobs of power but 65 was all you wanted The only reason he kept the 900l when he cut back was it only 50000 on a rebuild now 20 years later its got about 200000 on that same rebuild and it's paid for When I started really driving that's what we had so that's how I learned didn't know any different but it does ride nice I would trade the 15 for an 18 speed tho it leaves a little to be desired on top end options you either do 60 or north of 70 miles an hour to get the rpms where you want them
Sorry, I was thinking you got that truck 6-7 years ago. Maybe that was when you got it painted or the trailer, evidently my memory is slipping.... Either way, I have a full bed tilt trailer, like a landoll, and I've been wondering if just a tilt tail trailer would be handier. I just load my forklift and carry deck crane, or when I rent a telehandler. You about need 2 guys, one to be in the equipment and one to tilt the trailer, or really trust the park brakes.
Ughh. I hate digging around pier caps. Good looking work. Like the dual receivers on the grade rod. One for the cap and one for the bench?
You fellas really impress a old String-line and Transit type as me. Rule of thumb grade off with junk worn slick equipment, me.
Yea running multiple recivers is really the way to speed up your day you should run a rod with 4 recievers you really need to pay attention then Cm I learned a long time ago to embrace pier caps cause people avoid that work its tedious and slow and pays well The other thing that really helps is having that pc 220 it makes fast work of hogging out those holes and puts the dirt far enough away you don't have to move it to keep digging that machine probably cut our time in half on those but you have to get creative kinda like this those are number 16 tebar dowls the building is precast so they have a 1/4 inch tolerence to fit so if you bend them at all its going to get expensive to fix and these are poured already next to these big pier caps and you have to set up around them its a good challenge