All, I'm back with another hair-brained idea. I'll be installing some sod in my yard, about 2,000 sq/ft of Bermuda grass. The ground sucks and I'm planning on adding a minimum of 2" of top soil but I know I need to roto till the ground prior to adding top soil. I'm trying to avoid buying a roto tiller (or renting). I'm wondering if you guys have seen or made a tiller I am thinking of in my mindhole...what I'd like to do is build something with roughly 8" teeth that I could strap onto my front end loader of my Cat 446d and sort of back drag it along to till with. Would this even work? Am I stupider than my mother has led me to believe?
I am sure it will cultivate it but cultivating is a lot differnt soil prep than roto-tilling.
I don't know what your soil is like there, but doing what you are thinking about where I'm at, would result in turning your yard into football sized, hard chunks of earth.
Look into skid steer attachments of this type and get some ideas of what is possible. Practical for just 2000 sq ft is another matter. For a one off, I'd hire it out to a landscaper with a small tractor rotovator. Around here, they are common for doing gardens and the small ones go through regular gate. If you want the project to build, by all means, but if its the lawn you want...
Use the backhoe bucket teeth, hold them vertical and rake the ground before adding the topsoil, then again after. Then backdrag with the loader bucket to smooth and compact.
Good Lord 2000 sq feet , hire it out . Cost you quadroople to fab up something . Your machine will make more mess than you probably have now . A tiller is only 50 bucks a day
The brain trust has spoken, looks like I'll be renting a tiller. Thank you guys for the responses.
Two Mexican landscapers make short work of it. And for those of you that find that offensive, my Mother was Mexican so step off.
That's because they aren't afraid to work... That's not a common thing in some parts these days.
Exactly. My uncles and cousins were/are some of the hardest working people I know, most have done quite well in life. I'm the lazy white sheep in the flock, LOL!
No I am layzer But I do like the way Roddd thinks
If you till up the ground your going to have to compact it back down. If you don't when it settles your yard won't be flat any longer. Also need to make sure it has some moisture in it so the top soil sticks.
Tire chains on all four wheels. Of course in California you may not know what tire chains are. In VT they are considered essential three months of the year. My first backhoe, I figured 15,000 LBS won't need chains in the snow. Gravity will give it traction. I then proceeded to learn that 15,000 LBS gives a toboggan lots of speed. We use them for traction in snow, ice, and mud, or for shallow tillage. Willie
Ya, the toboggan effect, scary. Its also lots of fun with a crawler on ice or rock. Amazing how they will slide sideways when you don't want them to....
A local logger in my youth learned how to profit from the **** eyed policy of the Green Mountain National Forest. He had a big crew. Federal land regulations required very small crawlers. He owned perhaps 20 John Deere 350s. In one transaction, he bought another ten new ones. His employees spent their weekends in the shop. They joked about the new tractors they hadn't got to to "cork", (all new tractors were fitted with caulks). The joke was they would be upside down, the operator would need new pants. It might be battery acid, or fecal matter.
A **** is a rooster. He looks at the subject one eye at a time. It isn't a dirty word.
neither is petcok but that one gets busted every time too.