hi, ive always been hiring out my machines on an hourly rate but now getting a job where im going to be paid per cubic meter! so just wondering how to figure out rates for my d8n and d6r rates per cub and how much each machine would do in an hour?
Bloody hell mate! That's a loaded question and pretty much impossible to answer without some further details . . . Are you being paid on the volume of the excavation or volume of material produced? What is the material, how much ripping does it require, and how far must it be pushed? How good are your operators? A dozer is usually a poorly understood machine with few operators (without training) able to work the machine to its potential. A top class hand on a typical bulk pushing operation will frequently move more than double the dirt of an untrained newbie on identical machines. Folks with experience with modern machines will hopefully be of more assistance. Cheers.
lol i was hoping no one would say impossible! its to build a water dam 600m by 125 m and all the material is soft black cotton soil with minimum ripping. i will be paid per cube pushed to storage area. i do have good experiences operators. any rough idea of what sort of figures we talking about?
No matter how you price it , it won't be cheap enough for the customer and it certainly won't be enough for you. D6 around here is 150 or more per hour. D8 runs on bid jobs mostly. They are thirsty.
You are going to build a dam nearly 2000 feet long and 500 feet wide. That is what a meters to feet calculator shows. How High and wide at the top of the dam ?? Soft black cotton soil ! Good grief I hope the dam thing isn't very high. You don't even mention compactors. I hope you have a lot of liability insurance for when it fails. You don't say how far the material is from the dam site. I cannot begin to visualize moving and finishing a dam that size with just dozers. I don't know anyone who could give you a price to charge without seeing the site and having a detailed drawing of the dam itself. You will most likely go broke financially without an on site professional estimator.
Tinkerer, I saw that too and hoped its just stripping the topsoil, not the right material for a dam unless its to hold back sheep.
Tinkerer , after reading your post , I put my brain in gear. So this thing is roughly 2000' x 400' x ? The ? here is a big ? Unless the owner agreed to an hourly rate he can't loose . He just needs this one job in his career. Sounds like a couple million yards to move. Could be a 10 million $ job , big ?
Big, ya real big. Imagine say 3/1 slopes on it and doing it with dozers. I hope he is gouging out the fill dirt right below it. If he is imagine the length of those slopes and pushing the material up them. That price per cubic meter better be pretty high or he is gonna lose his a## if he is under a contract.
Considering his location, I'm thinking he's talking about a rectangular basin with a low berm all around it. That's closer to 100,000 yards to move.
Wouldn't that only be 3 1/2 feet tall? 2000 x 400 x 3 1/2? We need the mystery dimension.
Actually, I was a factor of two over what I was picturing. 600m x 125 m basin is 1450 m in circumference. A berm 3m high, 2m wide at top with 2:1 sides is 24m in section. That would give a volume of about 35,000 cu m. Or about 50K yards. Though of course it's all a guess but goes to show how a simple question really isn't simple!! Gotta have more info....
The mystery for me is the top elevation from the bottom elevation and the width of the top. Without knowing that, there is no way I know of to calculate the yardage involved or the time it will take to build it. That correlates to the cost per cubic meter to move the material which was the OP's original question. He really needs someone onsite to do the math for him. I am taking his word that it is a simple dam 2000 feet long. It very well could be a basin with a berm, not a dam around it. That is a whole different situation.
Yair . . . just to point out things are done different in different places and the definition of "dam" can vary with the region. I have pushed up walls like these around two hundred acre paddocks. It was always handy to have a scraper around but the bulk of the earthwork was always done with dozers . . . lots of them. I never worked on the project shown in the pictures but some folks may find them of interest. Cheers.
Nice post with those photos Scrubpuller. That is why I refer to the OP's original thread as a mystery. Just tooo many variables in dam and berm building to give a specific answer to his questions without having any details. The biggest berm, or dam as some would call it that I ever worked on was to create a 2000 acre cooling lake for a nuclear generating station. It has three finger dikes inside it to create the needed water flow for maximum cooling. Some of the borrow pits now have 70 feet of water over them now. It took 5 years to complete from stripping the topsoil to compacting the stone roadway on top of it. I was there from the beginning to the end. We can't do much, if any dirt moving in the winter where I live because of the weather.
We call that style of construct in the states 'Levees', used for flood control or encompassing a marshy area to keep water off more productive flat ground. Most of these along the major rivers are reclaimed sediment/sand/ or field strip soils. Which plant you work at tinkerer? I worked(retiring) at Callaway Fulton MO.
I never actually worked "in the plant". Just the dirt work for the building site and the lake. The hole for the generating station itself was HUGE because of the over-dig to get all the concrete forms and equipment down there. I wish I had taken photos of it. I sent you a PM
Gotcha
Thank you for creating such a forum for a particular industry. This will help many people like Superior papers discount if concerned and relevant members pool in their knowledge and expertise.