So I was asked last night to bid on digging a manure lagoon that is 250' in length, 80' wide, and 14' deep. This is also alot bigger than the work that I have been getting. At this point business is slow, so I wanna throw a number at the guy. Now all I have for equipment right now is a deere 450c trackloader, and I don't wanna be there for a month, so I'm going to rent equipment of a proper size. Site is currently a corn field right now so area isn't a problem, neither is rock. I'm looking a renting either a komatsu pc-300 hoe and bailing it out. Or a cat 8t w/ single shank and pushing it out. Now the hoe is cheaper by the week, and easier to transport, but according to comparing a cat 330 / 345 and the 8t in the performance handbook, slower. Maybe 35 hours with a hoe, and 22 with the dozer if I did my pencil work corrent. What are your thoughts? Oh, a 330 is 3,200 a week & a 345 is 4k, and the 8t is 6,200... i think. The pc 300 is 2,900.
What do you have to do with the spoils? I would say the d8 hoes are only good for digging and your 450 is going to be to slow to keep up spreading the fill. What about renting a scraper?
what is a manure lagoon? I can only imagine.
I have worked for a few companies that did some lagoons. We usually used scrapers or sometimes haul trucks. Maybe you could rent a double barrel scraper so you could load yourself? Let us know what you come up with.
manure lagoon noseplugs anyone?
It is not that bad.
I only have to move the spoils out of the hole. So I figgured I would move 40' to the left, and 40' to the right. 40' is getting close to a working swing radius for a hoe of that size. Its also a nice short push for the cat. I though of a pan, but what if I get into stuff that doesn't want to come right out... I'm going to need a cat. What pan I've ran we were doing 200 - 600 yard hauls with the material, with this job, even if i did it the long way its a 500' haul. As for nose plugs.... if I do it right I'll never be there when its in use. So to me it might as well be an oversize olympic pool. Wolf, basically they are a large holding pond for recycled cow feed. Dig it out, compact it, line it, and pump into it. The nose plug part is in 15 years when the solids have filled alot of it up, and they want it cleaned out. I usually work hourly or off a quote that i guesstimate off my hourly rate, and of smaller scope. House basement size stuff. What is the going number per yard for this type of work?
Hi Stumpjumper83,will the spoil dirt be used as a levee around the pit ? or will it be hauled off site later?
lagoon I would go with the excavator, I would make sure of what he wants to do with the spoils, thats a bunch of dirt to just stockpile. Just make sure you havent got to move it a bunch of times, to make room for more spoils. If its a clay wet dirt, its going to be harder to dig and move. Hows the water table, are you going to have to pump the lagoon to be able to keep digging? Thats more expense and it could take a big pump to keep out the water. Do you need a permit to do this in your area? Its tough out there now and everyone is trying to grab whatever they can, But if you get caught digging a pond without a permit (if you need one) that will be real bad. Lots of info on this site, this is just my 2 cents worth, I graduated from the college of hard knocks :Banghead
Thats what I was thinking your going to have a 40' of dirt piled around that pond.
This one is right up my alley, i have done this several times. Hopefully you are on clay bottom. You use the clay to seal the lagoon so it doesn't leak into the subsoil. What you do is push off the top soil and windrow it away from the lagoon, If you have sand or any other permiable material, remove that and windrow it. Hopefully you're on clay bottom. You need to be left with a large flat clay surface at least as big as the finished size. A good rule is make the hole a blade width wider all the way around the lagoon than the finished size is going to be. You remove extra subsoil but you refill the extra area with the clay. That makes it absolutely tight. Then all you do is start pulling clay out of the middle of the hole and building a big berm all the way around. You end up with a big lagoon partly below grade, partly above grade. Figure if the depth is to be 20', you'll be about 15' below grade, with about 5' of berm. Finish grade the berm to make it mowable, dress it with subsoil and topsoil, and you're done. Make the sides as steep as the dozer will handle. The natural action of the contents tend to erode the walls, and fill the bottom. Make it extra deep, and extra steep, it won't stay that way for very long. Make the berm as wide and packed as possible. Again, the natural action is for the berm to erode slowly, and 5' of water has quite a force. It will last at least 20 years before it has to be rebuilt. Last time I did this, I did 3 lagoons in 50 hours using a d6h and a semi-U blade with time to spare. I rented the machine, and hired a retired operator. He was shocked as hell that you could do so much so fast. Everyone thinks you should put an excavator on a job like that but experience says otherwise. Of course my experience is on a couple feet of sand with clay down to china. No rock. Btw, the ministry of the environment in Canada approves a clay lined lagoon as virtually impenetrable to water (or the lagoon contents) I had my contractor quote me $15000 to do one lagoon with a D7 and a 25 ton exc. I did all 3 for about $7000. I was pretty happy in the end. Good luck I was actually thinking of buying that 6, but that job proved there was no way i would be able to keep it busy.
watglen, what size is were these lagoons? The one I'm looking at doing is a 250' x 80' x14' deep. So your telling me to only got 10' deep, and use my spoils for the other 4'? The farmer is hoping that the clay will pass the tests for the liner, I should know that soon. If I only have to go 10' that will shorten my yards enough that I will not need a d8t, a week with a d6r/t should do it. When you compacted it, did you track it in or use a roller? Compaction tests? As far as the sides go, I'm almost positive that there is an engineer involved along with government moneys, and if it doesn't pass inspection I don't get paid...
Typically we go about 100 x 200' and 15-20'deep. The closer to square you keep it, the less travelling you have to do to transport the spoils. 10 and 4 should be about right. You can do some math to figure it exactly, or you can simply start digging and see where you end up. Pretty hard to screw this up. Just make sure that when you're done you have a nice thick wall of clay all the way around, bottom to top. This will keep the seepage to a minimum. If the inspector controls whether you get paid, you better do it how he wants it. We don't have inspections here, or soil tests for that matter, we just dig it. I compacted with the dozer alone. For interest, that 6h was 2500/wk. Now that i think of it, I rented it for 2 weeks, so the work i did took 100 hrs with time to spare.
As for pricing, I would just do it on an hourly basis. Thats all we ever do around here anyway. Figure out what you're going to need for rent/fuel/labour/beer and give the guy an hourly rate. It won't take a week i can guarantee. That sets the upper limit on price. Just use the old line about not being sure how its going to go and the cheapest way to do it is hourly. That farmer surely will bite on that. It works on me every time! Then you both get a fair deal, and you can all go home happy. A story from my childhood, my dad needed a pond for drinking water for the pigs, and there was a contractor working in the area with 3 double engine EUC scrapers and this monster EUC dozer. He quoted $14000 (1982 dollars) for a pond about 100 x200 or so. About 18' deep. Spread and level the spoils, move some dirt to fill some swamps, finish grade, that sort of thing. I'll never forget it, "Oh you're fulla **** (you have to know my dad) If you can't dig that ****in thing for $3000 I'll do it myself! (again, you had to be there) He told them to run until they got to $3000. Anyway, a week or so later, they were done, and the bill was $3000(1982 dollars!). Hourly, its the way to go. (That was running 7 engines and about 5 guys hard....for a week....for $3000! I'll never see that again)
This sounds messy.