Looking at putting in a water line. 4" dr21. It is 4400 feet long, one road crossing, no existing utilities. All clear farm land. May backfill with gravel maybe onsite dirt. How many feet can a 305 make in a ten hour day. Or a backhoe? Or what ever you run? Average clay dirt.
Dig and backfill? Or just dig?
All depends on what your digging in ,I’ve dug in clay where you had to work harder to dump bucket then fill it.
With my e42, I've done about 1000-1200ft a day in 'easy' soils. Did one at the end of this past season though that was only 600ft long, and it took about 8-9hrs for dig only. Ground was mush and I had to fight to empty the bucket every time. With that length of trench and if it's open, I'd probably want a bigger shovel than a 5 ton. I think I'd likely bring in an 8 ton minimum, just for extra bucket capacity per swing.
Is it only a 4" water line 3' deep? That's what they make trencher's for. If the ground is dry a trencher would do it in a couple hours or less. An angle blade on the front would backfill it pretty fast too.
My hired help on a good backhoe can average 80 feet sometimes a 100 an hour at 4 feet deep buts that's in dirt with no rock and the dirt cleared the bucket as fast as it went in I personally have done about 1400 feet in one day but it was about 16 hours
No idea on soil conditions. My guess would be dryish red Clay's. I have a 305 is why I'm wanting to use it. Why rent while I'm making payments on another one? I was hoping to hit 800 feet a day average digging only. I think I an inline from your comments...thanks
I'd still look into a trencher, even a walk behind one. Using a mini-ex will still make the job about 4 times more work and take a lot longer.
Did 3500 feet of waterline 5 foot deep for a micro hydro project with Yanmar Vio 35 mini ex and 24 inch bucket. Did 250-600 feet per 8 hour shift depending on whether I was navigating around immovable boulders, going through heavily consolidated cobble or fairly dry clay-sand-dirt. I make no claim to be a hi ball production operator.
I've been running hoe's for over 30 years and this comment is absolute hogwash. 3500 ft at 2by 5 plus expansion is 1488 aprox yards. That machine can cycle if you were gods gift to operating 1 yrd per min that's 9 cycles including breakout at 4 to 5 flat that's going way up. For the sake of argument 9 per mi. =1yrd 1488/60= would tske no matter what yiu say 24.8 hours the machine will not dig any faster than the numbers I gave period end of story. Sir you are mistaken. On that not how bout a fish story.
Dredging up a 4 year old thread ^^^^^
It is an old thread but I think RHISMB is confused. Orest never said how long the entire trench took to dig. He was using a 24" bucket not dug the trench in 24 hours. He said 250-600' per 8 hour shift which seems reasonable.
Most of the time (in my 27 years of expertice of breathing air) id the first thing you feel the need to state is your amount of expertice in a particular subject is that you just showed up for a pay stub and added no real value to a company. Again not always but fairly offen!
Using a 12" bucket digging 26 to 30"s deep . I spent 5 hours digging 380' in hard red clay and some tree roots. Using a 5 ton Takeuchi
If we are adding real data points to this old thread.... Last year I trenched 12” wide, 26-27” deep, 1400’ long in 6.5hrs. Ground conditions were average for our area, red clay and shale, open pasture land. Kubota U35-4 mini ex.
Thats it, I knew it. I should have gotten the Kubota... I suppose clearing the path threw the woods was also done in that time. Actually, I almost rolled my excavator digging the trench. When crossing the drainage ditch it was fairly steep and trees on each side prevented me from being able to move the boom and house much. As I was backing across the ditch the dirt gave way into a wash out under the top of the ground. Machine almost rolled over backwards. The upper corner of the house had gotten into a tree and the boom was blocked and not able to help me counter the slope. If you have ever had the machine list so much that the counter weight is working against you... you know what I am saying.... Thinking the whole time, I knew I should not have taken this Favor job... I like reading old posts it takes me back in time! Oh and if you are wondering that new water service and meter is going to end up costing the guy 20K. Between surveys, soil studies, being forced to pay for his own wet tap, cost of meter and 400 feet of poly....
You have to compare similar conditions. Clearing a path through tree's and brush doesn't count as digging time.
here is a picture of 60' of trench I dug today. You can see I tossed some of the dirt out to the right, it would not all fit in there. It is an extreme example of good material. It is sandy fine gravels, like digging in bedding. I did not know it was so nice and I had picked up pea gravel, so we used some. It did not take long and we dug it right to money @1%. In conditions like that a guy could fly! Up at my place, I dug in 500' of service trench in about 4 hours or so with the 120.
It would take me at least a week to dig a 3-foot trench and that's between a EMT visit or 3.
You guys living in places where you can dig 3' waterlines. What it must be like. We have to go 6' deep.
I know. I know. Mine's a 2-ft cover and the frost line for construction is 12 in. Perhaps there's a reason we are moving there
Some can't manage deeper unless explosives are used.....
Thats what she said
Are you coming to Idaho?
I'll visit. I am moving 100 miles in WA to get to the weather I like.
3' deep? LOL! All we have to go is 18".
I think 8 feet deep here. The joys of -35°C winters.
Our "frost" may get 3-4" deep here one or two times a year. One time our 321 froze to the ground and we couldn't break it loose and had to wait until the next day when the temps rose back into the 50's.
This ↑ SW Montana, seen them freeze at 6' more than once. I go 8', any less and I break out the foamboard and spray urethane for the hydrant and stock waterer installs. That's understood up front before I start..if they don't want the expense, then someone else gets the job.
We park our dozer on oak planks when the freezing weather comes so we don't get caught like that. Depending on when it happens, it might be 3 months before it gets warm enough for them to thaw out. The excavator is usually parked on a concrete pad at the farm during the winter.
That only happened to us one time in 30 years. I can't imagine what ya'll have to go through.
Parking on old tires is pretty common around here, and keeping a skinny shovel on the machine to clean the tracks each night.
Eh, it's not bad as long as you expect it and plan for it. Thawing out cattle drinkers is about the worst part of what I deal with most winters and even that doesn't happen often.
I use old consumed wide conveyor belting to park equipment on in freezing weather, it works.