Mini Ex – How long to dig
Hi everyone, New user here, and I'm hoping someone can help me with this. Once in place and ready to go, how long do you think it would take a novice to dig a cubic yard with a 24" bucket? Or how long on average do you think each bucket load would take? Is it safe to assume a 12" bucket would yield twice the time? I m trying to figure out how long to plan for a rental. I estimate with the amount of work needed that I'll get halfway proficient at it by the end. I appreciate your help.
Depends on how sticky the dirt is and if it comes out of the bucket... and even though the buckets might seem the same a 2' bucket on a 5 ton holds a lot more dirt than a 2' bucket on a 3 ton.
Yah, I'm sorry, I guess I should have mentioned that it would be a 6500-7500 lb machine. Also when I say novice I mean that I have about 20 minutes on one, where a buddy had me operate a bobcat 331. He had me dig a 6" deep trench about 60 feet long; he wanted 4", but that seemed fairly difficult to keep that shallow. Moving the arms didn't seem too bad, but it was obvious I didn't have it figured out. I guess what my goal is to know is whether I can get done what I need to in a certain amount of time or not so I can budget the rental accordingly. Thanks again, Mark
Explain the job you need to do with it and maybe we can have a idea of how long it would take a experienced person to do it.
Sure thing. So some quick background. At our own house we have a growing drainage problem that has been building up for some time, and portions of the yard fairly close to the house are higher than and drain to the house. When it rains heavy, which seems to be all the time now, we get a nice waterfall over exposed roots (at least they are now) and then the dirt swept away by the water deposits at the bottom of the "waterfall" into an unintentional wet weather pond. There are several factors that have forced us to come up with the plan we have; they include the way our house sits on the lot and how the neighbors lots are graded. We don't have too many options for lowering the surrounding grade and dealing with the water that enters our lot, and the public utilities/easements. I work with a large engineering firm and have access to Autocad such that I could use that along with surveying the backyard to get existing contours to help formulate our plan; lots of thought has gone into this and some friendly coordination with other engineers in my office. The attached image is the backyard plan and has been broken up into specific areas: A through I (shown), J-M (not shown). (Please, don't pay attention to the numbers on the attachment, they've been revised as the plan matured - I just didn't feel like redrawing my areas) Area A is a fill area to help get the drainage diverted to a new pipe going into to get to the front yard. This would be filled mostly from area B. Area B is a cut area for an upper level of a new retaining wall. The cut is approximately an average of 18" deep on the slope, and is about 11 yards worth. This would be excavated. Area C is a large cut area to help with lowering the grade of our yard in the tougher areas to deal with. This area is an average cut of 18", and is about 60 yards worth. I'll have to see how well the bobcat I have will do this, or I'll just use the excavator. Area D is a cut area for the lower level of the retaining wall. The average cut is approximately 24" deep, and is again about 11 yards worth. This would be excavated. Area E is a cut area for a new patio, and is an average of about 12" deep to lower the grade slightly, but also deal with the drainage rock. This is about 15 yards worth. Same as Area C as far as bobcat/excavator, depending on how well the soil works with me. Areas F, G, H, are cut areas to deal with some settlement issues and to put in some drainage rock and a drain tile while I'm at it. These areas total about 9 yards. This would be excavated. Area I is a cut area for a new walkway, generally the same as Area A above, and totals about 5 yards worth. I'll just bobcat this. Areas J, K, L, M are cuts for retaining wall foundation, and for drainage behind the wall. They are various depths, but the total wall length is approximately 210' and comes up to about 54 yards worth. A portion of the wall is between my house and our neighbors yard/fence paralleling the walkway (area I). This would be excavated. The last area is a temporary trench necessary for the pipe to get the main drainage to the front. This was to be a 2' wide trench, 80' long, and about 30" deep, so about 15 yards. This would also be excavated. I sincerely appreciate your input. Lastly, do you have a feel for how long say 30 yards can be loaded into a dump truck, assuming the next is right in line and the pile is right there? View attachment 136890
Yah so that worked well. Let me try this another way. OR
OR http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j214/hoppyumr/IMG_2237_zpshptfr1oj.jpgThe attachment does not work, but from how it is described, I would have to guess maybe 2 days worth. Most places rent equipment for 1 day, 2 days, or a week, in your case I would rent both machines for a week and have at it. It would probably be quickest to make one spoil pile for any extra dirt and then load it with the skid loader, any tandems you get will be roughly 12 or 13 yards of dirt per load. I can put 15 tons, or about 13 yards, in our tandem in about 5 minutes with a Cat 247B and a .65 yd bucket. Again this is all just a rough idea without seeing the drawing.
opps, just saw the pictures after I posted that.
So a pro should be able to dig/move/load the 150 yards total in about 2 days? Would that include final grading, or just rough? Thought I can't imagine much of a difference for this area. I was figuring I'd end up getting the mini excavator bucket about 2/3 full on average, and that my average bucket time would be about a minute each - being a novice. This ended up totaling about 38 hours of excavator use if I ended up having to do my Area C with it. Somewhere around 2400 buckets, if I did my volume/math right. Then as for the bobcat, which is a model 743 with a regular 1/3 yd toothed bucket, I was figuring about 3 minutes a load to get it loaded from a pile, drive to the front, dump it and then head back to pick up a new load. I figure my total length would be about 130' on average driving back to front through the narrow(ish) section where the walk will be. This didn't really include scraping the dirt up from its virgin location - that I figured was separate. As for loading the dump truck, I figured about 30 seconds per load for me to do it. I feel like I have a fair price for the hauling - 75/hour, no minimum. The guy was going to just stop by on his way home from his regular days at work. I know a pro could do this a lot quicker, but I have access to the bobcat for free. I might buy my dad a really nice steak dinner, but free otherwise. The thing that worried me was the excavating because of how things have to be staged. I actually may have a lead on picking up a bobcat 331 for anywhere from 10-12k; my thought was that I could use it as needed, then turn around a sell it when i was done with it. But it sounds like you don't think that would be necessary, and to just rent it. Either way, you're thinking this shouldn't be a big deal time wise for a novice to do? Again, I appreciate your help and thoughts.
I had assumed you would be renting, I dont really have a yes or no answer on buying a machine, that depends on how much you want to put into all of this. I am not sure what size truck your gonna load in 30 seconds, I have yet to see someone load a tandem with as small of skid as your using quicker then about 6 or 7 minutes, and thats a experienced operator.
Did you get any estimates from local contractors?
Oh, I'm sorry. I guess I didn't say things right regarding the dump truck loading. I meant that at best I could see maybe 30 seconds per bobcat load, times roughly 45, to equal a full truckload taking about 20-25 minutes. Yah, I have no intention of setting any new world records. As far as contractors go, I tried to get quotes for the patio portion of which we were originally going to do concrete instead of pavers. However, out of 4 contractors that I could actually get to come out, I didn't get a quote back from not one of them. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed in that. For the dirt work, I did have a friend that does work related to this (he and his family do excavation work) on the side come out to look at it, but even being a good friend of mine he said wasn't really able to put a price on it with the way it all has to come together, so even for him the issue was the staging and how many times he'd have come out after each successive step was ready. I was going to call a few contractors, but I don't have high hopes that I'm going to get any serious numbers, if any at all. I'd imagine I'd be asking them while they are already flush with work.
You know, I got into a business that uses "heavy" equipment not that long ago. You know what I found out? The only way to get reasonably accurate at estimating time is by diving in and doing the work over an extended period. Which, yeah... I know that's obvious, but it's not my real point. My REAL point is that you may as well just dive in and don't beat yourself up for being wrong, because you'll be wrong about a lot of things. You just have to trust that you'll learn, if you ALLOW yourself to learn. And don't worry... Hundred years from now, who gonna give a ***?
