I've been doing mostly home repair work for the past several years, lately we've been doing new builds including the foundation. There is a lot of work for that in my area and I've been thinking of branching out on my own doing site prep and foundation work. Mostly here the foundations are perimeter concrete footers, so a mini excavator would do the job fine, also it would work great for trenching for utilities. But certainly occasionally there would be grading work and I don't want to limit myself to not be able to take that work. I saw a video were a guy was grading with an excavator with a wide bucket (grading) attachment. If I were to do grading with a mini what would be the minimum size mini I would need for this? My budget is limited, I feel I could put together about $20k for the excavator. I know those are limited funds, but I've seen mini's in the 6k lbs range for that price, can I get away with going that small? Thanks.
I would go with a cat 303 or 304 with buckets from 1' ,18",2' and a sheep foot for doing utility work. As far as grading work I would get a clean out bucket with a smooth edge not sure how big you can get them. We have a bunch of 303 and 304 minis at work very reliable good all around mini make sure you get a quick coupler with the machine