My neighbour has a project for me. They are digging out a bank 150 feet long by 15 feet deep. It might end up being 80 plus loads for a tandem gravel truck. I realize this is pretty small as earth moving projects go but its only 100 yards from where I park my excavator so I'm pretty happy about it. I'm learning and playing as I go. Once the owner gets the wood etc out of the way I will cut the bench down to a more manageable height.
More pictures. The rock was wedged in tight. I had to get my chain and wrap it around the stump and the rock to get it out. The last picture is me playing with my other toys.
Very nice!
Must be nice . . . it's still a muddy mess around here. Does the nieghbour have a catch point established for the cut? How about a toe? Is there going to be a retaining wall? Can you load the trucks with you on top and them below or will you have to back them in on your bench?
The plan is to cut the bench down to 10 feet high and then have the trucks back into me when I'm on top of the bench. There are some very large nuggets mixed in with the gravel and sand. The bank will be cut fairly steep then put a row of the large stacking concrete blocks to catch any material that sloughs down. It will enlarge his semi-trailer parking area. The material will be dumped within a couple of miles for fill. Not sure what you mean!
Good morning tootalltimmy. The "catch point" is just the top of your cut in this case. Sometimes even if there are no stakes or anything to mark where the cut starts I will run a nice straight ( or meandering) paint line that I can see from the seat while I am digging so as to keep the cut uniform. The "toe" is where the bottom of the cut ends up.
A paint line helps to guide you kinda like this . .
Another thing I usually do (besides being an armchair quarterback) is to roll that "brough" at the top of the cut with the back of my bucket when my machine is facing square to the cut.
Got it. Thanks!
yer velcome, thanks for putting me back to work.
Questions for the quarterbacks here. All advice is appreciated. Here are the particulars: Case CX135 with 28" digging. 54" cleanup We have two places to dump the fill- one 5 minutes drive, other is 10 minutes. Owner wants to hire a truck and pup and haul to the furthest dump site. Closer site might not have room to dump with the pup. Around here it seems that the pups are pulled when it is a much longer haul. It will be slower to load from the side and take longer to dump. I am thinking that we should lose the pup trailer and go with 1 or 2 trucks. The material is tough to dig where it is virgin. I could use my cleanup where I have pushed my bench out with loose material. Should I use my cleanup when I can and change to the digging bucket when I need to or stay with the digging bucket? I have a wedge type quick change.A 200 size machine would suit this job better but that is not what we have available. My picture shows the red cut line, blue where I'm digging my bench down and the black arrow shows a circular drive, truck could come in either way. We are loading tomorrow.
I would say lose the pup and go with 2 trucks and the short haul. Start with your loadout bench around 6' in hieght and have the trucks come in along side the bench opposite the way the arrow is pointing so they can see the toe of your bench and get as close to it as possible. That means you will start loading about where you took the pic. Swing over the ass end of the trucks to load. Never swing over the cab of the trucks to load them. The bench elevation will be determined by how close the trucks can get, they will have to snuggle right up to the toe of the bench for you to reach them. Start with the big bucket but have the digging bucket accesible from the bench. After each loaded truck pulls out, you may needto pull loose rocks back into the bench so the next truck can get close. Have fun!
Of course I meant when the bucket is square to the cut , the tracks still running down the bench . . .
stay with the pups, push that loose material back up on your bench so you can reach it, get the trucks in as close as you can....looks like no problem...leave your cleanup on, have skiddy there to clean bottom up, push loose material to your reach. looks like about a 13-15 hr. job.
Pine stumps and gravel: That sure looks like a dandy job you've got going there, tootalltimmy. I know I'd like it... loading trucks, from a good positioned bench like you should have, is probably one of the most enjoyable tasks I perform with our excavator. Here's just a hint, on another technique, for getting that rock out of your bucket. If you don't have a stump, or some other anchor point... run the chain around the rock, just as you did, then position your thumb reasonably close, and hook the chain around one (or more) of the "grabbers". When you retract the thumb back up, it should pull the rock right out, clean as a whistle... always worked for me any way... BTW... You guys are sure good at making those lines and arrows on your pictures... :thumbsup... I wish I knew how to do that... ... lol Again, looks good.... OCR
I am a rookie when it comes to digital photography. The arrows are easy, you just need a program like Adobe photoshop, Corel Photo etc. and play with it. I am sure there are online programs you can use to edit the pictures.
Loading 1 truck and pup today. It was fairly slow so I had lots of time to organize between loads. thanks for the suggestions.
Looks like yer gettin er done . . .
Some more pictures. You never know how big a rock will be around here until it is all exposed. This one was around 8 feet x 4 feet x 5 feet. We dug a hole and rolled it in. Getting close, 15 more blocks coming tomorrow at 4400 lbs a piece.
Nice! Looks all pro to me . . .
how are you going to backfill the wall
I was able to reach up to the top edge and slope it back 3-4feet. That brought a lot of material down to backfill it quickly.
Nice job, I like setting those blocks for walls. We use them and gabion baskets when ever we can so east to work with. Pardon my spelling. ^
what about compaction, how high will this wall be :beatsme
Those blocks seem neat. I haven't used them before but have seen them. Do you set them and they interlock and thats it? I know its different all over the place but where would someone get their hands on something like that? Great job tootalltimmy
The wall is done, 2 blocks high which makes it 5 feet high. If we wanted to go higher it would have to have an engineers approval so this is it. These blocks came from a concrete redi-mix company. They make all sorts of products from cement.
Never thought they would sell something like that. Ill have to see if they do that by me. Thanks.
yeah they make them out of the left overs they have at the end of the day or trucks coming back half empty, they are also handy for disposing of tires and other garbage, around here we call them mafia blocks
Those are the nicest maffia blocks I have ever seen, and we use a lot of them around the NY area. That is definitely an expensive steel form job.
Nice job
i think it looks pretty pimp also