Doin a pond for a buddy of mine but he's about an hour n a half away. We've got a deere 750 c dozer & deere 9510R tractor w/ 18 yd pan. Obviously I can move more quicker with the pan since its good clay & no rock to speak of but the big issue is moving. Long way to drive a tractor & pan which makes me lean more towards the dozer. The pond will be basically a hole in the ground. There's a lil bit of a valley but not much. What's your alls opinion?
Do you not have a way to move the tractor and pan???
How much dirt will you be moving? How far?
Take them both. Move short dirt with the dozer and keep everything knocked down. Move long dirt with the pan. Done much quicker with weather a factor in pond building.
We have a lowboy but we've never hauled the tractor & pan just drove them since we've never went this far. Drove close to an hour before tho. With having duals instead of the big singles its a lot wider. The pond will be roughy an acre size with deepest point at approx 10-12 feet. The dirt is just spread around it pretty well. Their house driveway goes beside it & be building it up as there is a lot of low spots.
You mite be able to haul the deere and pan in one load. I would take the deere thats quite a bit of dirt to push
Agreed its a lot of dirt to move & I believe the pan would be much more efficient. I talked to a guy near me who works for a large excavating corporation & he said they just road all their pans. They've drove them up to approx 180 miles one way before. Just seems like a lot of wear & tear on the machine but is it more economical? My other concern is his driveway entrance is not real wide & I'm afraid I won't be able to get the lowboy in there. If I can't do that no sure what I will do with the truck during construction. Don't really wanna drive it all the way back to the homestead ya know.
If you're worried about roading the tractor/pan, just take the dozer...guys around here build ponds with only dozers all the time. Might not be the best, but sometimes you gotta do, what you gotta do! As for buddy deals...be careful sometimes they don't work out too well!
I've built a few with only a dozer before but I prefer using a pan just cuz of effiency plus lot more comfortable cab. Has anybody on here roaded they're pans long distances? Just out of curiosity.
I think the pan and tractor will give you better compaction if your using the fill for anything. If your just dumping it to waste then of course this wouldn't apply.
I wouldn't worry about roading it that far any more than I would worry about running the dozer for an extra week because I didn't bring the scraper. But I am thinking in terms of roading it in kansas. I could drive it across the whole state and barely get on a paved road and probably not detour more than five or ten miles off course.
good argument. Making profit & time is what this business is all about & can't do the job if you don't have the right equipment. Here in indiana pretty well have to take highways or you will pretty well double your travel time
Maybe drive it to a Walmart store. I would check with the store manager if you need to leave it a while.
For an hour or two run, if you take the pan, bump the tire pressure up about 5 psi over normal. Those tires are designed for dirt and will generate a lot of heat on paved roads. Higher pressures will reduce some of the footprint thus reducing the heat. Nothing worse than ruining tires by roading them too far. We have 9520's with tandem pans and road them a long ways sometimes. It's better to haul them of course, cause those tires aint cheap.
We have roaded scrapers alot, think the farthest we went with deeres was around 150 miles, only trouble we had was that the transmissions would start to overheat if you ran them full bore the whole time. This was with the older style 9630's new ones might be different.
Roading the tractor is not a problem , i run mine to and from every job. It will suprise you how much wear roads cause - not NO where close to what is thought. On two of my 9520's they are close to 6,000 hours and still running factory tires. When you look into rules on moving these tractors , its not worth the time and expense to load on a trailer. We are not allowed to move a tractor with a pan attached.
Thanks for the advice on the tires. Wouldn't of thought of increasing pressure. Those tires are Definitly not cheap. 150 miles is such a long time to drive a tractor at 26mph.
Yup took 8hrs but I looked it up and it was just over 100 mile. Company leased the tractors from another small contractor, they didnt have any floats so they just hit the road.
Was wandering if you core out for the dam of the pond with a pan also? I have only built ponds with dozers or loaders and never used a pan. I always thought the track machines were better for getting the dam compacted as it was built and also compacting the clay liner. I do have a small pull type scraper but had not ever thought about using it until I read your post and will the next time I get the chance.