This one is too simple to be worth asking... I am digging a lagoon, 14' final depth with banks built up 2-3 feet. Its tiny, at about 85' square, 1:1 sides. Most of the clay will fill a low spot at the one end. I have a 240 excavator and a d5g to work with. How do i approach this so i don't end up burying myself. The exc can bury the dozer pretty quick. Advice would be appreciated. Ken
Sounds like the dozer will be cutting downhill to make a fill, a big plus. Park the excavator and build it with the D5G alone. Use the hoe only if the dozer cannot load the blade. A D6R would be a whole lot better than the five if you can rent. Good luck.
watglen, most be a good low in there to hide that dirt, is your 85' the top of your slope at the 1/1 plus 3' or is it 85' at the 14' grade mark lower end of your 1/1 slope ? are you needing to cut a core for a dam on the lower end ? is it already mud in the lower end to deal with? I would push the topsoil out side the out side bank area, take the center section and bring it down to your grade, three blades wide while filling your low, dig with the hoe and place as far as you can for the dozer to carry, flatten out what you can then move the hoe to dig and throw and cut the slopes,let the dozer push the loose material and dress up behind you, I like to knock the center first due to weather issues, pond on grade in center is better than pond not on grade in center always, just my thought with no site elevations to work with.
the 85' is at the top of the finished bank, the high water mark. Pushing the topsoil a good distance from the work area was my first thought. Not much to that , clay comes all the way up. So i should start in the center of one side, dig and cast down to grade, back up and dig as i go with the ex. Clear the spoil with the dozer. I like the idea of starting in the middle and working out, gives a good spot for water to collect when it rains. 85' at the top gives 85-14-14= 57' square flat bottom. I can do that easily in 4 sections. Then pull the sides up and back with the ex. Finish by dressing the banks with the dozer, and cover with a little topsoil. That makes a lot of sense to me. If it was only up to the excavator, i could dig the basic hole in a day. But the dozer just won't keep up at all. Have to be patient. Take a book.
This job didn't go that great. I was hoping for a nicer finish, but for some reason the clay in the bottom was really nasty gooey creamy crap. It became impossible to work with. This is what i did, and i hope i can learn from some of your responses. We began digging and found out the area wasn't virgin. It was fill about 4' deep over topsoil. So i used the ex to dig a trench about 12' wide and cast to the side. Dozer pushed the dirt up into a pile outside the work area. Then i used the ex to dig a deep trench down to final grade. This was along one side of the lagoon because i wanted to store some material on that side. This created an endwall that is supposed to be 1:1 but ended up steeper and looks like it was dug with a giant hatchet. The endwall was on my left in the ex. I was casting to the left. I decided that was not the way to go. So i had the dozer slot the rest of the area down near virgin clay. He did pretty well at this, and pushed 4 slots up into a big pile. Then i used the ex to pull out the corners and edges so i had a hole about 115' wide, 4' deep. I ended with straight sidewalls overdug all around with the intention of pulling the blue clay out of the centre, placing it around the edges to create a watertight wall all around right up to the top bank. This is where it all goes to hell. As if the hatchet wall isn't bad enough. That blue clay was a mess. The dozer couldn't even move a half bucket of it. It fell out of the bucket in a solid mass, likely weighed a couple ton. Dozer sitting on the clay couldn't move it at all. Dozer couldn't find any traction at all on the stuff, which meant it was virtually useless. Sitting on it and digging, the ex would literally sink down to the track frame. So i started digging and casting, then bailing it to where it was needed. I filled the bank area with the spoil that consisted of giant bucket sized wads of the garbage. It held its shape well enough so compacting it meant driving over it to mush it down. Once i got most of the hole down to near grade, the dozer went into the hole to dress the bottom. Except for the fact that he could only peal inch thick ribbons, he did ok. Scraped it to one side and bailed it out. Then i used the ex sitting on the edge pulling the banks back to get a slope. I am sitting on the piles of goo, sinking and sliding and barely able to scratch the bank without sliding into the hole. Constantly having to reposition because i sink into the goo to the point of having to dig myself out. I scratch the bank a bit here and dump into the hole i just crawled out of. Slowly packing and building the banks. The goo was squishing out from under the ex, so i had to return to redress the top of the bank all over. The best i could do is use the underside of the bucket to smooth the bank as best i could. It aint pretty. The bottom of the hole is at the very end of my reach. I thought i could reach 14' no problem, but failed to account for the slope of the bank. I'm not done yet, but it's working. I just wish the result was prettier. I don't know how to use the dozer to create steep banks. I don't know how i could have done this to make it go any better, or result in a nice job. I will say we have about 16 hrs on the ex, 12 or so on the 5g. For the most part, when i am digging i focus on speed cuz i am really afraid of blowing my budget. Workmanship is not my first concern. We should be able to dress the banks nicely with the dozer, the dirt pile fill is nice and granular. I visited a site last summer, an ex with spade teeth built a nice pond in dry clay soil. It was picture perfect, like it was machined out of a block of aluminum. Laser straight top edge, crisp corners, absolutely flat bottom and sides. I don't think i'll ever get to that point. I would love to hear some thoughts on this one. I took some pics, but they don't really show the site very well. :beatsme :Banghead
watglen, take the deep breath, and don't think others have not been into the gumbo clay before, found a fill site,dump, junk yard and many outer things lost in time under the ground long forgotten. I think i would keep the dozer off the slope now that it's in that shape !, if you have a thumb find an old 8' I beam/bridge tie/pipe/straight log and dress it up with that! if you don't have a thumb take a pipe 6 to 10 " cut a slot for your teeth and fix a chain and binder to the rear hook on your bucket to dress up with. You can cover more ground and slick it up at the same time. The 220 I have at work has a power tilt,hyd thumb,and 6' clean out bucket and I still carry the 8 and10' I beam as I go to different jobs to give that look when I need to, a toothed bucket can hide a lot in good material letting it flake out, but the pumping gumbo is the worst to dress up by far pulling up in globs. Mite use your hoe with the beam to clean up the slopes again inside from the top and move the hoe outside the dike to fill the ruts and flatten out the top with the beam, then dress the outside slopes, how wide are your pads on your D5.
That's a good idea! I do have a thumb and beam, i will give that a try this morning! The d5 has 24 tracks i think, its not an lgp. pumping gumbo - good term, have to remember that one because that is exactly what it is. pulling up in gobs - I can see you've done this before. Thanks for the tip Ken