We have about 1 mile of 20" C900 pipe to relay and she's about 25-30 feet deep. We plan on using 3 or 4 trench boxes to be safe here.:usa Enjoy
Nice pipework pics. Looks like directional boring equipment in the background of one of the pics.
dont appear to be any foundation under that road? how does that work??
how are you pushing the pipe together? i hate that gasket PVC crap
good God man, thats a sloppy hole. count the osha violations.
OSHA would need a couple of books for that one.
yes no offense, but that is a poor cut trench, an abused machine, and lots of osha tickets! Just stating the facts, dont mean to sound like a jerk.
I don't know the whole story on this trench cut, but we've been on plenty o jobs in pavement or adjacent to where subgrade undermined during excavation- shoot, and this guy's 20' +. Looks like the native material is more granular (hard to tell , just speculation) to me, so doesn't surprise me a lick that maybe groundwater is trapped underneath the pavement structure and looking to give way... I won't comment on the OSHA issues. One issue- maybe he's cleaning out the trench floor prior to putting on the last box to get 18" above grade?
take another look at those pics guys!!! hey i dont mean to call you guys out but you really need to lokk a little closer at some of these pics before you criticise the operator. first off take a look at the edge of the asphalt in front of the tracks. you can see that it had been cut properly and that the asphalt is just breaking off. and the hole is not gonna get any better cus obviosly its not proper road bed material, its wet and look in the trench as you can see there are no bucket marks on the sides because the trench is sluffing off causing the asphalt to cave in. and as for the machine it appears to be a hoe used primarely for pipe laying and it appears to be between a 1996 and 2001 so its pretty old for that type of use. i have not seen too many hoes that old doing that kind of work that look any better
If the operator made the trench look real pretty, then some wise guy would be on here complaining he is wasting time making things look nice, blah blah blah. You can't win.
Take a second look guys. This guy hasn't done anything wrong. Where are the OSHA violoations? Box is 2 feet above top of excavation, he's well over a 1:1 back from the top of trench as the box isn't quite tall enough to get up to the ashalt and they didn't want to stack another box for a lousy couple feet. The only thing I noticed is that in the second to last pic on the operator's side is that there is a chunk above the top of the box. In the last pic, it has fallen off. In the last pic, everything looks pretty legit. As far as the machine being abused, it's far from that. That hoe is at least 7 years old at the newest, what do you expect? I've seen newer machines in worse shape. Someone making a comment about that machine being abused, given the pictures only as evidence, knows little of what they're talking about.
I agree dont critise until all the facts are known ,who operated that machine prior to this job, the pics dont show the whole subsoil make up, as I said it appears that there is no foundation under that tarmacadam ,and I may be wrong but that ground is made up of very fine material that flakes off in lumps ,heaven help you if you get water in the trench it will run faster than that "bolt" fella did in the 100m in china :IMO:my2c
Hello Not trying to hijack the thread, just wanting to stop in and say hi from a new member, but for some reason the board won't let me post a new thread, but it will let me reply. Anyways, if anyone knows how to fix this please let me know. Thanks
Welcome to heavy equipment forums IronFlyer. Countryboy's still fixin his deere.... Anyhow, there is a three post minimum I believe before a new member can post a new thread, so keep looking around for a thread thats already started to add some tid bit of usefull information to, or ask a question ot one othe the other posters about the info they gave. Have fun.
Don't take the criticism too seriously... Especially from the "Qball" fellow...he's been banned from another equipment related website (for die-cast construction equipment models) for just that kind of baseless commentary. Problem is, he has nothing much to show for his supposedly 'better than thou' operating slills. The machine looks to be a later model PC400LC-6, possibly an A85xxx serial number. Has to be at least 7 years old, and in pretty good shape considering what the majority of these vintage machines look like these days... I can't see what the operator had to do with creating the conditions of the sub-base, either. Looks clearly like poor material, not poor operator skills. Tony
paint yes the counterweight police will be along shortly at least the drive motor gods will be happy
Thanks for the explanation on the threads and postings. As for the age of the Komatsu, looks pretty good, just needs some paint and she'd look just about new save for a couple of dents. It still has windows and a door, unlike the mid 80s hitachi -1s that we had in the company where I cut my teeth. I can remember begging the boss for a window because the winter rainy season had set in and the left side of me was getting pretty wet and frozen.
You are right,you can't win with no safety.I understand the saw cut edges and such,but this situation dictates another box to get above the undermined asphalt and allow suitable backfill material to be placed so that when the boxes are pulled or leap frogged the pipe will not sustain damage from a wall collapse. On another note, Buckethead, When I worked for Schiavone in NY we had a Buckethead on our crew,any chance that this is you ?
I guess I'm dumb so can any of the posters who said that machine was abused and worn out please tell me how it is? I sometimes run a 200 Hitachi dash 3 at work and its much more worse than that 400 in the pictures,if that machine is worn out I guess our 96' should be sent to the scrappers cuz the pins are loose As for the saftey concerns,I see nothing in those pics that we don't do here again what exactly is wrong with the excavation? as long as any material around that trench box is more than 2 feet away from the box it should not have to be any higher since most rules for excavations are a 4 to 1 slope so for a 4 foot deep hole the top should be 1 foot sloped but they have trench boxes so its fine in my book. Also I've been on many water and sewer job repairs and I have yet to see a hoe haul out dry material from around the pipe bed thats being repaired so I'm thinking your seeing water from the bucket spill and from the pics it looks like it has rained while that hole was open another reason the ground looks muddy Only thing I noticed in any of those pics is in the first one your track looks a bit loose maybe needs some grease and yer good to go other than that looks good man and keep the pics comming and ignore the armchair operators
Wow, thanks for all the comments guys. I post a ton on DHS Diecast and get few responses on either my model collection or real world pics. Let me break down these pictures. The first picture is us just starting off and we are tieing into a 42" concrete pipe that Michels Pipeline is pushing 500' towards another shaft. They have a micro tunnel boring machine that sends the spoil to the manchine taht is sitting on top of the trailer. From there it is seperated into either rocks, mud or water. Pretty neat set-up. I will get more pics tommorrow of the shaft and crane and other surroundings. The first 15' was decent clayish material, but we sure hit the water table after that. The second pic just shows 2 trench boxes and we are still bailing out bad ground. We did have a saw cut line but as you can see the hole is getting wider by the bucket. Now this cheap *** company did not send out any 10'x20' road plates to drive down along the sides of the boxes so every time we took a scoop, more caved in. Take note, we purposely cut a 50 pair telephone cable to get the boxes in. The rest of the pics are us just waiting to get another box delieverd and road plates for him to sit on and so forth. The final result of out two day ordeal is four trench boxes 30' down to stone grade, a road plate under the PC 400 and the grond around it is being de-watered. The PC 400 is sure weathered and loose but that's what we had. The PC 650 was on another 30' + deep open cut sewer relay. Thanks guys
Well,after 42 years of doing pipe work and associated tasks in heavy civil construction w/ no lost time accidents to mine or anybody elses credit due to being safety conscious,then I guess I am an armchair operator. Every different situation dictates different approaches.OSHA does not care nor do they want to know about what you have ordered or are waiting for on a jobsite.They assess the situation upon initial investigation. After the last post,the story gets clearer when things are explained.Sorry if mine or anybody elses comments disturbed any individuals.
:lmao:lmao Always amazes me how some folks can know every aspect of a job by looking at a couple pics. Anywy , nice pics Cheesehead.
It's true they don't care what you are waiting on etc etc, but without guys down in the trench (which we can't see if there are or not) it doesn't matter if he has ANY boxes in yet or how high they are.
makes digging easier u just hog out the pot holes!:beatsme ointhead
yikes, well, let me explain. first; i know cheesehead personally. i thought i could bust his balls a lil'bit. second, i said the hole was sloppy. no fault of the operator. third, i am a 15 yr operator with osha 10 hr, osha 40 hr, hazmat, hazwhoper, disaster site worker and cpr certs. i take safety pretty seriously. fourth, as for the osha crack, they can and will find fault with any job, but i did notice no mouse on the bucket hook, undermined pavement, and no barricades 'round the trench. tony, thanks for pointing out my history at dhs, but you are mistaken. i am suspended, not banned. have a nice evening
OSHA will find fault in any job, even if it is done to perfection. I was on a job in NYC a few years ago and the inspector found no faults on the job. Upon his exit from the site, he noticed one of our laborers had his hardhat on backwards and threw the book at us, he made up for not finding anything on the site with one swipe of his pen.
Cheeshead, How many pipe a day can you do at that depth? I just finished up a 17' cut sewer replacement. We would set the by pass up and do 170 feet of pipe on average for an 8 hour day. We had very few utilities to cross though. I did a water main job in the city, somedays it was 3 pipe, sometimes it was dig all day to get ready to put a pipe in the next day. All depended on the stretch. Nice pics though, I'll do pipe all day long over site work.
The company bid the job for 2 20' pipe a day, so far we have been there 4 days and we laid 15'. This ground is so wet and heavy it's packing our sheilds in real tight. We can't slide them foward for the next pass.
The pipe crews on the VA job I was on last winter were having similar stuck box problems. Course one operator couldn't dig a flat trench before he pulled the box and then insisted on pounding the box level after he pulled it. :Banghead This backfired on him, several times, more than once the rear of the hoe was a few feet off the ground while the operator struggled to get the box loose, then as soon as he got it moved, he'd pull a bucket full out and pound away again:Banghead One time he got it so stuck they had to backfill all the way up to the box and widen out the trench and try to push with the 963 first and then when that didn't work and the D8 had to come down and push it while the 345 pulled it. I guess they are right when they say you can't fix stupid:beatsme How are you guys getting the box to move, if you dont' mind my asking?
ive run the komatsu line for 10 yrs now..my question is how can you dig 30ft with a 400? we did a sewer line a few years back at 27 ft using a 245 and it was all it could do. the shields themselves would seem to be to heavy to pull. tell your company to get you something you can make production with
The first picture is the machine that seperates all the material that the TBM spits out. The second picture is the backside of the pipe pushing machine with a huge concrete "thrust block" or whatever it is called. The third pic is the front of the machine that pushes the pipe 500' towards the next shaft. The last pic is the final result of digging down 28', 3 stacks of shield, road plates and a temporary metal manhole
C-900 Like the pics,and can relate situations like this.Am curious with the use of the C-900 pipe.It is generally used for pressure applications such as watermain,but that seems not the application here.Perhaps being used for sewer and the depth of bury in those ground conditions requires such a heavy wall pipe.Ran a new 400-6 series back about 12 years ago.I liked the way it handled,but found it would'nt close in tight like the 5800 Link-Belts we had. Not the best scenario in urban areas around wires.If you're going down 30 feet with that machine in that ground you have your work cut out.She'd be right on her toes getting anywhere close to grade.Try to send in more pics when you can.
It's to bad your 650 is tied up for this job. It would make life easier digging with that. I guess you can only do your best and it's the company's fault, or engineering company's for not doing test bores, or checking ground water. If you know how to control water, you own the business.