Okay so I have been researching and it seems confusing: Slope vs grade vs angle vs pitch, I know pitch is for roofing however it seems they all start with run vs rise. How do you all determine what is safe and not safe when excavating on a hill? Do you use a digital level, laser, inclinometer, eyeball, or just plain experience? The last one wont help if one has no experience I know seat time in a machine is an invaluable thing, however I have watched some videos where it seems experience did not help avert a tip over. What is the simplest and safest method? Thanks in advance for all your experienced methods Regards, Joe
The very first job I did operating an excavator was on the hill job. After a week I had calluses on my clacker. Time and experience can't be found in books or fancy gadgets written or made by people with no experience. Go and do what you are comfortable with and experience will teach you the rest.
No point in re-inventing the wheel HeavyEquipmentForums I assume this is in respect of your recent mini-ex purchase. It might have been better in the Compact Excavator section which is designed for that type of machine. I’ll ask an admin to move it to that section.
Same as 4 wheeling there is no glue holding the rig to the ground area plays a major factor grass,rocky hard clay/wet rubber or triple bar
1:1 slope = 100% grade = 45* angle = 12:12 pitch if it were a roof. 2:1 slope = 50% grade = 22.5* angle = 6:12 pitch roof, and so on. A very experienced operator can run an excavator on nearly a 1:1 slope if the conditions are right and the machine is rated for it (that's approaching the limit of where an engine will oil.) Anything remotely that steep and you aren't 'driving' the machine anywhere on it, you're only moving with the assistance of the boom or a winch line. An inexperienced operator can turn one over on flat ground. The physics of how it swings and moves the center of gravity is the most important, secondly is traction. All that to say, experience by far the best guide. For starters though, learn the machine and it's tipping points on flat ground with the bucket low. With a big bucket of wet dirt or a heavy rock, you'll get a lesson in physics pretty quick. Move to a slight hill when you feel comfortable and see how it reacts there. It will lift/swing a lot more on the high side than the low side, and the momentum of swinging around from up hill to down is what gets people in trouble. Try to work over the ends of the tracks if at all possible, you can side hill some when tracking if it isn't too steep. You can also put the blade downhill and use if to lift/level the machine to some extent. Hope some of this helps, just wear your seatbelt and work slow on gentle grades to begin with, you'll figure it out.
All the things that MG84 mentions and I would add or say again, if its real steep, and your spinning around over 90 degrees especially, slow you cycle times down and if it starts to get unsettled, drop the bucket down to the ground. There is a big difference in how a machine will react on steep ground verse flat, especially if your inexperienced. Very easy to pickup momentum swinging down hill loaded. The machine will be a lot slower swinging up hill loaded, you may have to tuck the full bucket tight to the machine to swing fully when its real steep. Acclimate yourself slowly to learn how the machine and you respond to the terrain. As stated above, for sure wear your seat belt.
Cat 306. Slopes change everything raising the boom, swinging counterweight & pressure on the bucket to ground. Highside track my start slipping getting light. Good luck with the tb240
On a job 1 day a young fella says to me, you know is steep when you can't swing a bucket of dirt uphill. I replied it's steep when you can't swing a empty bucket up hill. Later on that day he got a demonstration of what I meant. On that site but before the development started a bloke using an excavator and mulcher was killed. Tracked across a buried log a slid sideways down the hill until the bottom track dropped off, then rolled. The machine was fitted with a ROPS and the operator was belted in the seat but it didn't stop a stump coming into the cab. Xmas eve 1999. No matter what **** can't be stopped sometimes
If I need to hook my elbow on my arm rest to keep me in the middle of the seat, that is too steep!
I have had to clean several miles of ditch where I had to cinch the seat belt tighter than anyone should want to keep the arse planted in the seat. No swinging whatsoever with the bucket out any further than not hitting the downhill track, and you could feel the high track leave the ground for a moment when pulling the bucket up off the cut on every pass, but would set back down gently as you pulled it all the way in. Post #132. There are others, but this spot was a beetch. HeavyEquipmentForums
That picture in your post is where one would benefit from one of those plow type buckets
In what way exactly?
Like one of these but bigger, I would think you could sit in the middle instead of on the side. I maybe way off
He's digging an 8' flat bottom ditch there. The plow would do nothing, and with those plows you have to get down in the bottom. Sometimes that is a 1 way trip, you know what I mean? PLOOP! I did some urban drainage ditch cleaning near the shop, and ran the mini down the flat bottom and brought it to the 120. I could only access the ditch in few places. At the end of the job it was a big assist to get the poor mini out of the muck. Hard on the undercarriage.
There are very few ditches that you can sit in the bottom without requiring a helicopter to retrieve the machine. Our silty/loamy soils have no load-bearing ability unless they are completely bone dry. Other problem is you can't get the spoil much more than about 15-20' from the ditch, and most places that isn't even off the slope.
Urban ditch 5' bottom, and no place to toss the goo. I found spots I could bail out, and pushed big waves of crap with poor mini to the 120.
That all makes sense.
https://www.bobcat.com/na/en/attachments/dumping-hopper s I have one of these, pretty handy for getting spoils out of the way. It only holds about 3 cy but its much faster than moving material with only a skid steer bucket.
I have a developer/metal building fabricator built a couple of those. He let me use one for gravel for the secotionalizer when I was installing primary. Very handy, you could get a multiple buckets in his and you need roughly 1 bucket per location so it saved me some trips and I could throw all my scrap/trash in them on the way back to the gravel pile. I have used these bagster bags on a couple of parking lot bore jobs where I would be blocking too much with a truck/trailer. Cut the hole where the pipe will pop up or pot holing put the concrete/asphalt and the spoils in the bag haul the bag over to the trailer. They are surprisingly robust. And you can reuse them
That hopper will sit for months not being used, but when you need it, it pays for itself. I use it as a bedding box with a mini ex as well.
The regular excavators doing forestry work always make me nervous. Look at the ROPS and cab on a proper woods machine and they look like something prepped for duty in Iraq in comparison. I had a top break and drop probably 20ft straight down on my skidder roof. Other than the loud bang and jolt, wasn't any harm. Had a friend with a 200 excavator get the cab squashed pretty bad from not that big of a tree that fell during a wind storm. I was very surprised how thin the steel was. Logging stuff... engineer says 1/4" is think enough. Ok, sounds good, 3/8" it is! My Hitachi 40 is open cab, no seat belt. No idea how that's ok, it's a 2013 and came factory like that. There's not even provisions to add one. I may add shaker screen around it some day. Just tracking in the brush isn't that safe. A cab would be awesome, but I paid $20k for this one and that hurt. Didn't have another 10k+ for a cab machine.
I am not sure how other people work in the woods without a cab. I almost got killed, bushhogging trails on my Kubota, when I got it hooked on a dead pine. Cost my an hour of welding the handles on the bucket control. Made me feel very exposed and very small, when the tree crashed onto the loader control valve. I prefer loaded tires on wheeled machines on grades and on my excavator, I thankfully found one with a front blade. Thankfully, I don’t have to work on 3 to 1 slopes very much, I’m out after that.
Great info and thanks for all the time spent in writing this. I ended up with a 2026 Kubota KX040-5. I have been detailing it as I want this machine to be in pristine condition 5 yrs down the road. I had the Bobcat E35 and then the E40 and man what a difference in Design, Construction, fit and finish of this machine compared to the Bobcats. The Bobcats had weld doobies all over it and they just painted over the top of them. The Kubota has none of that and is easily twice the machine in being heavy duty then the Bobcat. Also the dealer has been day and night better to deal with. I will now start to get that experience in controlling and feeling safe. I dont know that I will ever get comfortable on a slope Thanks again, this is a great place to learn and from ones with actual experience in the seat Regards, Joe
Nothing wrong with being uncomfortable on a slope. Much better than becoming complacent. That's when bad things happen...
Spot on Mike, old saying, complacency breeds contempt is so true