Hi ya all... I am going to do a lot of levy banks to build ponds for an aquaculture project and was wondering if you guys and gals know about Padfoot Compactors?? The best and easy to operate, with least complications and electronic free. The nature of the land that I will be working in is sandy and muddy. Hope some one out there can help. Take care
Depending if you want one with a vibrator on it. had one a the an couldnt keep bearings in it. $2000-3000 canadian a hit. It was a Dyna-pac PA25 the one i have now is a ingersoll rand with a shell kit. works great You have to be carefull if vibrating in wet condions it will pull mosture to the top and you can loose your compaction I am looking for a 815B cat now i think the are the best for bigger jobs and roads. Pretty much troblesum free Hope this will help you, Good luck
Thanks a lot u been a grate help... I will have an eye open for a 815 Cat
Still waiting for some feed back from you guys and galls
The first thing one finds out about vibratory rollers, is that no one ever faithfully changes the vibrator compartment lubricant. This compartment takes the biggest beating on the entire machine. It gets very hot. The lubricant fails rapidly, and the bearings and seals are expensive and time consuming to replace. I finally woke up and learned to change the lubricant at one quarter the recommended interval, and I sampled the fluid. Any sign of excessive metal was a good enough reason to tear down the vibrator and check it out or make a repair. If there is one place to use a very expensive top quality heavy duty synthetic lubricant, the vibrator compartment is it! That said, vibrating compactors are a constant pain, always something going bad. They work well however, when they run...... They are also fairly easy to transport. Elliot grids are a waste of time and money. Static compactors like the 815 or 825 series present their own problems. Once the feet become sharpened by wear, they don't do well compacting. Replacing feet is a tough and time consuming job. Welders and mechanics hate the job. So do I! No one inspects and adjusts the cleaner bars on these machines anywhere as near as they require. Once the bars are worn back or worn off to no adjustment left, the compactor wheels fill up and then all you have is basically a smooth drum compactor. This situation does not compact well and you may have compaction failures in your fills that cost you more to redo. Cat makes factory hardfaced cleaner bars. Use them, and monitor the wear religiously. These models have far fewer problems mechanically than the vibratory machines. But they are a real pain in the behind to transport on regular lo-boys. Best bet is a beam trailer. That way the compactor feet do not ruin the trailer deck. With experience, maintenance people soon find out what they have to pay real attention to on both style machines. I've just let you know in advance a couple of the larger and more important items to stay on top of. Good Luck!
Whats the reason for needed a padfoot? You state that you are in sandy/muddy conditions. The majority of the material we work in here is sand. We achieve compaction with a combination of a smooth drum roller, and adding moisture. Since you say your material is sand, and muddy, is it possible to blend the materials in your fill? That way you have the moisture in the sand, but also dry out the mud so to speak. Also, what are your haul units? Are you working with trucks, or scrapers? The scrapers would be nice to stretch that mud out in long thin lifts. Using either tho, should help you achieve compaction. They just need to drive across the fill, each machine moving over a tire width from the previous machine. Follow up with a dozer or grader to level things off after that has been done, and hitting the lift with a smooth drum should produce the results needed to reach density.
surfer-joe Thanks a lot... your maintenance advice was invaluable.
Well we are actually doing a shrimp farm along side of the sea shore. The majority of the work will be putting up dykes around, and laying clay in the ponds. The area we will be covering is about 9 mill ft2 in the first stage. The majority of the land is basically sand, silt, and silty mud, with various depth layers of clay. We were thinking of using scrapers to do the shifting and then we were talked out of it and convinced to use tip trucks instead considering the time factor and speed of job completion. The padfoots where recommended to us due to their dual task feature with the semi grader blade in front and the compaction feature of its wheels. Thanks for your reply and comments and look forward to hearing from you in light of the above.