Today I got to a job that was make a building site in a big depression hole type thing down a steep “landscaped“ access road. Only had road base down halfway, the last thirty meters or so were just grass growing over soft clay. I even walked down first to see what I was getting myself into, the driveway at least seemed dry enough. The flat area at the bottom was a little soggy but I figured I'd be able to do something useful at least. The dry access road was an illusion cuz the morning sun had dried the top layer. Once I got past the section with Gravel the front and rear wheels started sliding freely, the 4x4 transmission didn't slow anything down. The tractor slid down like 20 steep meters like a toboggan. Luckily didn't crash into any trees. So began sloshing around on the flat spot, if the dry road was an illusion so was any structural integrity of the damp building area. Tried to move some piles of brush and logs out of the way before I started digging and nothing was working. Couldn't move at all unless it was pulling or pushing around with the tail. The engineer that was watching the job told me this was a waste of time and we'd have to try again during the dry season. I agreed and furthermore how the heck was I going to get out of there? Hopefully wouldn't have to make a mess to get out... Had to make a terrible mess to get out. Was well past the point of helping the tractor up backwards by pulling with the teeth a little bit. Had to make deep holes That fit the whole bucket and pull myself up with the engine revved full and mostly no transmission. Cuz if the wheels start spinning that sucks worse. Took like 50 minutes to get out like 20 meters. Had to pull myself with the tail up the whole way, one tail length at a time. The driveway looked like it got shelled afterwards. This afternoon it's pouring again, can only imagine how bad that mess is. I only charged them one hour instead of two cuz I felt bad. Sucked for everyone involved. This instance was only an inconvenience, not really dangerous. There was one time when I started to crumble off the soft edge of a steep farm road in a coffee field, that was dangerous cuz every time I did anything the tractor would zip a little further down the steep mountainside. That was dangerous... Took a couple days to resolve that one. So what are y'alls craziest stories about getting into bad situations with big ol' hoes?
To many to list but the one that comes to mind is a dig we did years ago had to hang on a simalar slope real steep and dig a footing coming up the hill took a second backhoe to pull the one digging up the hill with the rear of the second pulling on the front bucket of the first The other one that's been really sketchy I have done a few times is digging across a slope set up sideways on hills to steep to sit level with an outrigger maxed out on the down hill side we took a second backhoe and held down the outrigger on the up hill side but it takes a while to get used to putting a foot on a window to stay in the seat and dig
I won't go into the story of the dummy newbie (me) and his first time with his backhoe (with thumb) who picked up a big old birch and swung it to the side without extending the stabilizers (I don't need no shtinkin stabilizers) and quickly found himself leaning at a 45° angle held up by the boom and having to extend the dipper to get back on all fours........................but, I finally thought of a way to prevent driving off with the stabilizers extended and tearing up the ground: I took an old plastic container just wide enough to fit over the stabilizer controls and every time I use the stabilizers I place the container over the shift lever, so I won't ever again take off without being reminded to retract the stabilizers.
So what are y'alls craziest stories about getting into bad situations with big ol' HO getting outta bed, lol sorry the devil made say that
I had to get an assist from a drill on the dam job. I had driven down a ~30 degree side and down slope of solid wet rock, and damn near tipped it over at the bottom. It caught on a knob of rock on the rear downside tire, and the up tire came off the ground and it bounced there or a while. They needed me down there to peel out some soft rock that got left behind. Once i got done I backed up to that slope, set the brake and turned around in the seat and reached out to a rock seam. I had an extendahoe 416 Cat 2wd. The outrigger pads were worn gone, so I had steel on rock that was not a help. I could drag myself right up to that seam, but no combination of outrigger pressure, locked brake, and front bucket position would keep me there. I tried several times and each time I let go Whee! I slid all the way back down. The drill guys were watching with humor and offered a pull with their winch. That worked like a charm.
Other kind of hoe, this was a little dicey coming up out of that hole. After we were done with the piping, The 345 operator turned his bucket back around normal, we hooked buckets and he assisted me. Sounds good but I about lost grip on him partway up. We called that spot the amphitheater, for those terraced giant block walls that were mitigating the slide chute. The road kept settling there so the fix was to add drainage pipe at that level of the walls, and then rebuild it back. We were down into that a total of 30 feet. Map location on the link below. https://goo.gl/maps/Nhf6CbeVBb6kthwDA This what it looked like down slope. You can see the drilled casing in front of Barron in the first picture. I think it was for sensing the slipping of that area. This was after the wall got rebuilt from above. They put it back exactly as it was, including that niche.
Azlron, it sounds like you are in the habit of doing crazy stuff with your hoes.
Think I've told this newbie story before.. We we're extending an 18" storm drain on a very steep house lot that was all fill in the back about 18-20' deep. Got the pipe in and relocated the headwall. As I was backfilling the pipe with our 420DIT with extendahoe fully extended I reached down the fill slope grabbed a bucket full, dumped it on the pipe and swung back around and that's when it all went to hell. The dirt under the right outrigger gave way and the hoe started to slide off the soft edge. In a flash of a moment all I could think of is all the trees and limbs that would very, very soon be crashing through the right side of the cab glass so I put boots down and assumed the position thinking my boots offered the best protection for the carnage coming. When the tractor stopped I found myself crouched on the right side door of cab with all glass intact. Miraculously an 8" sweet gum caught the machine between the bucket and front tire which was just enough to stop it from going completely over. There was a hired 953C on site cutting the basement so 10 minutes and some chains later the hoe was out without any damage and I was headed home to change underwear.
It's not crazy it's just how we can accomplish the job at hand it seems that lately we dont have to be so creative houses have gotten so big there is flat area to work on instead of a slope I bet you have been in some crazy places from what I seen of coasta Rica in pictures
Ha ha purposefully going off camber with another backhoe holding your uphill outrigger down sounds pretty willfully crazy to me. But I'm glad you come out of it okay every time. Yeah, the terrain is pretty mountainous here. And people don't have that much money in a lot of cases so we get called to steep farms and asked to do jobs that could be considered out of the scope of normal backhoe work. Would be better with a bigger machine, but that would cost more. Usually we're able to make it happen without incident. I've been doing this for about 4 years with real backhoes, and a few years before that with a little toy Kubota that had digging attachments. But there are a lot of old dudes around here that have been doing it for 20 years and they're nuts, the stuff they'll do on the edge of a muddy cliff.
Candidly I will admit a time or 2 I got done walked over in what I dug to look at it and was happy i had the view from the seat cause from the ground it looked sketchy as hell my old man has been skinning a hoe for about 55 years so if it can be done with a backhoe dad has done it so when that's your measuring stick to be an operator you learn a lot i have spent thousands of hours growing up watching some interesting things and never knew it was anything special Operators biggest set back is a machines usefulness stops at the operators imagination limits
Never have rode one down a hill like that not sure I would want to interesting sounds like nothing got hurt
I remembered one. I had a JD350 crawler loader, and did a job between and behind some condos in 1980. It was a steep hill and I had to doze in fill underneath some cantilever porches, so I pulled the cage to get under. The trucks were dumping between the two buildings and I would push it down and around. I was waiting on a truck, and cut the material out too deep and went into a soft spot. I mean I went in almost vertically nose first! I ran the tracks and got it level but I was over the top of the idlers and looking at dirt over the top of the fuel tank. The bucket was high on top of the crap. There was a glu lam beam that would span across the footings ( the buildings were maybe 16' apart ) and I cushioned it with 2x4's and then wrapped a chain around it and used those built in chain hooks on the JD bucket. I rolled the bucket back and crawled forward repeatedly till I popped out, and then had the truck dump his load on the hole I just vacated. It was steep but I made my way out and never cut that deep again!
Scary stories y'all! Finca, we saw some of the coffee fields/farms when we visited Costa Rica. Steep barely describes the ones we saw, that were also way at the top of the mountain like so: Or more specifically like so, and the picture doesn't do it a bit of justice, way up at the top you may be able to see folks working the field: I just can't imagine, not to mention nothing seems to be dry for more than about 20 minutes there. My worst situation hasn't been bad, just being a brand new operator and burying my machine to the belly and not really knowing how to get out, and being right next to a creek that felt like I'd slip into and get eaten in mud. Every lift and tilt of the machine makes it feel like it'll tip and it's seemed impossible to escape a couple times. Now, that same situation feels kind of old hat to me.
Finca does have some challenging terrain to work in. I've spent a lot of time in CR, lived there for 2 years and my father is retired there. The coffee farms on the old road HWY San Jose to Puntarenas is some steep country. The new toll road has made that journey from SJ to the Pacific coast much more enjoyable. Crappy pic where they were working one of the many steep slopes on the toll road. They aren't afraid of cutting a steep slope..
I thought I was the only dummy who tried to drive away with the stabilizers down. Great idea on the bottle.
That looks real nice. Where did the split stone come from?
I don't know. I think it had been there for 40 years or more we took it apart and put it back together.
My old 580K and i were pre pairing a big hole at the base of a dam for fill. Max dig reach and the hole has mud and water in it. so i am working on the edge and had a brain fart. Went to move back a little using the hoe for propulsion as always. Something went wrong, I do remember exactly, But down the bank to the bottom i rode. So there i was up to the battery box in muck, with a very steep bank in front and two other sides, with a swamp at one end. Yay. On the other side of the hole (about two or three backhoe lengths) were a line of big oaks atop the other bank. There is no help coming and lacking an other big iron. I decided to have it save itself. I chained across to the oaks and used the hoe to drag the machine to the other side. About half way across the front end and loader sank, so the fan was just in the muddy water. Not good. So i found some small trees i could reach and pulled them to me, and then worked them under the loader so it could float the front end. It took three or four days, Just me, some chains, and the machine, to finally get out.
Ha ha aighead and cm1995 that's funny that you've seen the messes I deal in. It's been so muddy the last three days I worked I just went and made a mess for an hour and told them I couldn't do anything for them until the dry season. We're at the top of the rainy season now. I'm a getting kind of discouraged, think I'm gonna go do some welding jobs for a while. Sorry for the slow response, guess this mud has me so exasperated I haven't even wanted to think or talk about excavation work. Of course, that was the catalyst for this thread in the first place, but three more days of not being able to do any useful work has me sorta bummed. This happens every year around this time, should be used to it by now.
You guys are like a combination of MacGuyver, a farmer, and Rube Goldberg. You could probably fix anything with baling wire, a chewing gum wrapper, and some penetrating oil.
Don't forget the duck tape and convenient plastic bottle or aluminum can.
Ya know Finca, again, I am by no means a CR expert but I'd thought I'd seen some heavy rains in my time, up here in the good ol' US of A, but then we spent a week down there in a rain forest. When it rains it rains. Like 3 or 4 of the 7 days we were there it rained, for a bit, harder than I'd ever seen before. We stayed about halfway up to Chirripo, just outside of Canaan Rivas and there was a very fast moving river in the back yard. I quickly understood how that river stayed moving. While I thought it'd be nice to have a crystal clear river to swim in, in the yard, it turned out to be too cold for me and there was a constant PCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHSSSSSHHHHHH of water that was almost deafening. I guess I'm a wuss. Man, does it rain though.
Huh, that one might get the prize for the biggest clusterfugg so far
Ha ha, you were smack dab in the middle of my neighborhoods! I bet you drove right by the entrance to my house in rivas Centro at the bottom of the hill! Yup that's where I live and work. Fairly even split between old school farmers that want stuff done on their land, and new development by both nationals and foreigners. Bidneth is generally good. Small world, You'll have to look us up next time you're in the neighborhood!
Finca is Canaan Rivas close to San Isidro? A very good friend of ours from Georgia owns a farm in San Isidro and owns a hotel on the beach. Wife and I went to the San Isidro stock show and rodeo once and had a hell of time. Beautiful area of the country.
@CM1995 Yup that was basically the big town before Canaan Rivas. If you are heading south on 2 into San Isidro you hang an east on 242. Imagine my dumb butt, not knowing where I was, at all, I don't speak Spanish, and I'm lost as can be trying to get to my rental house at like 9pm, driving through that town trying to find 242. I was completely confused because, beyond the other stuff above, I looked at the map and knew my way south on 2 and where, theoretically, 242 would be. Turns out our gps was useless (or I'm too dumb to use it) and we ended up on the west coast, driving over the mountain, in pitch black. Then wriggling my way around San Isidro to finally figure out where 242 was. Sketchy! It all turned out fine. CR doesn't label many roads well... @Finca SDR Nice! It's pretty out there when you can see beyond the rain! I'm not sure if we'll ever get back down that way but we'll try to find you if so!
@Finca SDR Is Rivas Centro just called Rivas on the map (looking some more it's probably not)? If so, I'm sure I did! That's where the grocery we went to was. If I'm not mistaken it was one of the Chinese owned grocers. I'll have to dig through my CR pictures to see if I have any backhoe pictures. It's not common for me to pass up taking pictures of construction equipment while I'm traveling. I keep making edits, sorry! So, what up with the giant compound just as you come out of San Isidro on 242? Very nice looking place with fencing around it for what seems like miles. It's on the northwest side of 242. Drug kingpin? It looked very out of place but also very nice! I can attach a picture if you want. I didn't realize it until now, they've got their own landing strip too! Edit again! And the crazy full-sized tour buses tearing up that road were nuts!
San Isidro is a beautiful city with pretty nice weather compared to the sweltering heat on the Pacific Coast. The old city square is a nice place to spend an afternoon. 243 is the road we come up from HWY 34 at Dominical. Dominical is a neat little surf village that has grown rapidly over the last 10 years. Last time I was there they had a brewery. There are or used to be a family of Germans that had an off road shop in San Isidro. If you wanted the best to work on your 4x4, 4 wheeler or motorcycle you took it there. The father was on the German team for one of those endurance rally's they have in Europe. GPS is worthless off the main roads in my experience. I can speak a little Spanglish so we can usually get by however Ticos give directions like old school country folks. 100 meters past the blue house with bus in front and turn right type of thing.
Haha! Dominical was the first place we went after finding our house and going touring the next day, it was a neat little place and the beach was beautiful. It's also a town I recognized to get us back on track when trying to find the house the first day. The mountain between Dominical and San Isidro was the pitch dark one I was mentioning. The ocean showed me how out of shape I am. I'm a pretty decent swimmer but it'd liked to kill me. We walked all the way down the beach there to look at the big rocks and the surf crashing, very pretty! I believe we stopped at Restaurant De Coco to cool our burning feet from the sand and had a beer or two. I have the habit of finding foreign (to me) places where I stay off the beaten path. I may have done fine in the more touristy places, as I understand more folks speak English, but that wasn't the case up on the hill. We found that our AirBnB host was an Englishman, then a guy a Buona Pizza helped us order dinner once. In that area I was definitely out of my language leagues. My wife would look at me when someone spoke Spanish, like I'd suddenly learned Spanish...
@amunderdog yes that sounds ridiculously bad. spending days trying to get unstuck or fixing broke down iron in a mud puddle is not a good time.
LOL! Wife and I had many of those moments - both of us looking at each other like "do you have any idea what they are saying". What makes that area of the Pacific great for surfing also makes it deadly. Just a PSA for anyone visiting the Pacific coast of Costa Rica be very, very aware of the under toe on the beaches. The wave action that creates those large waves also creates a giant vacuum under the surface that will suck anything in the area out - quickly. AIG did ya'll come down HWY 34 to Dominical from SJ? If so you went right by my fathers place and through the little town of Parrita that we've spent a lot of time in.
CM1995, yep! Before we took the trip I stared at the map for about a hundred hours to make sure I understood where we were and where we were going, as the BnB host said it's very easy to get lost and you really want to find the house when it's still light out. It was: go right out of the car rental place, pick up Rt. 2 (or 1 from there, maybe) and take it all the way to San Isidro, then hang a left. Well, that went right out the window, as taking a right out of the car rental place threw me in a world in which I've never driven, madness on the road! I ended up going west through a toll on 27 I think, to 34 and we stayed lost (and only kind of knew we were lost) until we eventually saw the ocean. At least at that point I'd had it kind of figured out but with so many people on the road, motorcycles passing on the right, and the lovely sunset, I was a bit frazzled. The little towns were crazy and neat, so many people out and about. It would've been neat to spend a bit more time there to get comfy because it seemed like everyone was cool. There was another place, seemingly near Finca's, that we really should have stopped but it looked like a younger person's hang out, and that was a dirtbike hillclimb. We went through and there were hundreds of people hanging out watching the hill climb and it looked fun!
Once I was working with electricity tower constructors in high land area. Though here it is everywhere high land. So I was going uphill and road was so steep slope that my my front wheels lost control off the ground, I didn t recignise it untill there was turn to take. I noticed that my backhoe didn t respond to a stearing wheel turn, it goes streight ahead. when I stopped I saw that my front boom is swingin up n down. To go ahead impssible due even more slope. Started to go down and found out that it goes right back into woods. I got out there is nothing to put in a front backet to make it heavier, only autumn leaves. My luck that my hoe is a 4 wheel stear. I switched it on and took a turn on back wheels. I made U turn in better place and took that mountain going backwards. It was fun.
Other time we were logging I dragged heavy loggs down where it was cut. While I pulled it down it got stucked with other fallen tree, But I didn t see it I looked only on my left side on my right one of coworker was unlucky not to see that fallen tree is dragged right on him. It hit him on legs he fall down and that tree went over him. His luck and mine too that he fall in a small hole. And whole tree didn t cause him no hurm. Only a bruice where it hit him first time. He lost consciousenees of fear. These day when I work with loggers, I always beg pardon before trees for assistence of killing them. And I say that one day I ll also die and become a food them.
That's probably the Volio farm, Finca las cajuelas. Nicholas Volio is a coffee baron type guy, very well to do with diversified interests. Never met him or even seen him in 15 years and I get around these parts.
I don't really like working logging much either. Cutting down trees is disheartening and it's dangerous. But sometimes that's the order of the day.