A few projects I have done recently

[DMiller]

Engas’ be Enga’s Near, enagnears!!

 

[CM1995]

The clay continued towards the loading dock. Finally ran out of it 5-6 feet in front of the 20 yard.



Fortunately it didn't rain until after we got the line inspected and backfilled. Even with road plates covering the hole the weak clay didn't stand up to the truck traffic. This crack started small the day the trench was opened and kept widening until we were able to backfill the trench. GC will have it saw cut and we'll remove it as a courtesy.

 

[DMiller]

Elastic non compactable clay

 

[CM1995]

Elastic non compactable clay

Yep. I am really surprised the concrete has held up that well with all the truck traffic over the years.

Best we could do was backfill with DGB and move on.

 

[Oxbow]

Yep. I am really surprised the concrete has held up that well with all the truck traffic over the years.

Best we could do was backfill with DGB and move on.

Do you run into situations where a product like Tensar geo-grid is used, and if so what are your impressions of it? Other than it is very expensive.

 

[CM1995]

Do you run into situations where a product like Tensar geo-grid is used, and if so what are your impressions of it? Other than it is very expensive.

Oxbow I love the stuff. We are fortunate here there are a couple of places in the southeast that make it or an equivalent.

We've used thousands of square yards of the grid from building segmented block walls to ground reinforcement. Where it really shines in improving poor subsoil conditions is combining it with surge rock. Surge rock here is sizes just below CL 1 rip-rap which is anywhere from baseball size to a small watermelon.

This was a chicken shack back in 2015 where we used bi-axial grid and surge stone to bridge over some nasty alluvium material. Geotech spec'd it and we installed it.

This was the entrance and side parking lot. Part of the building pad is also on top of part of the grid and stone.





Had an auto parts store back in 2015 or '16 where we had to put a Stormtech system in the front parking lot. This project is somewhere back thread. We dug down to the bottom of the system where you would normally put the fabric down and 6" of #57 stone however the existing ground was like pudding. It was alluvium and it was wet.

Nasty excavation



Test pit for the dirt doc. Pudding.



Dirt doc spec'd bi-axial grid and 3' of CL 1 rip-rap IIRC.

The subsoil was so bad you could not walk across it without getting your feet stuck. If you look close in the pick you can see a 7/16 2x8 rip of OSB under the grid. We had to lay those out to walk on in order to roll the grid out. Even with just one man on the 2x8 piece of OSB it would start sinking in.

Worked great and we installed the system. Placed the first lift of rip-rap with the 321 and once we had a foot or so over the grid we used a Bobcat T250 to bring in the rest of it.

 

[Oxbow]

Pretty amazing being able to build on that!

This is the only time that we have used it.

This hillside road was not originally constructed correctly with compaction from the bottom up, but rather just pioneered into the hill. This ground developed new springs after constructed and portions of the road slumped down. This was in 2014 I believe. We excavated about three feet of the road out through this section, laid the grid material, then compacted the excavated material back in. Today this road is paved and the repair is holding, so I assume the product worked well.

 

[Oxbow]

Here is another section of that same road in which after construction a spring lubricated the material and it slumped down onto the roadway. This photo shows where the hillside had sheared.


We benched up onto it from below. The hoe was sitting on the bench when the entire bench began slipping.

We finally started the top of the slope high enough to bring it down milder, and it has held since then.


There were a couple of nice sized rocks in there too!

 

[oarwhat]

We used that one time. Much lighter than carrying woven fabric around. Kept getting my fingers caught in the hole when rolling out. Ouch.

 

[CM1995]

Here is another section of that same road in which after construction a spring lubricated the material and it slumped down onto the roadway. This photo shows where the hillside had sheared.
View attachment 309081

We benched up onto it from below. The hoe was sitting on the bench when the entire bench began slipping.
View attachment 309082

That's a pretty impressive shear failure. That red clay looks like some we have here.

 

[CM1995]

We used that one time. Much lighter than carrying woven fabric around. Kept getting my fingers caught in the hole when rolling out. Ouch.

No doubt. The cut ends of the grid will snag anything and everything. Always good to have some big rocks to secure the end of the grid when unrolling it. Sucks when it rolls back up on you as you're rolling the roll out.

 

[Oxbow]

That's a pretty impressive shear failure. That red clay looks like some we have here.

Indeed, that was a first for me.

 

[DGODGR]

You call it "pudding", I call it "toad poo". Either way you call it, you are building "floaters" if you don't do deep foundation practices. I've been working on several houses that fit those descriptions lately. Hammering rock one day....Laying geogrid and rock for floating houses the next! That stuff seems to work well, for the most part. Despite how well it works, I hate working with it. It's difficult to cut (I have found that industrial shears seem to work best, but is time consuming. What do you guys use?). I always seem to come away with my arms looking like I was fighting a feral cat (Like when I go dirt bike riding in Arizona, but without all the fun). That being said, I have used it between 24" thick layers of stone (bottom was 9" rip rap below 1" screened -you might know it as #57s) with another geogrid layer over top of the screened rock (but 500x this time), for a driveway within the CDOT ROW. Even with 4' of structural fill, the layers of geogrid, and another foot of 3/4" ABC on top, we still saw pumping. That was installed in spring, after a very wet winter, on a mountain highway at about 9,000 feet elevation. There was still a lot of mountain left above us, and an electric trench, and phone line trench, serving as conduits delivering water, in copious amounts, right into the work area. Quite beautiful, but a pain none the less (photos attached)! We used to have Tynsar 140 here but now our supplier has been bought out by Ferguson Water Works so they have another equivalent product.

 

[CM1995]

I see you also used fabric between the 57's and DGB. We use quite a bit of fabric, probably rolled out more fabric than geogrid over the years.

Used to buy all our pipe and supplies from Ferguson years ago but my salesmen left and we went with him. He's the type salesman that if he tells me he's changing company's I just tell him to get me a credit app for the new one.

 

[savman]

Same way. We hire out the model building and they send us a VCL file that we'll load up in the data collector, localize the site then load on the machine.

We are kicking around the idea of getting a TBC subscription but we don't do much design build work. 99% of what we do has design drawings so it's easier to send off the CAD file and control point file to the model builder and let them do it. It averages $1,000 per job for a 1-2 acre sized commercial job.

It's the time it takes to learn TBC. Currently we use Insite for quantity take-off and estimating models which my wife does exclusively. Insite does everything we need on the bidding side and the model builders are reasonable enough that it works for us at the moment. However on a larger job with a lot of change orders it would be nice to make those changes in the model and send it to the machine.

TBC is a steep learning curve.

Given the type of work you describe it's better just to let someone else handle it; especially at that price.

Having said that: Change orders...no problem, can have it back in a matter of hours; I do a lot of design build...priceless for that, especially when doing a lot of 'hey what's it going to cost to do xyz, and we don't have an accurate topo (or one at all)'

And as you say: on bigger jobs somethings always changing...and I hate to wait on people.

 

[CM1995]

TBC is a steep learning curve.

Given the type of work you describe it's better just to let someone else handle it; especially at that price.

Having said that: Change orders...no problem, can have it back in a matter of hours; I do a lot of design build...priceless for that, especially when doing a lot of 'hey what's it going to cost to do xyz, and we don't have an accurate topo (or one at all)'

And as you say: on bigger jobs somethings always changing...and I hate to wait on people.

Must be a full moon or something savman. Talked to Mike today about coming out to orient the guys on the 325 on a project in North AL next week and discussed a yearly subscription of TBC.

How are things down in South GA?

 

[savman]

Wet!

All is well; we have a full load of (mostly) good paying work.

I purchased a 315ng with a SteelWrist tiltrotator and have full auto GPS on it; used it for the first time Wed and man it was great.

Didn't acutally use the autos (long story) although they are supposed to work with the tiltrotator as well.

Be sure to ask Mike about it; the install gave everyone at SiTech and Trimble a lot of heartburn. Me too.

 

[savman]

Must be a full moon or something savman. Talked to Mike today about coming out to orient the guys on the 325 on a project in North AL next week and discussed a yearly subscription of TBC.

How are things down in s South GA?

I forget how much the subscription option was....I just entered year 2, but I opted for the physical hasp key. I don't get updates but the software is fairly mature imo, and I don't use near it's full capability as it is. I think I break even year 3? Not sure; my guess is the subscription has escalated like everything else, so I like the fact I am locked in. My hope is that by the time my TBC is deprecated, all my GPS stuff is buggy and my tractors are all worn out; and then it's time to buy a boat and just go fishing...lol.

I will say a lot of the benefit of owning TBC isn't as easily quantifiable as pay X amount for models. Aside from the speed and flexibility, I am to the point now where several of my customers know my capabiilities and will pay me to go 'figure it out' to get projects (or potential projects) out of a hole so to speak. Or I have had them call me when a project is going to be really technically tight, or super flat, or something changed or whatever hairy problem they have and they know I have the equipment and capability and everything is negotiated.

I have a few that will get on the phone and I will share my screen remotely and we will go over a few different scenarios in real time and find the best solution.

Upside is I have a steady stream of work; downside is I always jokingly say, they must give the all the easy work to someone else!

Last thing I'll mention on the issue is I have the base/rover, d3 gps, 315 gps, and a SPS930 robotic total station, and d3 UTS machine control; so I'm always using TBC now.

 

[skyking1]

315ng with a SteelWrist tiltrotator

My Cat dealer is having a demo day with one of those, probably just going through the motions but I will check it out if I am not busy. I've done without tilt buckets for a long time.

 

[CM1995]

I forget how much the subscription option was....I just entered year 2, but I opted for the physical hasp key. I don't get updates but the software is fairly mature imo, and I don't use near it's full capability as it is. I think I break even year 3? Not sure; my guess is the subscription has escalated like everything else, so I like the fact I am locked in. My hope is that by the time my TBC is deprecated, all my GPS stuff is buggy and my tractors are all worn out; and then it's time to buy a boat and just go fishing...lol.

I will say a lot of the benefit of owning TBC isn't as easily quantifiable as pay X amount for models. Aside from the speed and flexibility, I am to the point now where several of my customers know my capabiilities and will pay me to go 'figure it out' to get projects (or potential projects) out of a hole so to speak. Or I have had them call me when a project is going to be really technically tight, or super flat, or something changed or whatever hairy problem they have and they know I have the equipment and capability and everything is negotiated.

I have a few that will get on the phone and I will share my screen remotely and we will go over a few different scenarios in real time and find the best solution.

Upside is I have a steady stream of work; downside is I always jokingly say, they must give the all the easy work to someone else!

Last thing I'll mention on the issue is I have the base/rover, d3 gps, 315 gps, and a SPS930 robotic total station, and d3 UTS machine control; so I'm always using TBC now.

IIRC we were quoted $3700 a year which is reasonable and comes with all the updates as they come out.

LOL - You may be getting all the hard stuff because you can do it.

My Cat dealer is having a demo day with one of those, probably just going through the motions but I will check it out if I am not busy. I've done without tilt buckets for a long time.

Talked to the SteelWrist guys at Conexpo and was impressed with the quality of the unit. They were a little salty on the price for one for our 305E.