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Digging a pond???

Greg

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Jan 28, 2008
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1,175
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Wi
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Excavating Contractor
Scrubpuller,

Assuming it is clay won't need to rip it. Cut it with the pan. If going gets really tough will put a D7 push Cat in the mix. If it gets worse than that drop the ripper in the ground.
 

Dickjr.

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Mar 24, 2011
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Kentucky
The only time I raise the front is to start a cut , which I thought I said, need maximum penetration. There are a lot of things that stand up to get maximum penetration.
 

vapor300

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Dec 13, 2010
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382
Location
St. louis
LOL at scrubpuller? A dozer that size cant take much more then 6! Its a D5, it dont have the ponies nor the weight to take a foot cut
 

Scrub Puller

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Mar 29, 2009
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Gladstone Queensland Australia
Yair...a few issues here I reckon. First off the penetration thing...with a blade or with a scoop unless you’re working sand or loamy/ peaty top soil then to get maximum production it is necessary to rip.

(I just ducked for cover then)

Just because you can push it and get a “good boil going” without ripping doesn’t mean to say you’re being productive ...but you are burning fuel and cutting edge. Ripping time is seldom wasted. I have proved it building ring tanks...a ring tank is basically a thirty foot wall pushed up around a paddock, a small one is shown here. http://www.panoramio.com/photo/46259159

I worked on these with a motley crew of hired in dozers and cross sections taken for payment soon sorted the men out from the boys. From my experience over many years...and the old Caterpillar how to films...you absolutely have to rip.

And that is just the start of it. Once you’ve got it ripped you have to know how to work your slots. Fair dinkum, I have seen fellers rip (and when I say rip I mean cross rip) and then back out over their block and start pushing from the back!!
Once you have it ripped you line up for your push and back out onto the ripped area about one tractor length. The blade will bury with very little effort and the objective is to get the tracks working on the interface between the rip and the next floor down. In other words you take out the full depth of the rip in one pass.

In practice you will find that as you come back for the next push you will bulge one bladefull out and then back up for another...some times in “ball bearing” country you can have two or three bladefulls moving in the slot. With this style of dozing you get less “ boiling” in front of the blade, in ideal conditions it will just sit there as if being carried in a scraper.

I could continue on down thread if anyone is genuinely interested...I have a very thick skin and I’m used to copping flack.

I was interested in Gregs comments. It seems he works his drawn scoops as if they were scrapers. I have always worked them different...and a tidy cut is not part of the equation.

Cheers
 

SE-Ia Cowman

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Oct 22, 2009
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240
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Iowa
Greg our NRCS is useing the $1.40 for earthfill estamate then they pay 1/2 of that but we still work by the hour some small ponds will still get close to the estamate but not very often.
Scrub the dirt we have in this part of the northern hemisphere dosnt usually get riped because it dosent help. I have ripped both ways and only cut slits in the wet stuff it dosent heeve or crumble some of it wont hardly come off the blade and when it does it is like driveing over a suv we call it tiger shi--t. We do get lucky every once and a while and get some sandy clay that will crumble and lay out in nice lifts.
 

Greg

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Scrub Puller, I won't say I have a tidy cut when "hogging" out the material before getting towards the bottom of the cut. No ripper used in conditions like being discussed here because if the material were ripped first it would not load as good and would not get good boiling over load on the pan.

Nobody does work around here for $1.40 per yard on jobs like that.
 

Scrub Puller

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Yair...Greg I understand...although I am never adverse to a bit of pumping when it comes to loading pans, a well ripped floor, bog it in, two pumps to get it falling off the low side and I'm out. It doesn't make for pretty though.

Any pictures? I would be interested to see your set-up with the rippers on tractors that are set up to run scoops.

ih100...when I said in fifty years of watching I have seen very few dozer operators that can push dirt that is absolutely true...most were competent operators but had never been taught correct bulking out and slot dozing techniqes. I have been able to double a tractors production on bulk pushing by a few minutes explanation to an operator...if they know their bickies it does'nt take long before it clicks.

Even if you are paying by yardage it was annoying to have a tractor on the job that is not giving out it's best...I had one bloke on a D7 that could out produce most Eights...untill I had a whisper to the operators on the Eight. Some of course wouldn't listen and had been doing it their way for thirty years..rah...rah...rah...who the f##k was I to tell them how to push?

The technique improved a lot when I published monthly yardage numbers, as I said, it sorted the men out from the boys. And yes, I have forgotten the numbers but toque converter Twenty Ones would often outpush the same vintage D8's.
 

Greg

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I have the traditional set up Scrub Puller. Pan hooks onto the Cat drawbar in the traditional manner. If we rip, it is a separate Cat with traditional ripper on it and blade on the front.
 

monkey

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Aug 4, 2010
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lousyana
wow, I feel inadequate. I'm building about a 7 acre pond with my little D-31 and Cat EL 240B. But then I measure time in months, lol :tong
 

Scrub Puller

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Yair...gotcha Greg. I just thought you may have had a set up where you could pull a scoop with a ripper equipped dozer. I get a real kick out of talking to you blokes (and a little stirring sometimes) it sure helps to pass the time.

Cheers
 

AT&SW

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central Fl
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I cannot agree more with run what you brung. In the past I have tackled many large jobs with undersized equipment. It does not matter as long as you made money and the costumer is happy with the end result.
 

Construct'O

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SW Iowa
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Dozerwork,tiling plus many more!!!!!!!
If your working the sand loam dirt like in western Iowa then a nice tidy cut in the borrow pit or pondarea isn't a facter.If your working in muddy conditons or heavy claylike i do then i like a cut that drains and not a cut that looks like a bomb went off in it.Or at least get it cleaned up before quiting time that night.Especaily when they are calling for rain.

Nothing more irritating then coming too work the next day and having two foot deep water holes in your cut or fill.There a time too hog dirt and a time to smooth things up.
 

Greg

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Run what you brung. That is another reason I use Cats pulling pans. I have them, they work out well on this kind of work and most important make me money.
 

CM1995

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Running what I brung and taking what I win
Run what you brung. That is another reason I use Cats pulling pans. I have them, they work out well on this kind of work and most important make me money.

Yep, that's what makes the insane world of earthmoving profitable (we all have to have a mental imbalance to be in this industry:dizzy). Wouldn't want to do anything else.:D
 

Scrub Puller

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Yair...its funny how things crop up. Been away a few days and pulled up along the track to watch a little Fiat/Allis pushing out a hole. He was pushing slots but was working back to front.

To make matters worse when he'd pushed the slots out he straddled the rills and turned them into slots.

The rills between the slots are the "cheap dirt" and if you start at the back and bust them out into the slot you can clean them out real quick. The main thing is to preserve those slots and work with them to the end.

I was never too particular about cleaning out each floor...you always do the first rip in the direction of the push, this knocks the rills down and provided you're getting in there it isn't as rough as guts when you do the final rip across.

As mentioned up thread if you are not round the clocking it pays to clean out nice and tidy at shifts end and we usualy used to dig a sump and run some levels for drainage if it ever looked like rain.

Cheers.
 

monkey

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Aug 4, 2010
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lousyana
One thing I've come to realize in digging my pond

It takes a long time to move dirt, but it doesn't go very far.........

in digging out my pond and building a dam with most of the dirt, it takes a lot of buckets and dump truck loads to remove it.... but yet it doesn't seem to build up very quick

Maybe I need to buy more/bigger equipment :pointhead
 

ktm rider

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Sep 27, 2010
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Location
western md.
I have been looking for someone to clean out my pond for almost a year now. If you have experience at this, I'm sure there is money to be made in just about any area of the country. It seemed like a big mystery who can clean out a pond no matter where i asked.
 
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