how do u calculate amount of dirt on a site with no engineered plans?

Just a simple Garmin 62. Would be nice to have a topcon for sure! Probably be a extremely worth while investment! But budgets don't always allow for best choices. So we make do with what we got till we can!

Gps

greywynd said:

I deal mostly with small jobs, so I can use a tape and measure it out. I do have a handheld GPS that also tracks elevations, so I've toyed with the idea of trying it to see if it will give me a rough idea of an area/volume.....you can use it to figure out area, and with some more number crunching to figure out the elevation differences, it should be possible to come up with volumes.....

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The GPS is fairly accurate, we have used it before. I would not build a race car engine with it, but for dirt work it is close enough....

I too have used Google Earth for elevations and areas. I mostly use it for haul distances and cycle times....

I only use google/yahoo for haul mileage and cycle times for trucks. I wouldn't use on it for cuts and fills. Just a few inches over a large jobsite and you toast. Plus there could be different thickness of topsoil in different areas which will cause you to have less usable structural fill. I use trimble paydirt to do my calculations and find it is very accurate if your know your shrink and swell factors. Carlson also has a program called takeoff that is really nice as well.