Will a backhoe work for me??

hi guys,
i have a 100 acre rural property,quite steep clay,and need to do the following
dig a dam or two
clear a road
clear some scrub
remove a few trees
dig a trench
prepare a house pad

i only have skidsteer experience and know that traction would not be any good for this terrain...it would be shocking moving up hill,let alone putting the bucket in the earth

are the backhoes any good on gradients(some are 40 degrees) in wet clay
help me out guys,i was thinking a traxcavator was the go

Well I think you would be better off with an excavtor for all those things you want to do. TLB is a great machine if you need to dig a small amount and need to go get stone ,sand or what ever with the bucket. As you can not with an excavator. working on hills you would most likely have to bench .

I've owned both a TLB and presently own a skid steer with backhoe attachment. My skid steer is more stable than the TLB was and if I have a grade that is too steep to drive up I back up it. My TLB was 2 wheel drive so this was not an option with that machine.

I find my skid steer is more versatile for property maintenance with the different attachments I have than my TLB was. I don't have a lot of time on excavators so I can't compare them, but I've done just about everything on your list with my machine. A skid steer wouldn't be the optimum machine for production, but it's very maneuverable and will cover a variety of other jobs that will pop up.

Perhaps a Multi-Terrain Loader (tracked skid steer) would handle your slopes?

How about a trackloader with a backhoe attachment?:beatsme

It would be my first pic for that type of work if I could only have one machine, but I'm not speaking from alot of experience either.

I do see them around, used, but not often. I've always thought they'de be versitile (abeit expensive compared to "wheeled" equipment, maintanance wise), and would have alot more persuasion than most skid steer's on stumps and while digging.

Something in the JD450 size range maybe??

It's not entirely clear if you just need to traverse steep areas or actually work on them.

In wet clay, nothing with tires is going to be very useful or stress-free. If you just need to get to one flat area or another, it can be done, but only when dry. One job I had to run debris down a hill to an old inground pool to be buried. It had to be near 40-45 degrees. It was about as steep as you could climb with a backhoe before the tires would just spin. Any moisture meant that we couldn't run for the day, so work time is limited.

If you need to actually work on the slopes, then hands down a tracked machine is what you want. They laugh at slopes that make rubber tired equipment unstable. I had also thought of a crawler loader backhoe. It doesn't sound like you have any one dedicated type of work to do that would narrow it to a excavator or dozer. It's also important to note that most track loader backhoes that I have seen are older and will have more difficult controls. Not that you won't pick them up quickly, just something to be aware of.

If your clay is like mine, I would look for an excavator.

:usa you need a 10 or 12 ton trackhoe with a dozer blade on it kobleco makes an awesome one very handy for aa bunch of stuff it your gonna be workin on slopes you have to have tracks unless you have alot of exp. on a backhoe fro what it sounds like your gonna need something with tracks its better for you and safer being that you dont have a whole lot of hours in the seat you know your less likely to turn it over or get stuck... key words "less likely"

thanks for the prompt reply guys
in response,a tracked skidsteer in australia is about the same price secondhand as say a cat953 or 20ton newish excavator
i need to clear a road up some of those slopes as well as clear scrub/trees at the same time
an excavator may be a bit slow for getting around,not sure about putting in a road with one?? but then again i have never used one,i just think of a propelled machine doing a more efficient job(point'npush)....also i read on here somewhere that putting in a dam with an excavator doesn't give much compaction and the water leaks
ideally an excavator and a dozer/traxcavator would be best but i have a limited budget so see the traxcavator as the most versatile(jack of all trades master of none)....any words of wisdom on this theory?

Will a backhoe work for me??

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On your property....Nope

Squizzy246B said:

On your property....Nope

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short and sweet.....like your style squizz:notworthy
back to the traxcavator hunt then i guess,you seen the komatsu i am looking at?
how hard are they to get the hang of,only had the luxury of hyrostats myself,i don't even like manual cars

A machine like mine would work great for you if you can find one within your budget. They are around, just takes some hunting to find them....be a few extra levers to learn though But once you get the hang of it nothing will work safer or more efficiently on the slopes. And they are far more then just an excavator. They have a mile long list of attachments. I'm sure you would find a few of them to be handy.

Sorry to threadjack, but how do you like the Kaiser so far Brian? I ran an older Schaeff, which is basically the same machine, back when I was about 12. I think ti was an HS40, should be right around the same size as your machine. Those babies are wild, so much control. My buddy's machine had a winch and a hydraulic thumb as well, he could do a ton of work with that thing. He actually had 2 of them at one point.

I haven't taken delivery of it yet. Its in Kaiser's shop in Switzerland getting checked out before shipping. It's a bit of a long wait but I think it will be worth it. Depends on what all it needs before being ready to ship how long it will be. Probably a few weeks yet.
We got ours with an 800mm dig bucket and a clean up bucket. It's plumbed for a winch but doesn't have one yet. It has 5 auxiliary hydraulic lines for attachments, going to see what we get the most demand for and get attachments as needed. What type of stuff did your buddy use his for? His machine would have been about 10 ton, same as ours.

Maybe a Mini-Excavator?

BrianHay said:

What type of stuff did your buddy use his for? His machine would have been about 10 ton, same as ours.

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He did quite a bit of stream work and our main attraction to where I grew up is the lake. With the lake, everyone who had a dock on the lake more than likely had a steep slope from the road down to the dock itself. He'd take the spider down the slope to build retaining walls and slope retainment stuff. Getting tougher to do these days, fish and wildlife is ridiculous. I'm all for fish habitat, but c'mon, is placing some clean rocks in a lake that is 55 miles long really going to hurt them? No.

He also sent it down to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Snowbird, Utah to dig ski lift tower pads. He was a subcontractor for Dopplmayr aerial lifts and did a lot of that type of work. He also did some light forestry work as the machine is pretty low impact, but mainly lots of beach and retainment work in my hometown by the lake. A nice feature with the spider is that you can climb over walls to go where a conventional machine absoultely could not. In the winter, the lake level drops quite a bit to compensate for snowpack runoff in the spring and summer. The lake is dammed up at one end and this time of year we generate a lot of our own power while emptying the lake in preparation for spring. During this time, the seawalls are nowhere near water so he'd get a lot of shoreline improvement work during the winter. He even repaired concrete seawals, combined with a backhoe the spider could do all the excavation work while the backhoe shuttled materials to the wall itself. Sometimes this wasn't the case, but that machine has been in some ridiculously steep and/or challenging places, I've seen it in action and ran one of the two machines he had myself. They truly are unique pieces.

I have to think tracks would be better for you too. I like the bucket loader idea.