A few projects I have done recently

[CM1995]

Since we turned the pad over the concrete guys on the auto parts store we had a change order at the steak house that involved removing all the existing landscaping outside the disturbance limits on the original demo plans. Most of it was just bushes but there were 3 small water oaks adjacent to the spaghetti garden that were also slated to come down, stump and all.

Used the GC's rented lull and ratchet strapped the tree to the forks, cut it and carted it away. Went pretty quick and safe, two things I like in any operation. There were 3 in all.



Trees and stumps gone, graded and curbs cleaned up.



Using the lull to load up some of the trees on the side of the building.



Used the 420DIT, T250 and the free lull for this project. 30 yard of brush in the background, we got all the trees and bushes in one 30. It needs some tightening up before it leaves.



And now for todays project, painting my new garage door. We had to get a new garage door as the old one was basically torn apart by the opener and the fact it was 15 years old. The good thing is it didn't fall on the better 1/2's new car.:cool2

Temp was touching 100 with just about as much on the humidity scale. I hate painting but it's just a garage door right? Did I say I hate painting.:bash

 

[JNB]

A little more track loader love. The 953 doing one of many things it does best - turning and raking the wet material. The material looks dry and some of it is but the clumps of clay are high on moisture and need to be broken up.

A track loader is basically a CTL on steroids. It just moves more dirt, has more power and burns more fuel than a CTL.

Love this picture.

Saving this one in my pic collection.

Good looking work CM.

 

[CM1995]

Saving this one in my pic collection.

Good looking work CM.

Thanks JNB. To be honest I impressed myself with that iPhone pic, sometimes I get lucky. If that was a brand new 953D it would be worthy of a Cat brochure.

 

[willie59]

Did I say I hate painting.:bash

My sentiments exactly! You do know that if you remove the "t" paint becomes a 4 letter word of apt description.

 

[JNB]

My sentiments exactly! You do know that if you remove the "t" paint becomes a 4 letter word of apt description.

I don't mind painting, but my wife grew up with a painting and drywall contractor for a dad and happens to love it. If she has what she needs at the house to get the job done she'll do it while I'm at work. She also loves to mow the lawn, weed wack and brush hog...and she's 18 years my junior. Yeah, it's a tough life.

 

[willie59]

I don't mind painting, but my wife grew up with a painting and drywall contractor for a dad and happens to love it. If she has what she needs at the house to get the job done she'll do it while I'm at work. She also loves to mow the lawn, weed wack and brush hog...and she's 18 years my junior. Yeah, it's a tough life.

To each his own, I get that completely and have no issues. Myself...paint is a 4 letter word. But that's just me.

 

[dirty4fun]

Some more very good looking work that you have done CM.

We have been getting dumped on with rain all summer long. Just about every night, with a lot of 2"-5" down pours. Trying to get a partial basement replacement done, that has good old red clay. When it starts to dry when you track across it with my new mini it turns black. Must pull some of the color out of the new rubber tracks. I sure would like to see it that way soon as it has been two weeks of water sitting on top of the packed ground, soaked every night with more rain.

 

[CM1995]

My sentiments exactly! You do know that if you remove the "t" paint becomes a 4 letter word of apt description.

I couldn't agree more.:drinkup

I don't mind painting, but my wife grew up with a painting and drywall contractor for a dad and happens to love it. If she has what she needs at the house to get the job done she'll do it while I'm at work. She also loves to mow the lawn, weed wack and brush hog...and she's 18 years my junior. Yeah, it's a tough life.

Lucky dog. My wife's dad was an engineer so yeah I take care of well pretty much all of it.:yup

Some more very good looking work that you have done CM.

We have been getting dumped on with rain all summer long. Just about every night, with a lot of 2"-5" down pours. Trying to get a partial basement replacement done, that has good old red clay. When it starts to dry when you track across it with my new mini it turns black. Must pull some of the color out of the new rubber tracks. I sure would like to see it that way soon as it has been two weeks of water sitting on top of the packed ground, soaked every night with more rain.

Thanks Dirty.

We've been getting hammered with pop up showers that dump a lot of rain and then clear out. It can flood at one site and be dry as a bone 1/4 mile away. Last Wed. a storm popped up east of the parts store, you could see the black building. It literally skimmed right past the site, it rained a little but a couple of hundred yards east it was soaked.

I remember August being dusty dry 20 years ago but the last 5 years August has become a very wet month.:beatsme

Try this dirty it works every time - put some grass seed and hay out and need that grass to come up in order to get final retainage. It won't rain if you begged it too.

 

[Landclearer]

Hey CM, I agree great pic of the 53. I also agree about it being a big CTL. The only comparison you missed was the price of the undercarriage

You can tell you beat that clay to death, doesn't look like a single spot got missed by the sheepsfoot.

Is that a base coat on the asphalt, it is hard to tell from the pics?

 

[CM1995]

Hey CM, I agree great pic of the 53. I also agree about it being a big CTL. The only comparison you missed was the price of the undercarriage

You can tell you beat that clay to death, doesn't look like a single spot got missed by the sheepsfoot.

Is that a base coat on the asphalt, it is hard to tell from the pics?

I did a comparison somewhere here on HEF on the costs of a CTL U/C compared to a D5 and 953. Surprisingly the CTL was more expensive per hour to operate U/C wise than a 953 using my historical costs, others MMV. The difference is the 953 comes all at once other than pads and sprockets and a CTL is spread out more.

Just the binder course is on the parking lot at the steakhouse. If the seal coat would've been on the CO would've doubled in price.

 

[Landclearer]

I did a comparison somewhere here on HEF on the costs of a CTL U/C compared to a D5 and 953. Surprisingly the CTL was more expensive per hour to operate U/C wise than a 953 using my historical costs, others MMV. The difference is the 953 comes all at once other than pads and sprockets and a CTL is spread out more.

Just the binder course is on the parking lot at the steakhouse. If the seal coat would've been on the CO would've doubled in price.

I must still have the nauseated feeling from the 963:throwup.

I thought it was just binder. Nothing I hate worse than fresh paving and s lull on the job!

 

[CM1995]

I must still have the nauseated feeling from the 963:throwup.

I hear ya, that's ridiculous what you guys went through. My 953 has just over 5K on original chains and top/bottom rollers. Replaced the left front idler assembly last year, several pad changes, sprocket segments and turned the P&B's. Dividing the costs of each machine by the hours is where I came up with cost comparison.

Of course those are my numbers, we wear out tracks on a CTL in 500 hours or so but we deal with rock and demo projects. I thought about the metal UC on when I bought the 279 but we do still work on finished pavement and have to cross finished curbs and sidewalks.

On another note it's been nice having two CTL's, the T250 is long been paid for so it's a great backup machine to pick the low hanging fruit that comes along. For instance it's going to mow a residential development next week, it'll make enough in 3 days to cover the payment of the 279, fuel, mobilization and operator labor. Not too bad.

 

[Landclearer]

We seem to be just the opposite of you on CTL vs track loader tracks. We have about 750 hours on the SVL95 and only had a bottom roller go out. Tracks look good and sprocket is great. We thought about steel tracks on the CTL and our KX-080 but figured it sure is nice to be able to ride on any surface you want.

I hear ya on the backup machine. It really doesn't cost you anything to own it other than insurance and any possible repairs. Unless it is catastrophic it would not take long to make the repairs back either plus you have two machines for two jobs.

 

[CM1995]

We seem to be just the opposite of you on CTL vs track loader tracks. We have about 750 hours on the SVL95 and only had a bottom roller go out. Tracks look good and sprocket is great.

I suspect its the sand that's the difference, that and a ****** U/C on your 963 the last go around. The rock plays hell on our rubber tracks, metal pads stand the abuse better.

Some of our rock is soft like the grey slate at the steakhouse project. Chert rock on the other hand is very sharp and abrasive and plays hell on metal and rubber alike. The current auto parts project is a mix of red clay and chert, not too bad wear wise as the rock content is low but bad for moisture due to the clay content which makes getting passing compaction tests more difficult with pop up showers.

I price jobs depending on the soil makeup which makes reading the soil boring report a must. If it's an area known for abrasive chert the price per CY goes up as we'll wear GET and track pads more. If the soils report shows solid rock then the pricing goes into a unit rate for the rock encountered.

 

[dirty4fun]

C M I like that idea, putting out grass seed would sure bring dry weather. Oh it will get done one of these days, just backs up everything farther and farther behind. Usually it is very dry and the grass is brown, this time of the year. This year people are mowing every 5-6 days, and it is quite often to tall already.

 

[CM1995]

Or Dirty if you need rain just dig a hole that needs to stay dry!:tong

Works every time.

 

[dirty4fun]

I like all the ideas you have shared C M! Had a stroke of better luck yesterday, three miles north 3"-4" of rain. At my shop south of the job 1.6" of rain. Nothing at the job site and where I had to stock pile was dry. Was able to haul in enough sticky wet clay to back fill for now. The dirt was so sticky I looked like a cat with crap on it's foot, trying to get out of the skidsteer bucket into the dump truck.

 

[CM1995]

A few things from this week.

Got a call from the plumber that does all the new chicken shacks and takes care of the existing ones, really good guy. The call came in at 10:30 last Sunday morning. Water line leak which happened to be in the drive through at one of the chicken shacks. He got it repaired but it was 3' deep underneath the drive through lane, not good.

So I changed my Monday morning plans to take care of the backfill, haul off the mud and get the drive through open. It wasn't a large enough hole to need a dump truck and all the trucks I know were already out by early Monday morning so I rented a 4CY dump trailer from HD up the road.

After renting the dump trailer I head off to the landscape supply yard 1/2 mile down the road to get 3 CY's of #57's to fill the hole in. So I go in the office and tell the woman behind the counter that I need 3 yards of #57's and the owner sitting in a chair nearby says $120 with a straight face.:cool2

Whatever this is cost plus and they need to get the drive through open.



I really liked the little dump trailer, I'll get one just for personal projects and when we need a little material on a job.

Dumping the #57's in the hole.




Had to shut the drive thru down for an hour. Now for the funny part. The manager put a sign on the menu board that said drive thru closed but counter inside is open. We had one woman who pulled up to the menu board and asked if they were closed.:beatsme Another one pulled up to the menu board behind the T250 and sat there for a couple of minutes and then pulled around, mind you we had cones around the work site. I guess she thought the T250 was taking too long to order.:tong

These people live among us...



Back at the auto parts store. We had to move an existing inlet box 1.5' back for the new parking lot. The adjusted curb inlet lines up with the front of the new dumpster pad in the background. Knocked the brick out around the existing RCP, cut the RCP and adjusted the box. Pretty simple stuff.



A new run of 15" HDPE runs in front of the dumpster pad in the foreground. I have no idea why the engineer designed a 4' concrete stem wall for a dumpster pad that will be at grade once backfilled.:beatsme

 

[CM1995]

Yard inlet installation by the dumpster pad at the auto parts store. The existing sanitary sewer line for the old building which will be tied on to for the new building runs under the proposed location for the yard inlet. Moved the yard inlet 1' towards the parking lot. Cleared it with the PM.

The DGB is the bottom elevation of the new pre-cast yard inlet.



Yard inlet set, getting ready to set the next curb inlet. We had to field engineer the flow lines for this short run of storm in a tight location, the footing for the dumpster pad extended into the flow line of the 15" HDPE between the curb inlets. It all runs down hill but not at design grade - all in a days work with pics, documentation and approval of the PM.



Existing box with RCP and HDPE grouted in place. We'll pour an invert later.



Outside shot of the existing box. Another coat of mud on the outside of the box was done today before backfilling. Grouted the RCP connection. On a side note we use the cut outs from the knock out box to fill the hole back in, the pieces are the ones at the top of the hole where the HDPE goes into the box. A little cutting with a rescue saw and it takes less brick and time.

Salvaged enough DGB from the existing parking lot to backfill all of this storm pipe and boxes. Win on the budget side of this project.

 

[kshansen]

Had to shut the drive thru down for an hour. Now for the funny part. The manager put a sign on the menu board that said drive thru closed but counter inside is open. We had one woman who pulled up to the menu board and asked if they were closed.:beatsme Another one pulled up to the menu board behind the T250 and sat there for a couple of minutes and then pulled around, mind you we had cones around the work site. I guess she thought the T250 was taking too long to order.:tong

These people live among us...

That reminded me of a Youtube video I saw just this week. Some lady called in a radio talk show to complain about the highway department installing "Deer Crossing" signs in high traffic areas. She had hit deer a couple times just after passing one of those signs. She felt they should move the signs to maybe a school zone where the speed limits were slower!