A few projects I have done recently

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . . CM1995.

Thanks for the comments re steel versus rubber . . . I was looking at it from my point of view working mostly clearing and stacking/burning brush . . . its all hypothetical, I'm not really in any position to get one . . . nice to daydream sometimes though. (big grin)

Cheers.

 

[CM1995]

Scrub if I were mainly clearing and stacking brush, I would opt for a 943/953/963 loader - it'll work circles around a CTL.

Like you said it's all hypothetical as there are too many variables for a "one-sized fits all" scenario.

 

[CM1995]

Answering Jmac's question from Fast Dirt's thread -

Most of these dollar stores are built by developers who hire a GC to build them then keep and lease or sell them to the retail company. This can turn into a cluster real quick, as the developer wants all the project spec's met but doesn't want to pay for unforeseen site circumstances. On the civil side of construction we deal with unforeseen circumstances on a regular basis. A building is a building and is straight forward, what's under the ground can't be determined until one starts moving dirt.

For example -

The developer buys a crappy piece of property because its cheap. Hires a geotech firm that handles all of their projects to do a soil report. As we all know soils reports are at best a guide and don't guarantee site conditions unless they bore on a tight grid, which the developer is not going to pay for.

Fast forward to construction and low and behold the site has issues, might have been the reason why it was cheap. Geotech not wanting to look bad in the eyes of the developer wants to keep costs down but still meet specs as this is a big account for them..

As one can imagine, this creates a FUBAR between the GC, geotech, developer and finally the site guy.

The best advice I can give on commercial jobs is keep your notes, job site conditions and meetings documented, with pictures. I didn't loose money or not get paid for what I did but it was a battle and not the way I do business.

Take it for what it's worth but I probably will not do another one after seeing how the process works.

 

[lumberjack]

Best to keep your communications in writing. If you have a meeting take notes then email them for confirmation after the meeting.

 

[JNB]

The rain is killing us! 3rd day in a row, haven't worked this week. We've probably gotten 3-4" of rain over the last 3 days, flooding is now an issue.

This is what the site looked like yesterday -

That pipe needs to be in the ground!

I hear ya! I've been dealing with this fire deal I had with my CASE, trying to arrange a rental, and it's supposed to rain tomorrow. Worst of all I got into chiggers somewhere on Monday... a lot of them!

 

[mitch504]

Man! I you'd have tilted the manifold on that pit blower and blown it east. All my ag customers have reached the "very worried, spend no money" stage. It really looked like we were finally going to get some today and it just petered out 50 miles west. Yesterday we had a 50-70% chance the rest of the week, tonight it says 10-30% all the next 7 days.

 

[ScottAR]

I'd happily box some up and send it over if I could. Flash flooding is becoming an issue as the ground is saturated. Have a project here at home to start but it's so wet I just have to stare at sprayed lines on the grass.

 

[CM1995]

Mitch, I would if I could. Like Scott we're soaked here. Today is the first day we have worked all week and it rained last night.

Yesterday I had cabin fever and drove to the project, it's a 45min - 1hr drive one way so that tells you I was bored. Sun finally came out and job was starting to dry up. I pulled the excavator out and figured I grease it to be ready for today, just something to do. Before I could hit all the fittings, it got dark and dumped .5" of rain in about 15 mins. After that passed, clouds cleared and blue sky poked through.:beatsme

We're going to try today. It's rained so much there's no fines left on the ground, all that silt has washed to my brush berm check damns.

 

[CM1995]

321 earning it's keep, no I haven't fixed the panel I dented from the last demo job..:tong



18" RCP. This line was 190' +/-. Joints wrapped with mirafi fabric and my graffiti in "sewer green" upside down paint.



4x4 grate inlet box set, ready to slide in cut piece. This box just gets the top with a grate, no riser. This area is a drainage swell next to the new building to take the run-off from the existing parking lot and the new driveway for the new building. It dumps into a retention pond we'll excavate later.

 

[CM1995]

Couple of track loader pics.

This area is just a slope that needed to be cut down in order to get sight distance for the new driveway farther down the road. Since it was just a slope where nothing can ever be built on it (not enough set-back distance from the ROW) we mined some good structural fill for a change order and filled it back in with excess topsoil.



A little trick, take a look at the right side of the picture. This slope had to be cut down and it's adjacent to a fairly traveled road. The site drains well down and to the right, behind where the picture is taken. We left a dirt berm between the site and the road to channel rain water down to a temp. retention pond in order to settle out the silt before it leaves the site. If we would have installed silt fence and cut all the way to the road it would have been a maintenance headache, as the silt fence would have had heavy silt loads with all the rain we have been having.



What we did was create a temp. holding pond for the water at the bottom corner of the property. This allows the run-off to pond and let some of the silt settle out.



The trapped silt.



The lowest point of the temp. pond drains to the right. Where it drains out use a brush check damn to slow the water down and trap silt. Then it the silt is easily cleaned out with the excavator and it's not 1/2 way up the silt fence.



The silt fence can be seen in the background of the pic. I hate silt fence but what I hate worse than silt fence is repairing it after it fills up or breaches.

 

[Fastdirt]

Oh my goodness the water. Sorry you are having the rains. It seems we are getting daily rains too. Kind of like living in Florida with those hot scattered pop up storms. Sure makes a sticky mess in a hurry. Great looking jobs you have going on there. I love your equipment. You have the perfect fleet. Of course I love Cat and will always love the track loaders. We are going to have to get that dent fixed on that beautiful machine because dents attract other dents. Keep up the hard work. I'm inspired.

 

[CM1995]

Thanks Fastdirt, I appreciate it. We lost 3 days last week to rain, worked yesterday to catch up.

Yeah I need to get that dent fixed, I don't know how much of it we can pound back out though. Cat wants like $2200 for that thin piece of metal, so we are going to try something else. We haven't slowed down long enough to get into it.

There's another 200' or so of 12"arch and 18" RCP to lay on this project. We're just a 3 man crew and I am ditch man.

Exc. operator, skid operator and ground man and me in the ditch. Works pretty good as I can keep production going and make money but I'm not as young as I used to be and feel it after a long day.

You have the perfect fleet.

It works for us but there are a few pieces I want to upgrade. I've got a 420DIT, didn't bring it to this job. I would love to have a larger mini-ex in the 11K-12K range to replace my very tired 334. Been thinking about trading/selling the 420 and the 334 to get a larger mini, maybe new.

Ultimately a 308 would be very nice to have but I want to keep the weight down so it can hauled with a pickup. I have been looking at the 305's and E45-50's. Cat or Bobcat are the only two I really consider. We have a Kubota dealer but I won't deal with them and the Case/Kobelco dealer is 45 mins away, one way - longer if traffic is jammed up.

I might look at a Komatsu or JD but to be honest I already have long relationships with the Cat and Bobcat dealer and there's not much difference between this class mini when you boil it all down. I know what I am going to get with these two.

Also I would like a new CTL and a D6N, but that's way on down the line.

 

[CM1995]

18" RCP pond outflow with 4x4 pre-cast inlet box and 4 post top.



The bottom of pond elevation is 2' below the rim of the box, it gets an 8" DI stub at the bottom of pond elevation. Next we're going to lay out the pond and excavate it.

Received a change order today for another 150' of 18" RCP and a junction box, that should be the last of the storm on this project.

 

[pafarmer]

Great job again CM. I liked the tip, great idea. How you layed out the temp. silt collection pond. The brush filter system. We have used similar techniques in the past. Well done CM...

We are getting allot of rain here too, hard to put two whole days of work together lately...13 hours in the new 289D today and I stepped out clean, cool and fresh as a daisy....so comfortable and smooth.

 

[CM1995]

Thanks pafarmer. We have been rain free for 6 days and it's getting sorta dusty.

 

[pafarmer]

Thanks pafarmer. We have been rain free for 6 days and it's getting sorta dusty.

I'm looking forward to dusty conditions. Getting tired of playing the mud !

 

[JNB]

I was checking out your loader pics on the last page. Good idea on the berm. There are some guys working on a street modification for a high school here in town with their main piece of equipment being a Deere 955. If they would have thought of that little berm trick they wouldn't have been shut down for four days following a rain shower we had. An inch and a half of rain in about 30 minutes. Their project is at the bottom of a quarter mile concrete street which acted like a drainage swale into their site. The loader was sitting right in the middle of the site in a couple of feet of water. A simple berm would've diverted the runoff to a retention pond a hundred feet away.

 

[CM1995]

Thanks for the compliments JNB. I have learned through trial and error and the ol' school of hard knocks how to handle the amount of rain we get in the Southeast and what it does to a job on and off site. I'll admit we have been in a parking lot of a medical clinic that was downhill from a project one morning scraping, loading and washing the mud that breached our silt fence.

 

[CM1995]

Shaping the pond. The earlier picture of clearing and installing the silt fence is this run. The storm pipe photo from above is this outlet structure.



Not the way you want your Thursday afternoon to go. Taking the skid back to the dirt project after installing silt fence on a small, yet high profile project. It's a 25 mile trek back to the dirt job and the tire blew 1/4 mile away from the project..



However this is why I prefer the country over the city, any day. Not more than 10 mins after I pulled over after the blow out, a guy from the water dept. we are working for stopped to help. Within a few minutes he had a friend on the phone that had the right sized tire at his shop and said bring it on over. Unloaded the skid, took the wheel off and 30 mins later I was back on the road. The guy would not accept my money, I tried twice.:thumbsup

If this would have happened in an affluent area, I would have received a lot of horn honks and 1 finger salutes.

 

[willie59]

If this would have happened in an affluent area, I would have received a lot of horn honks and 1 finger salutes.

And the affluent property owner of the site you were going to would be blowing up your phone as to why you're not on site yet.