Demolition, clearing and grading

[Landclearer]

Stump Knocker,

The pics with the mudhogs are of a little pipe job but we have had to ditch clearing jobs before. We have also had to knock the trees down and work off of them like mats. I have a lot of pics of muddy jobs but I do not think they were taken with a digital camera.

CM, we can go about three foot on average before we hit water. Depending on how close we are to the marsh, the tide will actually affect the water table. The retention pond you did looked like one of those jobs that if you did not know what you were doing, you could get in trouble real quick.

 

[CM1995]

The retention pond you did looked like one of those jobs that if you did not know what you were doing, you could get in trouble real quick.

If it weren't the height of the dry season, that job would have required a long reach to clean the entire pond out. Property manager said it hadn't been cleaned out in over 5 years. Used the dry material you could reach to build a "bridge" out far enough to reach the back side of the pond and the machine still sank. Had to keep filling in the pad the machine was on with dry material.

This was on of my friends jobs he hired me to do with exc. He took his PC78 out earlier in the summer and tried to do the same thing - build a road with the dryer material. He was successful for a few feet and then his machine started to sink, stuck the boom down to level the machine and it disappeared after it broke through the soft crust. He quickly swung around and pulled himself out - then waited until August.

 

[Landclearer]

CM, I hope your friend told you that it was bad before you started. It was smart on his part to get out while he could. I never could figure why some guys keep trying and trying to get a machine out when all it is doing is going down. Sometimes it is better to just stop.

 

[CM1995]

CM, I hope your friend told you that it was bad before you started.

LOL, yeah he did. It's his trucks we were loading, same one I share a yard with. We have been planning that job for a while since the 78 incident and I had some free time and it's dryer than a popcorn fart here.

 

[Landclearer]

I can see where the dry weather would help out on that job. Does your friend do all of your trucking?

 

[CM1995]

Does your friend do all of your trucking?

Most of it. We have a special arrangement, I own a 55K tag trailer and he moves my equipment with his dump truck by the hour. He also uses my trailer to move his skids and 78. He keeps up the maintenance for use of the trailer -just bought a tire last week for it and I keep tags and insurance. We've know each other for 30 years, our families go way back.

Sometimes he can't get to me but we have a network as everyone does, of independents who can fill in. I hire out the 321 moves on a lowboy, have two friends in the business who can do that.

I have another good friend who runs roll-offs and has access to 60 yard trailers for demo debris.

Gotta love this business, the networking that goes along with it and the good friends you make along the way.

 

[Landclearer]

Thanks for the info CM. That is pretty much what I thought. It sure is nice having people you can depend on like that. We do the exact same thing. We have our own trucks but we cant do it all so there is one company we use on bigger jobs and a women that owns her own truck we use on smaller ones. We try to be loyal to them and they appreciate it. There is another guy that does lot clearing, we buy dirt from him and he throws demo jobs our way.

Like you said, it is interesting the people you meet over the years.

 

[CM1995]

We try to be loyal to them and they appreciate it. There is another guy that does lot clearing, we buy dirt from him and he throws demo jobs our way.

Same here, we know the people we can be loyal to and the ones we can't.

Sometimes it's like being in high school all over again except its adults and money is on the table - some never grow out of it. Birmingham is a "big little city" of over 1/2 million people but everyone knows everyone in the grading business. When times were tight, it was cut throat and you knew who your friends were and weren't.:cool2

 

[Landclearer]

You nailed the construction business all over I think. Charleston is the same exact way. You can't sneeze without people knowing it or calling to find out if you heard about it. Same here on knowing your friends. We have some good people we work with and we are real lucky in that way.

 

[Landclearer]

I didn't really do anything exciting this week until Friday and Sat. We put down 900 tons of rock and fine graded it but when I went to take some pics, the battery in my camera was dead so I figured I would post a demo job we did earlier this year.

 

[Colorado Digger]

Looks like here, although different architecture. These people up in Aspen are nuts, tearing down perfectly good houses only to build bigger ones.

Looking good!

 

[Landclearer]

This house had fire damage and the insurance company totaled it but we are wrecking more and more houses to build bigger and better ones. There is not much ocean front land left so they are wrecking the olde smaller ones.

 

[90plow]

Where about are you in charleston? My in laws just built a house in mt. Pleasant.

 

[Landclearer]

We do most of our work on Kiawah Island. We do work in Mt. pleasant though.

 

[Landclearer]

Did some work on the firehouse job this week. Finished the pipe and got an area ready for concrete slab and dressed the site up for the surveyors to come tomorrow. After we finished what we could there, we moved to a little road job we finished last week. They paved it on Tues and we started to grade the shoulders on Thurs.

 

[Landclearer]

Here are the pics of the shoulder grading.

 

[CM1995]

That's a nice house demo. At first I thought it was a "tear down a perfectly fine house to build a bigger one" until I saw the fire damage on the roof. That looks like a Frank Betz design. On Alabama's little sliver of Gulf Coast the architecture is generally the tropical/spanish style. Stucco and clay tile roofs. I like the low country style architecture.

All that sand kills me. I can see on one hand where it's a dream to grade and on the other it's a PIA.

Curious as to where you get your crushed stone from or is it recycled concrete?

 

[Landclearer]

CM, If you like different types of architecture, this is the place. They build all kinds of stuff from something that looks like Frank Loyd Right to Cape Cod style houses. The new fad around here are shingle sided houses with green windows and trim.

Sometimes I complain about the sand but if it rains, you keep on going. Grading is a pain sometimes but once you get used to it it is OK. It is nice to get in some clay sometimes!

We have 3 choices for rock, one is crushed concrete which you just about cannot get because everyone wants it or you go to Jamestown or Eutaville for crushed limestone. If you use use limestone, you can get about 3 loads a day and around $30 a ton. I prefer concrete because at 660 pounds a sqyd on your estimate you never have over runs because you are not buying water like you do with limestone sometimes.

 

[Landclearer]

Not a very exciting week. We tore up and put a new deck on a golf course bridge. Not a lot of fun. The new boards were 3x10x14's. We used the mini ex to pull the old ones up and the skidsteer would bring in the new and take out the old.

 

[Colorado Digger]

Whatever it takes, sometimes the boring weeks are good for catchup and shop work. I don't think we could get away with the shoulder grading after the black top went down. Maybe it was the first lift? Everything looks nice, you can tell you guy's care about the finished product.

Regards, CD

P.S. Did you decide on the loader?