Help: Driveway / Basement / Leveling a hill

[colson04]

Getting ready to close on some acreage to build a house on and looking for some pointers on dozer operations. While I run equipment on a farm all day, I only have a couple hours on a dozer, attempting to grade a driveway. That went so-so.

In the next month, I'm going to need 500 ft of driveway cut, a 72x32 hole dug for the basement, and a small hill south of the proposed house site cut down to match the grade of the house site. Cutting the hill down is not as important as the driveway and the basement, it's just something we would like to do if we can fit it into our timeline this year. There are no trees to remove as this location is all wheat field currently. While I don't have cores of the all of the digging sites, I do know the general top soil is a clay loam and runs from 1-6 ft deep. Under that is sand.

I own a Deere 310A backhoe, and 743 and 753 bobcats and access to 2 dump trucks. I'm looking at renting either a Cat D5XL or a Deere 650K LT to do the dozer work (1 week rental / 50 hours). I know I need to stake out the house site, and then the center line of the future driveway, but after that, I'm kind of short on excavation knowledge. Where would you begin once the dozer gets delivered to the site? Drop the blade and drive up the driveway? Turn 90 to the driveway and make many short passes side to side to shove top soil off? My excavation experience pretty much stops at digging stumps and burying them. I know with the drive, I need to cut all the clay out down to the sand, and then fill with sand back to grade. If I can fit it all in, I'd like to use the sand in the hill to fill back in the driveway to minimize material cost. I can get stabilizer fill for $7.25/yard delivered, but that adds up fast if I need a lot of fill. Once driveway is close to final grade, it'll be finished with 3" stabilizer and 4" crushed gravel. These were recommendations made to me from a couple local excavators. They said that's what is common for the area.

So, where do I begin? I know I have a good sized project in front of me. I'm not scared, I just need some guidance to get going in the right direction. I've been reading everything I can find here, watching videos on youtube, talking with local guys that run equipment and gleaning any bit of knowledge I can to help myself.

 

[sealark37]

Instead of renting a dozer and giving yourself grading lessons, you might consider hiring a man who does this type of work for a living. I borrowed a D-6, and hired an experienced operator who did the whole job in two days. You will be money and time ahead, even if you have to hire the machine and operator. Just my experience. Regards, Clark

 

[colson04]

My uncle (20 years dozing/excavator experience) has offered to come by once we get the land and get it staked to help me plan it out. The catch being he doesn't have the time to do the project, just get me started. So, I'm trying to learn as much as possible from all sources before I begin

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[390eric]

How deep is the basement? That will be a lot of dirt to loose coming out of that hole. Are you planning on dozing the bulk of it and then digging corners with your backhoe?

My game plan would be figure out your driveway and what you are going to do with what you have to strip off. If it's a lot, I would bulk with a dozer then load into a truck to haul to the lose area with the backhoe. Sounds like you might need some helpers to run all this equipment at once Then dig your basement and use the good dirt to fill in your driveway. You need access to your house to build it. So a good road in and out is needed. If it's a lot of fill I would put it in in lifts and roll preferably with a roller but loaded dump truck would work. Might be cheaper and faster to pay someone with knowledge and proper equipment. I would be digging that foundation with track loader or excavator. You might want to consider renting a track loader so you can strip and load with one machine

 

[movindirt]

Why strip the drive down to sand? I'd strip off 12" or till you get to clay, run a roller over that clay, throw down some fabric and pack the rock up from there. Is the basement going to be a walkout? Or a 8' deep hole that size? If its a 7 or 8' deep hole that size I'd use a 160/ 200 size excavator.

 

[colson04]

Basement is a walkout. 8 ft deep

When I dug the holes for the perk test, we found that the soil was a continuous clay loam, and the next layer below that is sand.

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[Welder Dave]

Are you having someone build the house or are you building it? If someone else is building it or even doing the foundation they likely know a contractor that digs basements. With a track hoe and an experienced operator the basement wouldn't take long. You could dig it with your hoe but there'd be a lot of moving material around 2 or 3 times where a track hoe could spin 360 degs. and have enough reach to dump the material out of the way. Sometimes it's better just hiring the work out to an experienced operator. They will do a better job in a lot less time and it may be cheaper in the long run.

 

[Bumpsteer]

I'm with Dave, basements are more than a big hole in the ground. The walls need to be plumb, the overdig far enough and the foor nice and flat. The footing trenches the same, material needs to be out of the way for construction but close enough for backfill.

Your contractor will have a preferred person to dig basements, use him.

Ed

 

[caterpillar13]

i agree with the advice to hire someone , if you over dig any of it ,it will have to be back filled and compacted to meet inspection

 

[colson04]

I'm building the house too. I know several guys that can do this for me, but that's not how I'm going to do it. I run a fair amount of equipment throughout the year, just not dozers. Mostly my hoe, wheel loaders, tractors and skidsteers. I've been in residential construction since I was a kid and I'm aware of what the basement needs to be dug out like. I know a backhoe isn't the first choice piece of equipment, but I have owned it free and clear for years and it's in good shape for its age. It's going to get the job done.

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[Welder Dave]

You've got all this equipment and have apparently run it a fair bit but have to ask how to do your driveway and you say your experience with the hoe is mostly digging stumps. I'm a little confused? What is the cat going to cost to rent for a week? I think you have enough equipment to do the job without having to rent anything. The thing with renting a cat and not having any experience is that you could have a bigger mess than when you started and then have to spend a lot of time fixing it with your other machines.

 

[dozerman400]

Go for it! Rent your dozer, strip the topsoil out if need be, Start your basement with dozer as much as you can then finish with backhoe or skid loader, level off spoil piles so you can get cement truck around hole. Then when you backfill foundation rent the dozer again and grade your driveway and hill then.

 

[colson04]

Dozer rental for a D5 or 650K runs about $2,000 for a week (7 days, 50 hours) with trucking. And yes, I have the time to run it during that week.

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[Welder Dave]

Do you need to have contractors insurance to rent the cat? I know a lot of rental places require it.

 

[colson04]

Do you need to have contractors insurance to rent the cat? I know a lot of rental places require it.

Good question. Neither rental place I talked to brought it up, but I will call and inquire about that today.

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[movindirt]

Only time Contractors Insurance has come up renting anything from Cat for us was they would refund the insurance cost that they have you sign with them if you can prove you have CI, a note from your insurance agent and you'll get the $150 or however much it was refunded to you. Never had to compact overdig, here it just gets backfilled loose once the forms are stripped off the walls and it settles over the course of the year it takes to build the house. Anything thats getting concrete on top usually gets 3/8" washed gravel thats pretty much compact when you dump it in the hole. I think you'll be fine with the basement, just double check with your concrete guy to make sure you're both on the same page for footing layout. Around here they inspect the hole before the footings are poured, and after before walls go up and then once walls are done before backfill. I think you will be fine, its your own personal property so if you screw something up its not AS big of a deal

 

[Welder Dave]

I think another reason a lot places require contractors insurance for rentals is to weed out the wannbe's. Some guy comes in who's never run any equipment and wants to rent a cat. I can't see anything going wrong with that.

 

[colson04]

For those interested, the basement was dug and I did not rent any equipment. I used my 310 A backhoe, 753 bobcat and my FIL brought his old 555 backhoe over to use as a loader as his hoe is messed up.

Basement was dug this past weekend with the 3 of us running for a few hours Friday afternoon, all day Sunday and a little bit of clean up and trenching yesterday. I think I totaled 40 hours of equipment run time between the 3 machines for this project.

First night

Sunday at 3pm

Monday when I met with poured walls contractor to hand over prints

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[oldirt]

since you say you have no experience you really need to hire an experienced dirt contractor that will take out your basement correctly, whatever that takes in your area. you're not building a hay barn.

after he is done with your basement, have him knock that hill down and run out a driveway. 500' will not take long. A 953 can do this really easily.