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No Experience - Need advice (excavation)
- Thread starter TheBackwoodHustler
- Start date
Willie B
Senior Member
Digging is always the easy part. I most commonly dig ditches for other people. I figure time as a four to one ratio. I can dig a ditch in 1/4 the total time. Placing bedding sand, conduits, more sand, backfilling, often topsoil, and rake work take the other 3/4 of the time needed.
To be versatile, you need a great many machines & tools. Start up requires a 5 ton excavator, a track loader, a 1 ton dump & trailer. That is minimum for small scale projects. Then you need underground utilities locator, tamper, lasers, concrete chainsaw, & many more.
Factor the payments for all that, add insurance, upkeep, depreciation, & all the other costs of overhead, then decide if you can still show a profit.
To be versatile, you need a great many machines & tools. Start up requires a 5 ton excavator, a track loader, a 1 ton dump & trailer. That is minimum for small scale projects. Then you need underground utilities locator, tamper, lasers, concrete chainsaw, & many more.
Factor the payments for all that, add insurance, upkeep, depreciation, & all the other costs of overhead, then decide if you can still show a profit.
John Canfield
Senior Member
Couple of weeks ago I dug a 100' trench for a french drain on the east side of my shop. Had the trench dug in about an hour or so with my mini-ex and then spent the next two days getting the gravel base in the trench graded for a proper fall, wrestling with the pipe and landscape fabric and then fill gravel. One hour of digging and maybe 15-18 hours of finishing the job (working alone but I'm not a young buck.)In the sitework business digging the hole is 9 times out of 10 the easiest part.