Will a landfill compactor work in dirt well?

[stars&bars44]

Looking at some compactors and found a good buy on a landfill machine. Its got the tall kind of narrow feet I assume for chopping trash. Will those feet work on dirt? I assume you can get decent results with enough passes, just wondering if anybody is familiar with this?

 

[Jeckyl1920]

For initial lifts, sure. For finished surfaces or surfaces trucks need to drive on.... not so much. You would have to smooth it out after compacting.

It would work like a sheeps foot, and you probably would have a hard time getting it stuck.

 

[Cmark]

Landfill compactors typically have minimal or no wheel cleaner bars. If there's any kind of moisture in the dirt you're compacting, you will find wheel plugging to be a problem.

 

[Jeckyl1920]

Ignore me. Listen to Cmark.

 

[John C.]

From what I've had to inspect in landfills in this area they usually have individual bars in line between the knobs on the roller. The issue I've observed is that I haven't seen a landfill compactor have a vibration function. As noted above, the landfill machine has cutter type knobs and not the squarish ones that are good an pushing rock and soil down into the ground. The cutter knobs are for busting up the debris and forcing the air out of the voids from loosely dumped garbage.

 

[ih100]

I've done a lot with Cat and Bomag compactors on clay fill, the cleaner bars do work okay. If it's wet enough to clog the drums it's too wet for engineered fill anyway. As already said, when you get to level you either overfill and cut down, or finish with a smooth drum roller.

 

[Jeckyl1920]

Interesting. I replied knowing nothing about the cleaner bars on landfill rollers. I assumed I was wrong as I was only looking at the drum type and not the machine as a whole.

Since they seem to do ok with not clogging, the drum dynamic would work well since the idea is to remove voids, as that is the same as what a sheepsfoot attatchment does.

You may be able to do larger lifts with this type of compactor as well. What is the experience from people who have used them for soils?

Good info to know for future exploits!

 

[RZucker]

I saw an older Cat machine with paddle type drums on a job involving caliche, the scrapers would drop odd sized slabs and that machine would chop the slabs up into stuff you could grade with. Did not look like a smooth ride for the operator.

 

[ih100]

Did not look like a smooth ride for the operator.

For sure on that. I often wonder why Cat fitted a three-speed box to their machines, if the ground was wet enough to compact they wouldn't pull third gear, if it was hard enough for third you couldn't stay in the seat.

Actually at low speed the ride isn't too bad. Every job I did this kind of work, we were restricted to 1-foot Max per lift. Any thicker and you needed a lot more passes to get compaction. The method is to squash the big lumps then blade the tops off, otherwise you end up with voids.

 

[Cmark]

For sure on that. I often wonder why Cat fitted a three-speed box to their machines, if the ground was wet enough to compact they wouldn't pull third gear, if it was hard enough for third you couldn't stay in the seat.

It's because they share the same powertrain as the wheel loaders. From the centre hitch back, the 980, 826 and 825 are all fundamentally much the same machine. In fact the compactors actually have a four speed transmission with fourth disabled.

 

[ih100]

I wondered if that was the case, Cmark. I remember that the 825 would just out push a D6H on spreading clay, not by much, but consistently. Wider blade and faster backing up. I'm just imagining fourth gear in one of these machines......makes my teeth vibrate thinking about it.