Looking for advise. I am a mason contractor and not a GC, so I don’t have alot of experience with these sorts of manuvers. Let me set up the nature of the task:
Lower level is 2/3 excavated basement with slab. 1/3 of lower level under living room is crawlspace. Foundation walls in crawlspace are full-height, footings are at same elevation as basement areas. Lot is level but cellar door is below grade about 3′.
I need the space for a growing family but the dirt has gotta go.
What are the options? I’m thinking only 5 gallon buckets and lots of strong backs and weak minds.
Replies
Try an extension ladder flat, plywood with rollerskate wheels underneath to roll on the ladder rails, sides on the board with roller skate wheels either side to guide it along the edges and a pull rope on either end. Viola! No bending over carring a 5 gal. bucket. Just set it on the board and give it a push to the person at the other end.
" I'm thinking only 5 gallon buckets and lots of strong backs and weak minds."
That's a lotta buckets!!!!!!
I just had 420 sq ft of flooring torn out to the joists. I used the opportunity to clean up the crawl before I put down plastic.
Lots of debris. Mostly fragments of glass, pieces of rubble stone, and plenty of wood scraps in all sizes and in various degrees of rot.
So much of the debris was so small that it was simpler to just scrape the loose layer of dirt up and haul it out debris and all.
So just the thin layer of loose dirt over 420 sq ft....30 buckets!
You can't get a mini excavator int there?
Can you set up a conveyor belt??
Best of luck.
Rich Beckman
Another day, another tool.
I once saw a Bob Villa show where they were lowering a dirt cellar floor before pouring a concrete floor to finish the basement. The excavation company was digging by hand, but had a conveyor belt with a hopper in the basement where they shoveled the dirt, and it was taken by the conveyor belt through a window into a waiting dump truck. I've never seen one of these for rent, but if you could find one it might be worthwhile.
I want to do the same thing on a smaller scale to get my crawl space accessible and up to modern code of 16" to the joists. My surface consists of micro-fine dust, so I've been trying to come up with a sort of shop vac on steroids. The idea would be to use a 10 - 15 true industrial HP blower pulling thru a cyclonic separator. So far, I have a source for the cyclone, but not for a reasonable blower that can pull over 100" of vacuum.
The vacuum side of an air spade system might also work:
http://www.air-spade.com/products_air_vac.html
I figure mine would be about 30 - 40 cubic yards. If yours is, say 500 square ft. by 8 ft. deep, that's close to 150 cubic yards, which would be about 6000 five gallon bucket loads. There was a guy back in the fallout shelter craze of the 1950's who built a multi-story one much bigger than that entirely by the five gallon bucket method. It took several years, but he didn't pull any permits.
It was certainly great exercise. Figure 6000 reps of hauling maybe 50 - 70 pounds .... No paying for a gym membership.... That could work if you want the exercise.
-- J.S.
I had a crawlspace/basement excavated with a huge combination pressure washer/ shop vac. It had about a 3 yard tank. We pulled out about 18 yards IIRC. It only took an hour or two to fill the tank. One of the great things about it was it produced very little dust and was also exhausting air from the crawlspace while running. It was a lot more fun than using buckets too.
Wow, that sounds perfect. Any idea what make? Where to get one?
Thanks --
-- J.S.
Ditch witch makes one. I think they cost upwards of $40,000. These things are big trailer mounted things. The excavator I used rented the one we used and the rental was pretty reasonable, but I can't find his bill. It seems like I was getting bids in the 3-5K range to do the bucket brigade thing and I think it came to around 4K for his work. He also brought a small backhoe over and moved a little dirt too. I'd try calling around to some commercial rental yards. What was neat about it was that I was trying to get some areas opened up for access for plumbing, wiring, etc. and he was able to enlarge an access hole and then sort of blast out these deep trenches for access. It wouldn't work as well for trying to remove an even foot of dirt over the whole aree. He sort of blasted a large post hole with the thing and then you can sort of collapse the wall of the holes in and then just suck the dirt out. It didn't produce a lot of mud either, the water was mostly used to dig/drill the hole, the vac sucked out the dirt. It is really good if you only have restricted access because you only need enough room to get the hose/water wand in and you sort of burrow a ditch from there.
You can rent a ditchwitch vac system on a trailer for around 700.00. Doing my crawl space this spring.... make sure to leave enough material around any pilings and your perimeter foundation so as to not weaken it!!!!!! Locally we can get one through Herc rentals but it took many calls to hunt one down.
I'd consider renting a conveyor section or 2 - see:
https://www.sunbeltrentals.com/equipment-rental/0440200/10-x-15-conveyor-section/