I am landscaping my backyard and wanted to grade it so that it sloped away from the house. It currently slopes toward the house. I was not sure whether I should rent a large roto tiller, or a Takeguchi excavator. I went with the Takeguchi.
The results were less than impressive. The Takeguchi came with a bucket/spreader and payloader w/ jaws attachement. I sense that I should have roto tilled the ground first, and then come back with Takeguchi once the ground was broken up.
I think the last step would be to rent a compactor to flatten the ground.
Just out of interest, is this how landscaping is sculpted, using these three types of tools?
Replies
I used a shovel, rake, and wheelbarrow.
I hired a guy w/a bobcat, 35.00$ an hour, then covered it with straw. Got lawn now.
A rototiller would not help you correct negative grade. An excavator is the correct tool, and presumably you will be moving a fair amount of dirt around. A good operator can do a pretty good job of grading with a finish bucket, and from there you take over with a grade rake.
A rototiller is for breaking up soil prior to planting. It does nothing to change the grade.
I seen people use a skip loader. It has the bucket up front and a blade in the back. I'm not sure of the name for the blade in the back but is specifically made for grading.
In the picture you can see where the dirt is in the attachment.
It take a fair amount of skill to get it right and do it quickly but when someone knows what they are doing it is pretty impressive.
Maybe you can put one on a Bobcat.
http://www.heavyequipmentforums.com/Forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2196&stc=1&d=1160752606
Will Rogers
Edited 6/28/2009 7:02 pm by popawheelie
Do it all with a Bobcat and standard bucket.
Scoop, dump, pitch bucket further forward, lift front wheels off the ground, fly back to scooping location in reverse, spin around, repeat. Some finesse on adjusting bucket pitch and front height rise of machine will be developed with practice. First few runs will look like a washboard country road but you'll get it figured out.
I used my John Deere Garden tractor with a Johnny Bucket on the front.
View Image
Jeff
IMHO a rototller would have broken the ground up and made it easier to work with.
An excavator isn't really made for what you were trying to do with it.
A box blade can be helpful. (Like the one in the link popawheelie posted) But they won't always break up hard ground, unless it has teeth in it.
Almost anything with a blade will work, but it takes some skill on the part of the person running it.
How big? how much grade?
Like said find a guy with a bobcat tell him what you want and stand back. Some of these guys dance on wheels.Did you check your utilities??? HMMI am hand digging 1 inch of now dryed hard pan from the rain last sunday 6 inches 6 hours. only wish I could get a machine down the slope.
Should have asked them "Did you consider a pool instead of a patio"
Breaking up the ground with the rototiller was exactly what I had in mind. The ground was compacted, and I could not get the soil to actually move around, cause I just could not get to it.It took a couple of hours of playing around in the Takeguchi to actually make any headway. What a blast it was driving it around. The payloader with jaws was just the ticket for pulling a old tree stump out of the ground. It makes you realize the exponetially greater power that a mechanized machine provides.Someone else mentioned a "scarifier", which kinda looks like a rototiller.
A bobcat type machine would be all that is required particularly with a skilled operator, and no you should not be compacting the soil unless you are trying to ensure that anything you want to grow in it has a very tough time.
In my experience this type of work is influenced far more by the skill of the operator than the type of machine.
It could be done with a dozer, a loader/backhoe, an excavator, or even a Bobcat loader; but the operator is the crucial link.
A laser builders level can be helpful too.
Scott.
I've graded yards with shovels, wheelbarrows, and rakes and with a D7 dozer. If your soil is baked out clay, that excavator probably wasn't enough machine for the job.
The trick to grading for drainage away from a house is to over dig the line where you want the low point, then blend it into the surrounding dirt so you end up with a gentle swale that will carry water away from the house and all the way to where you want it to go.
Here in CA, I can get away with a 2" - 3" swale since we rerely have heavy rain and that's plenty to carry the water away. The more water you have to deal with, the deeper the swale you need.
Seems to me the type and amount of soil you will be moving is the first question. Around here, heavy clay, none of the machines mentioned would do the job. Have you shot any grades or developed a grading plan?
Also, since you say that the grade now slopes toward the house, am I to presume that it continues to slope in the same direction all the way to the property line or is there some point where the grade slopes in the other direction. Sooner or later you will need to take the water off the property completely at some point.
Like others said, the operator makes the real difference.
You may have done better with a skid loader but still takes lots of skill.
I tried grading my yard recently, all heavy clay, using a skid loader with steel tracks and scarifiers in the back. I used the scarifiers to break up the soils to the desired depth then came back with the bucket to move the broken up earth up to the house. The tracks helped to break up the soil chunks even more. I did a mediocre job at best. I have about 2 years experience.
I called in my dad to finish the job. He has almost 30yrs experience with skid loaders. He made it look easy and the finished grade was perfect. He can cut a perfect 1% grade by eye.
BTW: the skid loader we used has a bucket "float" feature that makes back blading much easier and smoother.
Good luck.
DC