A little bit of everything

[Jim15]

Haven't been on this site in a while, but thought I would post some pictures of our work. I was browsing this section of the site, and I'm impressed by the quality of work by guys like CM1995, Landclearer, and Fastdirt. We might not be that big, but we are growing and, get ourselves into some neat projects every now and then. We always say, if our machines can do it, then so do we. So onto the pictures.

First set of pictures is a parking lot sinkhole caused by a failed 16" RCP drain pipe we did on Friday afternoon

 

[Jim15]

A little project from this past week, removing about 200 yards of loam and mulch from against a building so they can waterproof the foundation, and move the curbing closers to the building to accommodate another row of parking spots.

 

[Jim15]

This project was a new 2 bay garage. The property backed up to conservation land, so the DEP made the owner do all kinds of drainage. First, the driveway all slopes to one side, where a 4" schedule 40 perf pipe collects the run off, covered with 3/4" crushed stone. That is piped into a precast trough drain which runs the width of the driveway that catches any run off coming down the driveway. Then the trough and all downspouts are piped to 2 infiltration chambers in the backyard, all covered with 3/4" stone. All of this was done next to the gas service which was only 2" off the end of the trough drain, and had to be crossed over at one point.

 

[Jim15]

Finishing the garage drainage project.

 

[Landclearer]

Hey Jim,

Thanks for the pics. Looks like you guys do a little bit everything just like us. Got any pics of the dump truck, you are teasing us with that pic

 

[clintm]

keep posting

 

[Jim15]

Thanks Landclearer, sure do have some pics of it. It's our 3rd 33k GVW 6 wheeler. We had a 2000 Ford F750, then a 2008 F750 that was a total lemon mainly cause of the Cat motor. Got rid of that after only 8 months. This is actually a 2007 International 7400 that we bought new in 2008. 300hp DT 570 motor with an 8 speed Eaton roadranger. Has a chrome bumper, but we still haven't taken the plow bumper of yet. Only 70k miles on her and only had 1 issue so far.

One thing our other trucks did not have, that I'm glad we added to this truck is the barn door gate kit. Seen in the 3rd pic, it's great for loading and dumping big rocks and stumps like we did this week without just letting them slam in the body, and then you don't have to worry about hang ups.

 

[Jim15]

Here's another little parking lot sinkhole and drain pipe repair. Two 4" drainage pipes broke and undermined the parking lot. These were old 2' concrete sections so they were pretty old. There were no bells, almost like they were only laid next to each other.

 

[TrentNz]

Swinging tail gate is pretty much standard on every truck here in nz. Makes sense to be able to swing and use the trips.

 

[Jim15]

One of our specialties, tough access jobs. This was an addition excavation that required climbing over a 3' high block retaining wall and granite staircase, and removing a section of fence to access the job. Originally we thought we were only going to have to strip 6" of loam off of the ledge and they were going to pin the piers to it. However, after uncovering it and tugging at some of it, even though it was the dreaded blue New England ledge, it did start to come apart. That led the GC to want all of the piers down to 4', and a nice little extra for us. About 20 ton of ledge had to be removed.

 

[Jim15]

Last one for now. This was an old garage that was falling down that we demoed and excavated for a slightly bigger new garage. This one was fun as the edge of the foundation is 2.2' from the lot line, and with the overhang it was within a foot from the neighbors shed. With the 120"+ of snow we had this past winter I'm surprised there was still a garage to demo as we looked at this one last year.

 

[Jim15]

Finishing up the garage demo and excavation, and backfill and prep for the garage slab with 3/4" Stone.

 

[CM1995]

Nice work Jim! How do you like the E42?

What do you think caused the collapse on the RCP?

 

[Jim15]

Thanks CM,

The E42 is very nice, night and day compared to the two 334's before it, although those were nice machines themselves. We've had it for almost 4 years, put over 1,000 hours on it. Haven't had any issues with it other than a piece of debris finding it's way through the black plastic grill and puncturing the radiator on a demo job last year, and we did have one track rip at about 800 hours on a ledge removal job that we were not happy about as we usually get around 1,500 hours out of a set of tracks on our CTLs and excavators.

As far as the RCP pipe, we did find a couple 2' to 3' diameter rocks pretty close to the pipe which could have caused it. The break was actually near the bottom, but there was still flow through the pipe. I think because the ground underneath the pipe was very sandy, the sinkhole wasn't caused years ago. It's hard to tell, but in the second picture you might be able to see that when the broken section connects to the last section before the manhole, the pipe was actually at about a 22° angle, and I don't think it was properly seated there either. So a very sloppy install all around.

 

[Jim15]

Just realized I put the wrong picture up. Here's the right one showing the angle at which the two originally met, although the broken section over time worked it's way out of the last section.

Second pic is from yesterday, the old man got a little over anxious pushing fill off a cliff, calls me while I'm by the pool, "Ya I'm about to roll off a cliff, I can't get out of the machine without it probably rolling over, grab a loader and chains and meet me over here." So much for a day off..

 

[Landclearer]

Thanks for the extra truck pics. It is a good looking truck for sure! We have a little Pete setup just about the same, 300 motor, 10 speed, and a barn door. We do some asphalt patching and it it nice to be able to swing the gate open and stand in the bed and shovel out the asphalt. That might be the smallest RCP I have ever seen or was it terracotta?

How much does the E42 weigh?

 

[CM1995]

Now I can see why the RCP failed, looks like a very poor installation. How in the hell did the ones who put it in think that was going to work? Since it was so close to the manhole there was no reason why that RCP shouldn't have been ran straight, they could've made the connection at the manhole at whatever angle they needed.


Those small concrete drain pipes were fairly common in my area years ago. Mostly used for basement wall drainage. Run into them when tearing down older houses. Of course now it's all 4" ADS perf pipe.

 

[Jim15]

Thanks for the extra truck pics. It is a good looking truck for sure! We have a little Pete setup just about the same, 300 motor, 10 speed, and a barn door. We do some asphalt patching and it it nice to be able to swing the gate open and stand in the bed and shovel out the asphalt. That might be the smallest RCP I have ever seen or was it terracotta?

How much does the E42 weigh?

No problem Landclearer. When we were looking to replace the Ford we actually test drove a Pete 335 only it had an Allison auto. That was right before I turned 18, and my dad wanted me to learn how to shift so that's pretty much the only reason we didn't go with the Pete. We do a decent amount of asphalt too and this body only had the one coal door in the middle, so once we can't get any more out the shute we'll open the door up.

The standard E42 weighs in around 9,300 lbs, however, we got the long arm configuration which comes with added counterweight which puts it at about 10,000 lbs. So with the T590 at around 8,000 lbs they both go on our 10 ton Eager Beaver tag trailer. The key thing for us though is that they're only 68" wide as we get into some tight job sites.

As far as the two 4" I thought it might be terracotta but it seemed like it was concrete, no wire in it though. They were very old for sure, the building was almost 100 years old. I would have replaced the lines entirely, but it was a bank, and you know how they are.

 

[Jim15]

Now I can see why the RCP failed, looks like a very poor installation. How in the hell did the ones who put it in think that was going to work? Since it was so close to the manhole there was no reason why that RCP shouldn't have been ran straight, they could've made the connection at the manhole at whatever angle they needed.


Those small concrete drain pipes were fairly common in my area years ago. Mostly used for basement wall drainage. Run into them when tearing down older houses. Of course now it's all 4" ADS perf pipe.

Ya I didn't take a picture, but they didn't even mud around the section going into the manhole, just some bricks around it. I'm not sure if because of that it shifted when back filling, but either way the guys doing the installation really didn't care. I'm surprised they got any flow through those small concrete pipes as it seemed like there was nothing joining them together, they were just butted up against each other.

 

[Landclearer]

I think your dad did you a service by making you learn how to drive a manual transmission. I think one day manual trans. will be a like a friction crane, not many around and not many who can drive the few that are left.

I guess our Kubota 121 is about the size of your E42 but yours sure looks bigger. We got an Eager Beaver trailer but it is a 20 ton. I think sometimes it would be nice to have a 161 but like you said, getting into the tight places.