Advice sought re using water truck in grading project

[Streetcar]

Cost will depend on how far the water needs to be hauled.

 

[EddieWalker]

...The Grading contractor says he needs to wait for rain before starting, and I understand that as I cut a preliminary road/path to the sight and the dirt soon turns to powder - no cohesion at all. And there is also the dust issue. We have been told the hill may have to be taken down 3-5' for a pad depending on precisely where on the hill we choose to build. ...

Back in the 80's I drove a water truck for a summer in California. On jobs similar to what you are describing, I would wet the roads down to keep the dust down because of neighbors. You only put down enough water to keep the dust down. To much and the road becomes a mess.

The other reason for water was in filling an area. I would add water to the soil and the operator would mix it to get it right, then load it onto a truck, or haul it to where they where using it with the loader bucket. The operator said when to add water, and how much. If too much was added, he had to add more dry soil. To much water will pump and never compact. Not enough water and the soil was too dry to compact. Over at Blackhawk in the Danville area, they had me add too much water to the mix where they where covering up a creek with square cement culverts and then building a road over it. They failed the inspection, and had to dig it all out, add more dry soil, and mix it all together again, and then fill it back up and compact it again. Fortunately the operator admitted to adding too much water and nobody got bent out of shape over it. As the water guy, I honestly couldn't tell when there was too much or not enough. I just sprayed the hose when told to do so.

In your situation, nothing that you are saying adds up. Nobody digging dirt is going to want to add water. Rain will just make a mess out of everything since there is no way to control how much water you get. Waiting on rain, and then waiting for it to dry out just enough to work it seems kind of crazy. If you need water for dust control because of neighbors, then waiting on rain doesn't make sense. If you need water to mix it into dry soil so you can get compaction when building up an area, that means they dug down too deep, or you have a low spot that you need to fill. Waiting on rain for this doesn't allow you to get the correct amount of water into the soil, which has to be mixed to get it all even.

You mix soil with a loader bucket by picking up and dumping it, then spreading it a little, and doing it all over again while somebody is spraying it with a fire hose.

On jobs where access was limited, I drove a 2,500 gallon truck. On bigger jobs I drove a 4,000 gallon truck. Most of the time I had a meter to get water from a fire hydrant, but on big construction jobs, they had a tank set up that I drove under and I just pulled the rope to let the water into the truck. That was much faster and there where no meters that I had to deal with.

On one steep hill in the Santa Cruz mountains, I had to dump about half of my load because I was at such a steep angle going up that I couldn't turn. My wheels where not on the ground enough, so I could only get about a thousand gallons at a time up to that site.

 

[dodge man]

I worked on jobs where they had to add water to get compaction. More often than not it was too wet and they had to disc it to dry it out some.

 

[beowulf]

Thanks Eddie, you have given me a lot to think about. The grading contractor does a lot of work here in the hills -where it is very dry from July to whenever it rains again. Usually our last rain is in March or April and our next rain in November, or December - hopefully. I will be getting together with him and will talk to a water trucking company after Thanksgiving.

From my own experience (grading roads here, moving dirt etc. ) in the dry season is that there is a dust problem (but neighbors are too far away for that to be an issue) but major issue is that you get to a point where you are just pushing dust around and I have had my tractor tires just sink into dust at times. Seems it needs a bit of moisture- as I have had much better luck with my dirt moving tasks in the Spring.

Thanks for the input. Much appreciated.