Age old question.. hire or purchase.

[JerryK]

I look at the ' do it yourself ' or ' hire out ' question from a different viewpoint. Even if I save a lot of money in the long run having someone do something for me, I view it as an activity or hobby. It keeps me active, and the maint keeps me busy too. If you like working out at a gym, playing golf, boating, etc... that all costs, too. Whatever floats your boat. I have a neighbor that wanted to bring his fairly new Cat excavator down and do a bunch of work for me for free... but instead, I bought an old Cat excavator to fix up and do it myself... Kind of stupid, but, my kind of stupid...

 

[Fuddy1952]

I like doing everything myself, except when it requires knowledge and expertise I don't have, or requires expensive equipment I'd rarely use, or something extremely dangerous.

 

[GLyford]

Look up a guy named "letsdig18" on youtube...he does a lot of pond renovation and land clearing, usually using about a 20T trackhoe.

Taking out the the stumps while still attached to the rest of the tree is by far the fastest I see it being done. Even the size machine he has struggles with some larger trees, but can really go to town on smaller ones. With a thumb it can pick up stumps, logs, and branches and stack them for removal, burying, or burning. With the rotation of the whole machine rather than the 180 swing of a backhoe it can move muck and debris further every pass.

There is also a fair amount of science and experience that goes into keying the dam into place, selecting which soils and clays can be used in what parts of the excavation, and designing and installing the overflow.

And lastly, any time there is muck and heavy machinery involved, things eventually get a little hairy, and almost certainly don't want anything with wheels involved. A set of crane mats often comes into play.

I have no idea how close 30k would come to hiring someone like him to do the work, but it sounds to me like either hiring someone with similar experience, or at least renting/buying a larger trackhoe with a thumb would work better than either a tractor or backhoe?

 

[Richard]

Eddie- my only hesitation on the full size TLB is twofold- the amount of time dedicated to fixing/maintaining older equipment, and that this property has a lot of jeep trails and logging roads that I would like to keep open.

Not read full thread yet so pardon if this has been addressed by now...

I'd agree about the industrial backhoe (I'm biased as I have one).

I agree that WHEN they need it, they can be expensive to fix. That said, I've owned my JCB for (guessing) maybe 20 years now. I've repacked all the cylinders, new muffler... some odds/ends when I snapped a hose on a log (which I guess might be something you'd be exposed to)

My biggest issue with it is it won't hold a charge so I have to keep it charged every now & then.

It's really been very reliable though I guess there are some basket cases out there (visually, mine is a basket case but I always try to take care of it mechancially)