diggin' the walkout

[frwinks]

Finally got the OK from the building dept. to start diggin'... and after 15hr of seat time I'm 75% there. The wall I'm diggin out is 26' x 8' tall and I'm going out about 60'-70' out to level (with a slight slope away from the hose). Diggin' in pond clay (tea time of over 85) is soooo much fun. I'm also hauling the dirt about 200ft away from the house one bucket @ a time
now for da pics..

first and second pass



forming the pile


some hidden gems




one bucket @ a time


the inspector


end of day one.. 10hr


The front turfs on the tractor were not in the best shape to begin with. The stress of full buckets of clay being carried all day long was all they needed to call it quits. I ordered a set of Carlisle TrackChiefs from StateWide tire in IL, who happened to have the 25x8.5x14's in stock, and had them delivered by my bro within a week. The new tires are a huge improvement and with a max load of just over 2100lbs. per tire, I don't think they will have any problems handling whatever I can throw at the tractor

 

[frwinks]

a shot from this morning...another 4-5hrs and I'm there


and enough clay to line a small lake


next on the list is dig all around the house to replace the weeping tile and under pin four corners of the house for point loads for the addition. Hopefully one day we'll have something that looks like this or something with a roof/windows/walls and such (this is just a SU model to show the framework)

 

[JDeerekid]

Wow nice work. It is amazing what these little compact tractors can do. Keep us updated with more pics. We love pics.

 

[Gizmo2]

A lot of work. Bet there are plenty on here that would give quite a bit to have the real seat time you have had thus far on this project.

 

[frwinks]

Over the long weekend I put in another 12hrs and finished moving all the dirt and digging the entire perimeter of the house down to the footings.
Now that that's out of the way, I can work on the new footings, get the concrete truck in and move on to blocking the new wall.

 

[johnk]

FRwinks,

I sure wish I had a project like that to do. You reqlly have gotten a lot done for the time you were working on the job. Nice work and keep us posted. thanks for the pics..

 

[Erik_in_Hoyt]

great job!
excellent project!
look forward to seeing more of it.

 

[atgreene]

Looks good! Be real careful of a cave-ins if you get down in the hole. That's a narrow hole to be in if it lets go.

 

[frwinks]

Looks good! Be real careful of a cave-ins if you get down in the hole. That's a narrow hole to be in if it lets go.

didn't help that the backfill was sand...man that stuff moves fast
good thing the only portion dug by hand was a small section (8') under the enclosed porch. Other than the sand the rest is all red clay, that stuff doesn't move

another 20hrs diggin this weekend, some by hand, some with the hoe. With a new lower grade on the back we had to address the frost issue. Our engineer designed a 6ft corner underpinning that will take care of that.
Since it's not recommended to drop down 4ft in one shot, he designed two zones. Zone1 (closest to the wall edge) goes down 4ft and zone2, which starts 3ft back from the edge goes down 2ft. We decided to tackle zone2 this weekend plus some of the footings inside the house.
the corner accesible from outside (don't mind the dog... he was trying to burry all his toys in every hole we dug)


this corner can only be accessed from inside


My girl setting up for the dig


a new 42x42x18 footing will go under this corner



and the existing 24x24x8 pads will be replaced with 36x36x12 to support new 10x10's instead of steel jackposts.


Now I just have to form all this stuff for Wed. inspection and hopefully pour on Thur.

 

[POC]

You, my friend, need a dumptruck!

If I start up there to Ontario in my DT now, I'd get there about this time next year.
It's a 1958 IH.