digging out basement

[Jerome]

I need to dig out my basement this coming summer and need some way to get the dirt out of the window and into a truck trailer or something. would an old grain auger work or is there something better?

 

[ToadHill]

Maybe a hay elevator if you can get it into the basement.

 

[BucketHoe]

Jerome,

Find a company that is reasonably local to your property that has a large Truck Mounted Vac-All. Check with them if they have any adapters that can reduce the snout on the Vac-All from the normal 8 or 10" diameter to something in the 3 or 4" range.

Depending how close you can get the truck backed up to your basement, get a hose that can attach to the adapter and reach all of the basement you want to dig out. Get an electric jack hammer and as fast as one person can break the soil up with the jack hammer, another person can suck it up and send it into the truck.

I would think that would be easier than shoveling and loading it on to a conveyor.

BucketHoe

 

[john_bud]

BucketHoe has a cool idea. Never seen one done that way. Used to work for a guy that wanted a full basement. He used about a dozen 5gal buckets and a shovel and one winter he dug it out by hand and toted the spoils up the steps and out the door. Hundred or so trips a day for the entire winter. He was in GOOD shape by the end of the winter!

jb

 

[Jerome]

John-bud that is exactly what I do not want to do. I though of the hay elevator but they will not fit, the vacuum truck sounds like a good idea. Do you think a duct cleaning truck would work?

 

[MrJimi]

Not knowing what you have, how about lots of kids and each a 5 gallon bucket like a bucket brigade You would be done in no time
Jim

 

[Whitey]

We recently finished a commercial project that included the demolition of a below grade level and we rented a rubber belted conveyor that we sat in the stair well and it put the debris in a pile that was eaisly loaded into a dump with a skid steer.

 

[6sunset6]

When I was 5 my grandfather started with 5 gal buckets , My father continued and I finished. just under 20 years. When I started I could not lift the 5 gal can, when I was wrestling in college I could carry 2 full of bankrun, when I finished I could just about carry 1 again. Then of course all the cement had to go back down. We used the bank run we dug out in the concrete. That was 40 years ago.
My father liked to tell me that if I spent as much time digging as I did talking about a conveyor I would have finished in half the time.
I don't think a vac truck is going to do it. High school kids for the summer and 5 gal buckets.That's how those B DRY guys do it. They trench around the inside of a foundation to cut off water infiltration.

 

[rtdiggr]

I need to dig out my basement this coming summer and need some way to get the dirt out of the window and into a truck trailer or something. would an old grain auger work or is there something better?

Call Mike Holmes and his cheap temp labour in. sorry i couldn't resist.

Shane

 

[turnkey4099]

I don't think the hay elevator or grain augers will work. I would expect them to by shot in about an hour.

Harry K