JD450 to make driveway & house pad?

[H20Buffalo4Sale]

Howdy from Texas,

I am trying to buy some raw land that is in the flood plain & I need to figure some cost to raise from dirt on site/create a pond. This is to figure in with my loan application to buy the property.

I will need to make a driveway. I am thinking 14 feet wide on the driving surface, 4 feet high, & 350 feet long. I want to surface it with 6 inches of concrete wash out & I already have all of the info I need for that (I think). At the end of that driveway I want to build a dirt house pad that is 50 x 100 & 6 feet high to put a manufactured home on supported by cinder blocks or piers. The driveway has already been cleared & the 4 or 5 trees that are where the house pad would go are not more than 1 foot in diameter.

All I have to work with is a small tractor with a box attachment for grading, a John Deere 450 dozer, & about 6 months to get it done. I have learned how to operate the tractor, but I still need to learn how to operate the dozer.

A water well report states the following: 0-14ft=topsoil, 14-25ft=clay, 25-35ft=s&/clay streak... no way I'm digging any deeper. Can a JD450 easily topple 1 foot diameter tress in relatively loose soil? Any idea of a range of how much diesel fuel I should budget for? Any idea how much it might cost to have the 15,000 pound dozer hauled about 40 miles? Other expenses or information that I should consider? /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Thanks,

Michael | JD450@RemoveThisCrapTheClays.com (remove "RemoveThisCrap" to e-mail me) | http://www.WaterBuffaloes.com/

 

[Taylortractornut]

I hate to sound like negative but moving dirt like that would take a tractor and pan or a self propelled scraper. An excavator and some 2 axle or 10 wheeler trucks to haul the pond spoils. The dozer will be good to grade and strip topsoil but it takes alot more for the dozer to push dirt. After about 200 feet a dozer becomes inefficient for this task. You have to mke a trough from the dirt spilling off your blade to carry the dirt but its also adds alot of wear. That would be a big dirt moving job for even for a D9 Cat depending on the location of the pond thats why I suggested the scrapers plus they can strip topsoil and do most fine grading. Also the excavator is a cats meow for clearing to. All this sounds expensive but its not compared to the wear and tear on the 450, and your time frame and the mount of soil to move. I move dirt for a living and we ve done several pads in low places and fixed alot of small jobs that were done with a smaller dozer and had a long way to push the spoil.
I cant tell you how much fuel to burn as I dont know the condition or the year of the 450. and clearing trees tha sie depending on their spacing can be difficult. A dozer has to dig around a tree to cut the roots and also make a dirt ramp to gain leverage on the tree. A medium excavator can scoop a frew buckets around the tree reach up and push it over.

 

[powerstroke2000]

It takes a good operator to move dirt and make anytime.
Second around here you are not aloud to build on a flood plain or can you build it up. It changes the whole flood plain program

 

[DKinWA]

It sounds like a fun project, but you're talking about an awful lot of material. With my quick figuring for the building site and road with 2H:1V side slopes, you're looking at moving 2700 cubic yards of material. Even then, you may have to remove the topsoil you're going to build on. Then remove the topsoil from the area where you'll excavate to get suitable material for the road and building site. Ultimately your project might involve moving upwards of 6000 cubic yards of material.

On top of this, you'll likely need to have a compactor available to compact the material as you go. This could get very expensive given how long it would take to move the material with a 450. The first thing I'd do, is contact a soil engineer and found out just how much material you're going to have to move. A poorly constructed fill has the potential to do a lot of settling and can do a lot of damage to a building.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but I'd figure on $400 to move the dozer. Then I'd factor in a hefty budget for fuel and maintenance for your equipment. If a customer hired me to do this, I'd have an engineer determine how to construct the fill and supervise construction. Around here, I'd probably have a large compactor, D5 dozer, 200 size excavator and two tri-axle dump trucks to haul material.

 

[H20Buffalo4Sale]

We have already checked with folks at the Austin County Texas office and they said that building up the driveway and house pad is not a problem. They said that the mobile home needs to be at least 1 foot above the 100 year flood plain level and that they septic tank will have to have a back flow valve. I am attaching a picture of one of the drawings for what I want to do with the driveway and house pad.

 

[H20Buffalo4Sale]

Sounds like more than I can handle on my own. I got a bid proposal for someone else to do the whole job for $7,800:

1. Selectively clear unwanted trees and brush.
2. Build driveway 320'x10'x4', topped with 6" of road material.
3. Build house pad 100'x50'x6'.
4. All dirt used to build house pad and driveway will come from onsite. A pond will be excavated to obtain the dirt.

Does that seem like a good deal? /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[H20Buffalo4Sale]

Wow, that is a many times more material than I thought that I'd have to move. Originally we had planned on only a 250'. We got a verbal quote of $3,500 to $5,000. He was figuring on about 800 cubic yards of dirt. Then the fellow and his co-worker went out there after we had several days of rain and said that the house pad would be eroded if it was put where we planned (see attached image), so we changed the plan. Since then he has given us a written bid proposal of $7,800 (see previous post from me for more details). That is what got me into looking at doing this on my own.

A friend said I could use his John Deere 450 dozer and my father-in-law said that I could use his tractor and box blade grader 3-point attachment. I have been concerned about the wear that would be put on these machines that are not mine.

Now I have other concerns as well... The Service Consultant with the local electric provider who is familiar with that area told me that she thinks that it may be a wetland and if it is that they will not be able to run power to where I want to put a home. She said that she thought that someone was looking into it a few years ago and could not do anything with it because it was a wetland with some special swamp grass growing on the low parts in the front.

I had my wife do some calling and she was told that although it is not a certified wetland, it might qualify to be a wetland. If so, and we build on it, then we could be responsible later to pay for wetland restoration. She was told that to be safe we should write a letter and include a drawing of what we to do and then have the current owner mail it as a request for jurisdictional determination to the US Army Corp of Engineers Regulatory Branch. She was told the it takes 3 to 6 months to get a response from the Corp.

I informed the bank (where I have applied for a loan for all this) by voice mail and I am waiting on a response from them. I just found out that the loan officer is out for the next 3 days. I informed the current owner and she seems very upset and says that it is ridiculous and a not a valid issue. My wife is thinking that this whole thing is more than we can handle and that we ought to back out, but that she'll leave it up to me.

Has anyone had a similar experience? Advice anyone?

Thanks,

Michael | JD450@RemoveThisCrapTheClays.com (remove "RemoveThisCrap" to e-mail me) | http://www.WaterBuffaloes.com/

 

[coopers]

AAHHH, the wetland problems. This is sooo common. At least to me. We (my parents) had the same problem in trying to put a house on some property. We weren't clear cutting, just clearing enough for our house and some yard. If there is in any way, a plant that grows in very moist areas, it may constitute as a wetland for the time being....this may be because of a rainy season or whatever, because like what happened to us, that certain species of plant was gone because it had dried out. You will have one heck of a time dealing with whoever you deal with (in our case, the county) in trying to do your project. Keep in mind, I'm only telling you what happened to us. They get very strict when it comes to this issue, and in some cases (like us) they won't let you build there period! Hopefully it works out for you guys and you don't get hassled by the county or whoever for building on "wetlands."

Blake
WA

P.S. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against wetlands, I'm a birder and hunter, it's just sometimes the county is too stupid to realize that there is NO wetlands. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif

 

[DKinWA]

Here in western washington, $7,800 would be on the low side. I'm not sure how the contractor came up with 800 cubic yards of dirt to move. If you do the calculations, you come up with a lot more than 800 yards.

For the house pad: 100x50x6=30,000 cubic feet. To calculate cubic yards, divide the total cubic feet by 27 (27 cubic feet = 1 cubic yard). Soooo, 30,000/27=1,111 cubic yards of fill for the house pad. The driveway (320x10x4)/27=474 cubic yards, for a grand total of 1,585 cubic yards. This doesn't include any material for side slopes, and I'd want a minimum of 2:1 or even 3:1 so I could actually mow it. Basically with the calculations above, you have a house pad with 6' vertical walls. The driveway would be exactly 10' wide and have 4' vertical walls. By the time you add some decent sideslopes, you could easily double the volume of material needed.

My calculations also doesn't take into account unsuitable material that may have to be excavated to get material that will compact appropriately for a house. I've never been to Texas, but around here, topsoil has too much organic material in it to be used in a fill like this. Now that I think about it, $7,800 around here would be dirt cheap /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

 

[coopers]

I thought that sounded low but I wasn't sure...I have no experience.

Blake
WA