Yet another toothbar

[Big_Lug]

I wanted to know how your toothbar worked out, I would like to build me one. What advantages do you have with one? Thanks

 

[BGL990]

It has worked out really well, with one exception. I was trying to pry a big rock out of the ground and managed to put enough pressure on the toothbar (and in the right direction) to basically pull the middle of it off the front edge of the bucket. The sides were bolted on of course and stayed put so it bent the toothbar up pretty good. The fundamental problem is that the thin and narrow flat bar I was forced to use wasn't quite up to the task. I wanted to use something beefier but the weld seam on the bucket and thickness of the cutting edge I had to fit the shanks over prevented it. I've got the bar straightened out now and I will probably fit some thicker and wider pieces of flat bar between each tooth and weld it all up solid.

Aside from that one instance, it has held up well and proved to be very useful several times. I was doing a bit of landscaping and the bucket alone would barely scratch our hard clay. The toothbar cut in so well I went too deep a few times - just peeled up a nice strip of earth several inches thick without any effort. I highly recommend buying or building a toothbar if you have any need at all for ripping into the ground.

 

[billycalexander]

I was thinking of underfloor heating as my house is on piers. Not mainly for primary heat but for warm floors and possibly heating a swimming pool. Cost seems high to me ~4 grand for the system. What are costs up there?

 

[BGL990]

I'm not sure, actually. The boiler was already here when we bought the house and I haven't looked into what they cost. I did have to re-do the plumbing, valves, pumps, etc. because it wasn't done quite right and I had to add another loop when we turned the old garage into an attached suite.

The cost of all that stuff was around $2000 CAD. That was 2 pumps, a bunch of 1" copper, a mixing valve, various manual ball valves, enough baseboard heater sections to go around a 19' x 27' room and various odds and ends. Pretty much everything except the boiler. The in-floor plumbing in the garage was also already here, so I don't know what that costs either. In any event, I'm guessing the boiler at around $2K, and given that you would have more plumbing than I had for the suite, $4K US doesn't sound totally out of line, although maybe a bit higher than I might have guessed if that is just for parts. If that is total price to get it all done by someone else, then it probably isn't unreasonable.