I have a 450 John Deere crawler loader with a straight bucket and a backhoe attachment. It is a pretty heavy piece of equipment and it has narrow street type tracks on it. I used it to clear trees and make a road for a piece of property I eventually want to build a small home on.
The property has a small ravine on it with very swampy ground (silt)in it but it does have clay on the upper end. I would just like to dam up the ravine a little bit for a small pond-mainly for visual effect. What I am concerned about is the weight of the mud and water in the bucket.
Is this type of equipment usefull for this or would a dozer with a blade be better. I don't think I can take the machine down in that ravine with the backhoe attachment on and not get stuck. Also I was concidering just having an overland spillway with no pipe but the water does flow most of the year.
Come on you guys with equipment experience give me some advice. The size of the pond will be about 1/2ac. but I can't afford to pay to have a pond dug by a contractor-might not do it at all but I have the equipment so I might try it if I could get some good advice. I need your imput.
mossie
mossie,
Since no one else has responded, I'll take a shot. I have a small dozer (Case 450 C), a front-end loader/backhoe, and tractors and have scratched out a couple of ponds in East Texas.
Can you accomplish what you want with your equipment? My guess is yes, given lots of time and patience. You should plan on doing the work in dry weather, otherwise you won't be able to move the dirt and run a significant risk of getting equipment stuck/bogged down. Presumably you can use the bucket as a psuedo-blade and push dirt when you need to. When you are working in the clay, my guess is that it will be very time consuming. Cutting the clay is difficult even with a dozer. Always place safety first.
You mentioned spillways...and my opinion is that natural spillways are the best, cheapest, and longest lasting. That's not generally agreed to, but in a small pond like you are talking about, I wouldn't consider anything but natural spillway. Also, you should probably plan on renting a dozer for the final work.
Meadowlark,
Thanks for the imput on my project. I have been picking away around the edges of the silt with the hoe just trying to get it to drain and hopefully it will be dry enough this year to get some of the silt out. It has been wet here in northwestern Pennsylvania for 2 years now--even in mid-summer.
I don't know alot about soils but I am hoping I can use the silt for my yard--but don't know if grass will grow in it very well yet. I realize it's going to take several years of picking around it to just get it dry enough to work in but I don't have the money right now to pay a track-hoe operator to do it. I might try to get someone with a small tractor-hoe to help get the silt in the valley to drain.
As soon as I can borrow a digital camera I will try to get some pics of the site posted so members will have an idea of what I am dealing with. I'm sure that will help them give me some specific advice. This post doesn't seem to generate much in the way of response yet and it will be a long project unless some extra funds emerge somehow.
Thanks for your reply. From what research I have done the natural spillway seems to be the best way to discharge the excess water and I do have enough stones and rocks to line it. It will be very beautiful with lots of large natural stones and nice clear water.
mossie
hi gl with your project i just completed mine!! a half acre pond here in northern ontario with my 450 b jd crawler loader i went down to 15 ft deep on roughly 30% of the pond the rest 5 to 10ft deep ,i never broke through clay dont think its gonna leak very much lol!!! it took me about two months to complete yes a solid two months !! the key is to only cut 3 or 4 inches at a time, try and bite more and you will end up with a mess having to raise your bucket when machine bogs,thus creating a very rough working platform,more even your working suface easier to operate way more effecient ,you will need a lot of patience it is very slow going but this machine does have its advatages too, fall was approaching and so was the rain!!! not many machines can go down in the bassin of a pond and scoop mud and hall it out 100ft !! mine doesnt have the hoe im sure this would slow it down in mud a bit ,but it might help you get out if you do get stuck, is taking it off an option ?some are not too bad to remove, after a rainfall id pump out the all the water i could then scoop out the mud . The mud was up to 18 inches deep at some places
after a good rain broken up clay soaks up water and turns to mud very quickly!! ! No problem , cut straight into it back up and haul away start at one spot and work from there till its all gone then you start carving again ! slow very slow to move material but you can complete project from start to finish with one piece of heavy equipment!! tracks are hard to beat for traction !! never got stuck i have a very good clay base that was a bonus i was very happy with its overall performance! gl again Brian
Great to hear from you Brian G. I have alot of silt in my area and there are springs in there too! I probably will get started this summer if its a dry one. Yeah, my backhoe attachment comes off and I usually run it without it. Post some pics of your pond it you can. Thanks.
mossie
mossie, I built my first 10,000 cubic yard dam with a 3 yard pan and a 40hp box blade tractor, most of the "good ole boys" thought that I was nuts. The lake covers about 2 acres and is 15 feet deep at the dam. I asked lots of questions and discarded at least half of the answers through common sense. Having the right equipment for the job can usually be remedied by more time spent or different weather.
Nick Jones
www.soilmovers.com
Mossie, The 450 could do this, However, getting down the ravine, (and back up) may be a problem.
do you have a plan to get un-stuck? my 450 is currently 3' deep in saturated loam 5 feet from the edge, w/o a winch. Have to wait for some drier weather.
Most track loaders have the semi grouser shoes on them and are not very agressive that + weight = sink city....sl