Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? ?Any free Bull dozer safety tips out there?

I'm considering renting a dozer and am striking out finding free "Bull dozer safety tips" around the net. Lots of training guides related to construction sites pop up. Keep reading, 'make sure the dozer's backup beep beep is working.' I need info about staying safe, bumping over trees, handling sloped terrain, how not to break the dozer and other stuff unbeknownst to me. Struck out with the Pond Boss search too, though it seems I've read something on this topic years ago.
Thanks for links and other responses.

Unless you just want the fun of running it, you would be money ahead to just pay an experienced operator. He will move more dirt in 4 hours than you will in 8. I ran them some in the military and the newer ones aren't that difficult but, as noted above, there is a big difference in running one and using it to its maximum capability. Wear the seat belt if equipped. Had a friend die when he got too far to one side while unloading it off the trailer and it rolled over crushing him. Stay safe and good luck.

agree^

Be careful if you go to push over a dead tree. Tops often break and fall when contact is made. Also pay attention to the ground in damp areas, if water is skirting out or it is real spongy you may stick it if you break thru the top layer.

While I fully understand the do-it-youself tendencies, you didn't say what you were wanting to do with the dozer. If you're simply "pushing" debris into a pile, then I can see where you might get along ok...but if you're altering the landscape to any decent amount, then I agree with the previous posters. Running a dozer appears deceptively simple because an experienced operator makes it look that way. There may not be a lot to it from an purely mechanical operation standpoint, however on the other hand a barber or hair stylist only needs a pair of scissors and a set of clippers to get the job done....but put those same two implements in the hands of a novice and the outcome may not be nearly so pleasing to the eye.

I'm considering digging a 0.2 acre pond this fall, hesitant about spending the dough. My last 3 dirt work projects turned out badly, a waste of money. Tried to get this last guy to level out 15' before the house. He wanted me to install rain gutters and said he'd have to refinish the surface and it'd cost me. After 2X's, at $350 a pop, I had to get up in middle of the night, grab a shovel, get out in the rain and try to channel the small streams away from the foundation. At church a friend told me, "Hey you know you've got an erosion problem in front of your house?" I rented a skid loader half a day, along with 6hrs on a shovel, fixed his overly simple attempt at finishing the dirt around our house. I discussed digging this pond with a previous dozer guy. We agreed on test holes and probably digging in January. I stepped the concept off and drew and redrew plans. Got busy in December but had time to redraw neat plans the week before Christmas. Well, about then I got the call and he said, " Yurpond's holding water, that'll be $2600. It was the 2 of them vs the 1 of me. Since I can build over the frog pond he dug, I let it go. If I had all the money wasted on other folks doing dirt work, I'd have plenty to get this pond done proper.

Actually rented the skid loader for a full day. Half day taking out the slope upside of the house, other half I made a preliminary stab at digging at the pond site, as well as a 6' X 40' X 30" test trench. Wish I'd had it for 2 days! Very rocky and not that much marginal clay in pretty rocky stuff. No way a guy working by the hour is going to separate out the roots and rocks the way I would. I get 40 hours on the crawler clock, but have 7 days so by huffing 10-12hrs a day, the marginal soil will get cleaned (labor intense, my labor) and packed (which the skid loader can't do). Estimate 2 weeks needed on the JohnDeere 550 with roll over protection and seatbelt. Crawler limited to 5mph. Kinda like the "Zen of Motorcyle Maintenance." The one that cares the most if it's done right, is yourself.

Keep the quality comments a comin'. Watch wet soil, tall dead trees (there 6 50'+ dead 'uns!)wear a seatbelt, careful on slopes, and don't charge over logs. Whatelse? Any useful links?

Deceptively simple as stated already to do a good job. A dozer is expensive to run and the operator is the cheapest component so if money matters hire it all out.

If you're after a fun project, you'll get what you want. Look for an army field manual on earth moving operations, you'll find what you're after in there.

Just like in a car make sure to wear your seatbelt. If you go over 1-2' drop it WILL throw you out of the seat and onto the dash. Good way to break ribs that way.

Following was taken from this recent thread---
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=350351#Post350351

"Speaking of windshields...if you ever find yourself in one of these pieces of equipment, WEAR YOUR SEATBELT! Once I had finished digging out the pond, I switched gears (literally) to moving the berm of dirt that came out of the small pond near the house. I made countless trips back and forth from the berm to the dam of the new pond, and on one of those trips hit a depression in the pasture that caused the loader to buck forward. Instead of dropping the bucket, I hit the brakes, and my forehead made contact with the windshield. The only suffering I'm doing is paying the $500 for the glass and $300 to install it. So, even on flat ground, you never know. Protect your body, wear your seatbelt. Protect your wallet, wear your seatbelt."


When I begun cleaning up my pond, I was considering renting. I am glad that I didn't. I purchased an old excavator to play with. Granted all the headaches that come with such a thing, it still let me learn at my pace (that would be slow). It is highly dangerous if you have never been around equipment before, which I have been. I heard a lot of stories about folks renting, and by the time they were done with the way they wanted it, it cost twice as much as to hire it out. Or even worse, they could have bought the equipment.

I agree too with Spark, possibly your not doing a job of extreme skill, and it could be a fun learning experience.

Tums above also talked about renting equipment awhile back. He described his way of renting to get a better deal when doing so. Perhaps you can look thru his old threads to find that.

just a quick note for anyone lurking that might be following this thread....if the machine in question has a ROPS, then wear the seatbelt...if it is not equipped with a ROPS, Do not wear a seat belt.

Anything made in modern times should be equipped with a ROPS, but you never know.

Will, these guys have made some valid points. I've had a tractor-based side business for some years now, and loader operations are second nature to me. So renting a huge loader was cheaper than hiring out what I wanted done...even if I add in the costly windshield to the equation.

Fuel cost can be overwhelming, depending on the size of the equipment and how hard you're pushing it. I went through 125-140 gallons of diesel in the 40 hours I rented the loader.

Also, as pointed out in the quote from my recent post, accidents do happen, and I haven't found a rental outfit that had insurance that covered glass, hoses, and the like. I paid 14% of the rental cost just for catastrophic insurance, i.e. the thing burns to the ground. In this case, the "thing" was a K-loader valued at $209,000.

True, I wanted to do the work, I wanted to operate the equipment, and it was fun for the first 20 hours or so. The last 20 hours was work...and I know why guys charge what they do. Comfortable to a point, air conditioned and air-ride equiped, it still wears on an old body. Take this and the other advice freely given in respones here and make an educated decision. Good luck.

Mark

I pretty much find that most major things (skilled trade things) I try to do myself end up costing me triple than if I'd hired it out.


That, and the wife gets to say "I told you so!"


Ugh.

You too, huh?

Hi All,

Newbie here from north Idaho. One issue we see regarding any earth moving jobs is availability of a machine and operator. The window of opportunity to work the ground is relatively small - June to mid October and during that time frame there's a huge demand for equipment/operators (many also do road building work for the county and logging ops)so if you want it done when you need it done, you often need to rent and do it yourself. BTW - way more guys here with excavators than with dozers.

I had a guy look over our current pond (~ 15-20 yrs old)and figured 3 10 hr days with a dozer (D8 size)at least $150/hr from time left shop to time back home. So there's $4500. Our local CAT Rental store is $1500/week (smaller 550 or 650 dozer)add in $500 for fuel ......

My experience with DIY has been - if I do it, I see all the glaring mistakes. If I pay someone else to do it, I just see them later. Haven't ever hired someone who did things "perfectly" probably because they don't exist.

Mobilus, I hear ya. I switched homeowners insurance to a "farm based" insurance plan because they would cover any heavy equipment rental for pennies on the dollar as an umbrella policy. IIRC a week rental of a $100K machine cost me $35. Rental fee included them repairing any hose breakage, etc. that happened to the equipment that was not due to operator error.

125-140 gallons of diesel isn't too bad, some equipment that I was quoted was rated at 8 gallons per hour when working hard, but it usually averaged 5 gph.

Then you have to figure out how to feed it daily. That's a LOT of 5 gallon cans to fill and empty. Figure in either a fueling service, or renting a portable tank and have it filled at the beginning of the job.

D8 vs. smaller equipment means more time moving the same amount of dirt that a D8 would move, plus learning how to move dirt. Just a guesstimate here, but I'd figure on at least tripling the time of a D8. Then add in time to fuel and lube the equipment, check air filters, clean windows so you can see, etc. which is usually every 4 to 8 hrs of machine time depending on the operating conditions of the equipment. An 8 hr day "machine time" day can easily turn into a 10 hr day when everything else is factored in.

Plus, if the pond has a lot of muck in the bottom, and a person that is unfamiliar with the machine gets it stuck, that's an expensive recovery bill!

I'll definitely call the insurance company tomorrow to see if they have a farm option. Not like they don't get too much of my money already, might see if they want some more. Thanks for the advice!

Oh, I was pleased with how much work I got out of so little fuel!

As to refueling, I have long used a 55-gallon barrel with the cheapest (around $200 IIRC) 12 volt diesel pump for fueling my tractor. Of course, that is close to 8 tanks for the Kubota...it burns a gallon an hour. The loader I rented would take the whole barrel of fuel in one fill. You're right, for someone not already equipped to handle larger quantities of fuel, that'd be yet another expense.

Regular maintenance schedule was per 8 hour blocks. It took about an hour to perform. The reason some people won't do it is that in the morning they are too hurried to get out to the job and in the evening they are too tired...but it is something not to be skippped. To grease it, a full tube each time was required.

Recovery is something I didn't have to worry about, thankfully.

Since I'm not keen on giving up some of my pickup bed to a permanent fuel tank, I bought a 50 gallon transport tank and 12V pump (15 or 20 gallons per minute) mounted on a pallet so I can put it in and out of the bed as needed.

BTW - make sure you're not paying on road taxes on your diesel fuel to use in these machines (ie. use or find the dyed stuff). Probably about .40 to .50 /gal cheaper.

Making sure the pond is dry enough to work is the primary concern and can take a while of being empty.

Our Catch22 is that the best time to dry out is also the time when we could need to use the water for fire protection. So if we empty it and then there's a fire .......

HERE'S A FREE COPY OF THE ARMY EARTHMOVING MANUAL MENTIONED

http://www.constructionknowledge.net/pub...-434%202000.pdf

Finally got me some reading to do, thanks BunchGrass and everyone!

Just read the 1st chapter; finally a simple break down of soils into 4 categories, and a tidy simple explanation of taking down trees.

I wondered whether trees should come down 1st or after some soil had been removed. The army corp guide is pretty basic yet validating of what I sorta think how soils should be handled. Good stuff!

I gotta admit the manual wasn't as informational as I'd hoped.

If you are working on a side slope (most likely finishing) your sphincter muscle is something to believe when it puckers up. It will warn most novice operators when the slope is getting too steep to be on. Believe it. Experienced operators that have operated a dozer for many years learn to somewhat ignore it and instead rely on slope meters and other more technical indicators. Thing of it is, most dozers will not NORMALLY tip over. They slide sideways. The problem is if the slope is too long it is at the bottom of the slide that the problem comes in. A local long time operator with thousands of hours experience slid down the side of the embankment which I imagined had happened more than once before. This time when the lower track caught the bottom the momentum tipped the dozer on its side. He ended up with a control lever knob through the side of his cheek, loosing several teeth in the process and bunging him up pretty badly. He actually crawled out of the dozer and drove himself home before going to the hospital. Just be careful finishing side slopes and about a 3 to 1 is enough for my warning system to pucker up and that is good enough for me.

An operating tip but not safety is if you are pushing sticky material that wants to stay with you on the return trip to get more, a tip I learned 40 years ago while operating an old Cat D7 3T cable machine right out of high school leveling strip pit dumps. Right before you go into reverse shove hour blade down into the pile or ground just enough till you see the material on the blade start to roll from the cut action. Then immediately go into reverse. Sticky clay or muck will tend to suction onto the blade and it is a bugger to get off. If you don't get it off, you end up wasting about a third of your blade capacity each pass. This little trick getting the material to slightly move releases it and allows it to drop off.

Some people have a natural ability at operating equipment and a new guy will get right with it. Some can be taught. Some never have the talent available to them and best leave such things to professionals.

Be safe, have fun, and hopefully get something done in the process.

snrub

All good advice and can only add my own 2 cents. I have operated almost every kind of equipment there is and have found that as long as the work is small can be done with just common sense. Yes the fun does where off quick. Note, the trickiest part you will face is the unloading and loading so if you do decide to rent try and get this added in the rental agreement. Another point that has not been made mention of that most all good dirt workers know that there are different kinds of dirt. If you don't know the difference say in pond construction you might have trouble getting grass to grow on the damn or worse have leaks and an unusable pond.

Spend the first few hours of operation on flat wide open ground until you get a good feel for how it works. Go slowly as you learn. Anxious mistakes can be very expensive (life , limb and dollars).

Another operational tip.

If power is the limiting factor run in first, assuming you are pushing a full blade and using full power. (if power shift, a hydrostat machine would be different).

If traction is the limiting factor often second gear will get more done. The reason is tracks kind of go from about 3-4% slip to 90% slip almost instantaneously. Rubber tire tractive efficiency is good up to about 15% slip. Tracks are more like 6% max. Imagine a train running on train tracks. A track machine is similar except it picks up its rail and ties and carries them with it. As long as the grousers are attached to the ground full engine power can be used. As soon as they break loose, they tend to loose traction quickly.

What running in a higher gear in traction limiting conditions does is essentially reducing the power to the tracks (you can use the decelerator to slow down if 2nd is too fast ground speed). By gearing up and reducing power to the tracks the torque converter does the slipping rather than the tracks. This keeps the tracks pulling better rather than breaking loose and loosing traction.

I have not ran a hydrostat dozer (lots of other hydrostats, just not a dozer) but to apply the same logic would be to reduce engine speed with the throttle (if the machine allows) and use the hydro handle to adjust speed.

snrub

Our dozer does nothing unless at full throttle. You use hydro lever to control it..