Backhoe operations info

I still not sure when to use the boom and when to use the dipper when digging.

I'm using old telephone posts to build a corral. I set one yesterday to snub up horses to. 11" in diameter five feet deep. I hoped to have 3 straight sides and then backfill from the other, but I couldn't get the back of the hole to go straight down.(don't have a post hole digger) After a couple feet deep the bucket was leaving a curved end. Ended up with a trench 6' long and 15" wide. Put the post in the middle and backfilled from both sides. Maybe I set up to close to get a straight backed hole. If anyone has a secret to this let me know. I still may go rent a post hole digger. Also got down into some wet gumbo clay and couldn't shake my bucket empty. I'm going to let it dry out and try to shake it out the next time.

Most usefull piece of "FARM" equipment I've ever had.

Shallow trench, take some florescent orange spray paint and mark out a trench to be excavated, un-curl the bucket, set it down on the teeth so they are vertical, measure up 18" or 24" depends on the bucket size, when you "stab" as it is sometimes called in the manuals or control labels, this line will give you a visible guideline for the depth. Marking out the trench will help you stay straight, make sure you line up the machine on the center of trench. Set your outriggers and front bucket down, level up the machine, some operators will raise the machine up as far as it will go on the outriggers and front bucket. Not always necessary to do this, sometimes when working on turf, I place the outriggers down and front bucket down just enought to stablize the machine, but not so much it will damage the turf, you can adjust how you set up the machine for where and what you will be doing, if doing any heavy work make sure the machine is firmly planted. If you have to run on a side hill, swing the hoe up towards the slope, and extend the hoe if you have to, also can lower the opposite outrigger, but make sure to raise it back up as soon as you clear the slope, doing this can allow you to ballast the tractor to the high side as you travel through, and having the outrigger close to the ground allows you to plant it quickly in case it wants to tip too far, these can feel a little tippy, the hoe is a heavy attachment for most of these, and the tail does wag the dog in a manner of speaking, so use care in that regard and always think of what and where you are working in advance. I have often crept through areas that felt uncomfortable, but not too much for the tractor, with newer machines that are more stable, you may just want to stay on flat ground for now, especially if you have no overhead protection. You could also learn a lot from an experienced operator in a short time, if you have any natural ability, you will pick up on it quickly, it's kind of fun to learn too.

The boom is closest to the tractor, stick is what the bucket is attached to. Lower the boom with the bucket uncurled and the stick at a tight angle to the boom (stab), as the bucket teeth sink in, you can close the stick, move it towards you and curl the bucket at the same time, to fill the bucket, raise the boom with the bucket fully curled, with enough clearance over the trench, swing to either side and cast the fill leaving enough room so it can't fall back into your trench. Many operators will used the side of the bucket to knock the slope of the fill down to keep it out of the trench by swinging the boom and using the bucket side to push, sometimes you have to swing hard and fast, it's not usually a strong point of the hoe, so the fill can stop you, take less of a bite, raise the boom, keep the bottom of the bucket flat to the ground when doing this. Once you get to depth, watch that line on the bucket, you can practice grading the trench bottom with the bucket, lightly stabbing in but nothing more than combing the bottom with the bucket teeth. If you are doing any kind of grade work, or slope for a pipe that has pitch for drainage, you should set up an optical level, or transit level, so you can check the depth with a grade stick, measuring depth to insure you have slope, it takes awhile to come close by eye, good to check with an instrument so you don't over excavate. A decent operator will leave little handwork to be done to dress up the trench bottom, those skills don't come overnight, but are no problem to learn, just spend some time in the seat.

Hopefully the above is clearer than mud :) !

There are a lot of little tricks to learn, like I mentioned it just takes a little time in the seat, sooner or later you should pick up on it and make good use of the machine, it is a very useful thing to have on a farm.

To recap what you said Billy so I understand it.

Center up on the line of the ditch.
Keep the boom and stick at a tight angle where the boom is still sticking high up into the air.
(here is my first question)You have the bucket working close to the hoe with the boom up at a tight angle and I thought I saw a picture where you extend the stick way out with a long reach so the boom and stick are at a wide angle and almost parallel to the ground and then take long shallow straight swipes with the bucket all the way back to the hoe and going deeper with each pass?)

Uncurl the bucket so the teeth and the back of the bucket end are vertical with the ground.

Use the boom to lower it and stab the bucket up to 18" to 24".

Then pull back on the stick and the bucket curl and the same time to fill the bucket.
(Second question is I guess and maybe the same as the first is that you must have the stick extended a litte so how far or at what angle? I suspect not moving the boom at this time helps keep the bucket at the same depth.

When the bucket is full, pull back on the boom to raise it and and swing the boom after being clear of the ditch.

Then uncurl the bucket and re-extend the stick to close to the original position while dumping the bucket.

Then while swinging back to the ditch get the bucket back to vertical and ready to stab again with the boom.
(question here is for the return to the ditch in the last two statements is this how you set up for the next stab or is there another way? I know the good operators are usually preparing for the next move every chance they get and the not so good operators do one thing at a time.)

Then once you are at the right depth and close to the hoe, then stab the bucket, raise the front bucket and outriggers and push the hoe forward with the boom and stick controls.

Then start over taking 18" to 24" slices off the top until you get down to depth and close to the hoe again.

How do you begin to backfill a long ditch with a regular loader? I welded a 3 point attachment on my front bucket and will eventually buy a 3 point blade to mount on there to work like a grader but for now I have to use a bucket. Is it a matter of just coming in at an angle with the loader and keep pushing a section at a time or come in at a 90 degree angle and push a bucket width at a time?

For a square flat bottom and side sloped sewer pit, would it be best to come in from each of the 4 sides and pull the dirt back towards you working from the center of the pit getting you a flat bottom and the proper slope? Or maybe you have to come in from a couple places on each side. Seems like a small 12' square bottom pit has about a 30' square berm at the proper depth. The state has the proper measurements on a form I got. Then I have to slope the back of the berm. I don't know how much of it can be built with the loader though.

I found a couple books on amazon and will probably get one.

Also found a blurb or two by google on the internet. One showed how to use the front bucket and hoe to move your rear end back and forth to line yourself up. The other showed a picture of digging a pit and taking shallow swipes all the way across and steadily working your way down to the final depth.

In my situation, I have been around equipment all of my life, spent a lot of time in the seat, but everything I learned was from watching experienced operators, and seat time, eventually working full time as an operator. One short story, my first job as an operator, I ran end dumps and tractor trailers hauling equipment on the road, 1st day on the job, had to go get an excavator, owners dad was with me, checking me out in the tractor and lowboy, he had no problems there, detached, went to load the excavator and he says, get up on there and load it, I told him I never ran one before, no problem you ran crawlers, figure it out..... ok loaded er up no problem, went to a job site, had a dozer and excavator, doing a large pond, I was on the dozer, had experience on those since a kid with our D7, he got the cuts started and said get on up in there and cast fill to me, I'll push it off, we worked all day like that, once I was cycling around with a bucket full, and he was backing towards the bucket, we had a good cycle and rythm going, he laughed, I narrowly missed hitting the R.O.P.S. on the dozer, and some fill landed on him, Robert was a really great person with years of experience he had been partners with a big heavy & highway outfit that is still very successful today, family... and there was a falling out, so both the father and son went on their own, I worked for them their first year, I learned every trick and skill imaginable with an ecavator and just about everything Robert knew how to do with the equipment, this is a great way to learn this trade. He's still around and I remember how much I learned from him and others along the way, it was a great skill because you could always find a decent job doing this work.

Backfilling, you need to use some up front planning when you dig, always figure where the machine will be, where you need to dig and don't lock yourself out of where you dig, like when doing a foundation hole, you start and complete areas where the machine can comfortably reach.

Keep your stockpiles at a slope that won't collapse into the trench, if you have to dig a deep trench, the walls can cave in on you, depends on soil conditions, you will need to reinforce the trench, use a trench box or bench the area down, and slope the angle of repose ( 45 deg slope) so that this does not happen.

If placing pipe, you have to bed pipe with clean fill and carefully fill and COMPACT same ( key word when backfilling). Once the pipe is covered you can use the hoe to fill in from one side, most will come in at an angle with the front bucket, cutting edge flat so you take clean sweeps and dump the fill over the trench but NEVER run your tires in the trench. There are a variety of preferences to backfill, but you need to learn how to properly compact and some other odds and ends, then you will have an understanding of how soils work.

When doing footings you have to only excavate to the correct elevation and not over excavate, if you do that it has to be filled in 12" lifts packed in and repeat, using a vibratory roller, jumping jack(hand tamper) etc.

That pit you describe, figure the reach of your machine, and strategically plan where to dig and cast and make sure if you box yourself out from that area, that you are done digging that area when you move the machine, including dressing up the fill stockpile so it does not collapse in to the hole. You have the right thoughts on how to do this, just figure what your hole needs to be like and work where you can, move when necessary, dress up the bottom before you move the machine.

Read through that quickly, have to go now, but hopefully some help, you'll figure it out, take your time, use care and be safe regardless of what you do, always give some careful thought before you do anything, it is a big help.

I've been around construction, oilfield pipelines, and road construction in my earlier years but back then when I was manning a shovel or whatever, I was usually to busy digging to watch any of the operators and think about their methods. There was no leaning on the shovel for us. One year I worked road construction. They usually had me running the milling machine and paving machines or occasionally the crane or as a pug mill operator at the asphalt plant. We went over to redo some streets in one small town. They let me run the scraper picking up the old 4" thick asphalt so we could do it right. That was fun. They later sent me over on a rainy day to straighten up the asphalt pile with a loader. I was moving up loads of rubble side slope up to the top of a hill. No one told me how to do it, just there's the loader the there is the pile you need to move. I noticed everytime that an alarm would go off half way up and get louder the closer I got to the top. At lunch time when I was done, I told one of the regular equipment operators that the tipover alarm kept going off. He said they didn't have such a thing and the only horn there is is controlled by a button on the floor. Went back, lifted up the floor mat and saw the horn button. I figured out that the greater the slope I was on, the more pressure and weight I was putting on my left foot on the mat which was causing the horn to go off and steadily get louder. I didn't want them laughing at me so I didn't tell anyone about it. I never got a chance to operate a grader which I would like to do. Same for a dozer.

My dad was a dozer operator all his life doing road construction back when they were building the interstates. He learned in the army as a combat engineer. They went in with the first wave at Leyte Gulf and Okinawa. As soon as they had taken the jap airstrips then he would move in and get them ready to take our planes. His complaint in Okinawa was that they got the first strip ready to go in two days but they were getting a lot of jap kamikazi attacks coming in. Our carrier planes would have a shot up carrier and try to land at our strip but our gun happy defenders kept shooting down our own planes too. They were either working on the airstips or building roads and occasional burial pits. When the monsoon rains hit, it was nothing but pulling supply trucks through the muck. If he was still alive he could help with this.

I would imagine that the clay would be stable when dry, seems to form a nice clean trench, but if you go over 5-6 feet, you need to use a trench box, shore it up or bench down along the sides of it, never work alone, I had to dig my foreman out by hand after a collapse in fine sand, he went to grab a $100 grade stick trench was collapsing at a predictable rate as I dug that water line, he went back to far, big piece came off and slammed him to the opposite side and knocked the wind out of him, was buried up to his face, I dove out the back of the cab, it took me over an hour to get him out with a shovel. Even standing on the side is dangerous, the whole bank collapsed on the same job, have to watch for fracture lines, I was holding a phone cable with a rope, as Robert was digging, he was casting fill when he turned around to get another bucket full, I was hanging by 1 hand from that rope and the phone cable was now holding me up, the trench was about 18'-0" deep, I was waving at him so he did not hit me with the bucket. The water table was high, if I ever fell in there, one good reason to wear the safety orange vest and a hat, even though nothing really could fall on you, it makes you visible, even if the hat fell in to the trench he'd have seen it and stopped, what a job that was, fine sand, high water table, well points and pump running, 1200'-0" of 8" sanitary line to install.

Use care near that foundation, make sure to locate all utilities, use a hydraulic cement or another suitable material to seal the crack, then waterproof the area around it, I have done entire foundation drains over, and re-waterproofed the walls, what a pain that is in an occupied home.

If your dad was a combat engineer in WW2, and worked on the interstate highways he must have been very familiar with the D7's D8's and Caterpillar graders, + the other manufacturers and all the other equipment. I have a pair of those old D7's from that era, some interesting photos on the net of the seabeas and engineers building strips on the islands, have to wonder if he brought home any photos from there. My uncle was a Marine who survived the pacific theater right to the end of the war, raised a big family after, he saw some of the worst things a person could imagine in war, including hand to hand combat, most things he only told my father and grandfather about as both were also veterans, he did not return home for over 1 year after he got out, had to take some time to adjust, he's still with us, but slowly fading, might be dementia or alzheimers, my grandmother, his sister had it too, nothing like bumping elbows at a reunion with him while eating a meal, with all the cousins,he had 8 brothers and sisters and raised 9 kids himself, so I never thought he really knew who I was, but, the last time I saw him, he sure as heck knew who I was, and it was an honor just to be in the same room with the guy, one tough old codger too, he worked until a few years back, part time at the end.