Kingdom of Callaway - Fulton, Mo 65251 | dondozer - 4/23/2021 07:30 I was always told the spring line is about a third of the way up on tile. In commercial, city work we have to undercut grade at least 2 or 3 inches, then add stone to grade, bed the tile. Lay tile and cover tile, at least 2 inches over tile. Takes a lot of stone. On your job, how are your grading the trench? receiver on boom set at a pre positioned angle or what, just asking. Or do you have a man in trench with grade rod? We at the time were using a magnetic receiver attached to boom with stick straight and bucket flat. It would get you close to grade then man in trench would use pole with another receiver to let hoe operator where to cut. May sound crude, but is sure was better than batter boards with string. See how many Ag Talkers know what that set up was in laying tile. Now back to your trench, if I was digging that, all those clods with be falling back in trench, dirt so close to trench. Most of the time we laid dirt one way, would walk, work off other side. Most of the time would have three men on job, if bedding tile would have four men. Top man was the boss, his job was the most important, called for tile , run the final grade with rod, trench man was the rookie, did the work, leveled stone for final grade. Of course had the hoe operator and if rocking tile, had a loader tractor man. On deep work, the top man had to be the safety man, watched for cave ins , some jobs we didn't run trench boxes, but now about all big jobs require it. I'm glad your tool is working in your dirt. Another question, at that depth, why don't your run a large trencher with a groover built into it, too soft? We have in our area guys that can run up to 2 foot trencher for the large mains.
Good morning Don -
We are lucky in that as you know gravity is our friend. We have enough slope on that field that once we got out of the 3 acre catch basin, we have enough evenly sloped fall that we just really have to hold the depth the same as we dig to get the right fall in the pipe. We often add a mark on the boom to go by, or in the case of this excavator, the main bucket pin is four feet with the spoon straight down. I am usually the dummy in the trench running the stick and hooking up the tile. That also lets me double check the digging, and to wave my hand at the guy bringing up the sticks when we are ready for a new one. I check the down hill end of each stick of pipe with a laser transit to make sure we are slowly falling. Once we get down to where the field turns into almost flat bottom ground, then we get serious with the laser so we don't over dig.
We do own a Vermeer trencher with a boot. But it will only handle up to 10 inch tile. It will do 12 in a pinch, but you have to have two guys feeding it in so it isnt stretched, so we mainly only use it for 8 and 10 inch tile. There are not any contractors around here that do trenching with larger machines. So we are doing this with a excavator. I have been on the hunt for a larger trencher, but the ones I can afford are pretty rough. I will hopefully stub my toe on one sometime in the future.
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Tile spoon fab - thank you agtalk
