Workshop Project Page 1

Site excavation would have cost me a small fortune on this project since I had 2 trenches to dig (each around 140 feet long by 3 feet deep)and a 40 x 50 site to level. I decided to rent a Teramite over the weekend so that I could do everything myself for about 1/6th the cost of having someone come in on contract. Our local hardware store "Hostetter's Hardware" carries several different types of teramites so I got one with a backhoe and a bucket scoop.

It turns out that the one I rented was a bit too small for my needs. It was far better at being a backhoe then a front end loader. Luckily the backhoe is what I needed the most. This was all 100% new to me. I had never done this work before so I was learning as I went along.

What else is new right?

I didn't want to start near the house because I obviously didn't know what I was doing and figured that destroying the house would be a bad move!

So I started out where the shop was going to be. -MISTAKE #1!

Since I had the teramite I figured I would make 2 trenches. One to my workshop where I would run both water and electric side by side (6 inches apart); the other trench out to my garden where I would just run water. I figured since the shop was the critical ditch I would start that one first just in case I ran out of time somehow. -Mistake #2!

My wife didn't get any pics of me during my first ditch experience so unfortunately this picture was taken after I started the 2nd ditch. Well I was literally an EXPERT operator by the time I got to my second one. I had probably put 20 hours into the first 140 foot trench. -Oh you're wondering why it took me so long? -Well let me explain! :lol:

Remember I didn't want to destroy the house so I started out at the shop. The teramite came with a 16 inch bucket and an 8 inch bucket. I told the hardware store to put the 16 inch bucket on for me and to give me the 8 inch bucket just in case I needed it. -THANK GOD! I spent no less then 4 hours getting my first 5 feet of trench dug. It was at this point I realized there was something seriously wrong here. It couldn't be this awful ...could it?

I had positioned the machine directly in line with the house so I was digging straight behind the machine heading in towards the house. I was able to dig down to nearly a 2 foot depth without much problem at all. It took me about 10 scoops to get down 2 feet. But then the nightmare began. I had to push down to a 3 foot depth to ensure that my water line didn't freeze. I was not about to do this in a half-assed manner and decided early on that I would do it properly the first time, or not at all! So 3 feet it was ...and let me tell you MAN did I have to work for that last foot! The teramite was rather light and every time I tried to push down with any force to dig into the more compact ground, it would pull the entire machine around. Yes the buckets had teeth. Yes I had the stabilizer arms extended and secured. It was just too light for the job. Thank god I didn't have clay or something really nasty to dig into. I was digging mostly shale which seemed quite nice to dig.

I thought about calling the hardware store to get a better machine but it was too late. I had no way to get a new machine over the weekend so I had to make the best of what I had on hand. Well about 50 (yes 50) "swipes" later I was down to the full 3 foot depth. The damn thing only let me scrape a little bit each time so I found myself employing the following technique. I would dig down as far as I could easily dig, then I would scrape the teeth along the bottom of my trench pulling the dirt toward me. When I had scraped about 5 times I would have enough to bring 1 scoop out and dump it. Then repeat that process 10 more times until I was finally down another foot. WOW did that suck!

So I worked at this for about 4 hours and when I stopped to finally relish the work I'd done ...realized that I would probably die of old age before I finished this project. -Drastic measures would be required if I was to finish these ditches by the weekend.

I decided to try the smaller bucket since I didn't really have many other options at my disposal. I had pretty much tried every variation I could think of to my digging technique and was pretty sure that it wasn't my technique that was the problem here. I hoped therefore that the smaller bucket would allow me to dig with a little more force since I was not going to have so much resistance against it.

Now I was in for another shock... HOLY SHIT WOW! -Oh I'm sorry... you didn't realize that was a perfectly legitimate phrase?

Anyway, these buckets are massively heavy! They look like nothing at all on the end of that digging arm, but I could barely lift the smaller one up to position it. I had to use the teramite itself to do a majority of the work. Great big 1 inch nuts and bolts which thankfully I did have tools to work with them. So about 90 minutes later and LOTS of grunting, I finally had the buckets changed out! -Man I hope I don't need to do that again!

So I jumped back on and resumed my digging. Nearly 6 hours had passed now and I was hmmmmmm about 4 or 5 feet. Thankfully the 8 inch bucket was my salvation. I was able to run the teramite at a much lower RPM which saved tons of fuel (gasoline), and I was able to be more effective in my digging. An 8 inch wide trench was all I really needed anyway. The water and electric were required to be 6 inches apart so that was fine with me. Less dirt, less digging, hopefully a LOT less time.

As I dug I kept advancing the teramite toward the house by about 3 feet each time I was down to the desired depth. This let me dig my trench in what I started to lovingly refer to as "jumps." It was a rather painstaking process. The new bucket allowed me to get down to 3 feet with about 30 scoops instead of 50 so that saved me time now as well. But I was scared to do the math on just how long that was going to take me. I tried to fight it but when you have nothing to do but DIG, DIG, DIG... the mind wanders. Instead of naked women and beer, I was dreaming about numbers:
140 feet divided by 3 foot jumps. Take slop into effect and I was probably looking at 50 - 60 jumps total. So 60 jumps times 30 scoops ...1,800 scoops! Yikes! Let's see 60 jumps at about 15 minutes per jump, once I got proficient on the thing... that worked out to about 15 straight hours of digging for just 1 trench! -HOLY SHIT! Enough of that, I need to focus on naked women and beer if I'm going to survive this weekend!

So I dug, and I dug, and I dug. On the second day when I had finally gotten within 20 feet of the house I realized I had a problem.

How the hell was I going to finish the ditch? The teramite was facing the wrong direction. This is when I realized that I had made Mistake #1 that I spoke of at the beginning of my story. So I spent 2 hours trying to come in at an angle, but it was just not working properly. You have no power when you have the arm at a 45 degree angle. It worked, but not well at all and I kept pushing tons of dirt into finished parts of the trench. I tried jumping down in the trench and shoveling the dirt out. OH MY GOD was that a mistake. It looks so light and fluffy when you're in a big heavy machine. That bucket just scoops it out with zero apparent effort. Well when you try by hand... it was a nightmare. It would take me about 50 shovel scoops to equal 1 regular bucket scoop. The shovel didnâ€™t fit well into the trench either because my shovel was about 10 inches wide. So after F***ing with that for an hour I went back to the teramite. I decided to try putting my big back tires right in the ditch and digging at an angel. That was nasty because now I was not only pushing dirt around with the bucket but I kept knocking even more dirt back into the trench with the damned tires!!! No problem you think... what's some dirt going to matter? Well here's the problem: If any 1 spot was above the 3 foot depth, it was negating the work on the entire length of the ditch! If just 1 spot was high, it would be that spot which would freeze in the winter. The rest of the ditch could have been at 6 feet... it wouldn't have mattered. A frozen spot in the line would mean failure for the entire water system. Digging this back up 2 years from now because I was an idiot today, was not an option. I had to do this right or not at all!

I was out of options, my only choice was to do the one thing that I did NOT want to do. I was alone and had no one to help me so I was scared to death about this, but I knew that it was my only option. I drove out to the end of my ditch by the shop and then started backing up toward the house while straddling the ditch. I took me about 30 minutes to just reach the house because I had to keep moving dirt as I backed up. I was not very NEAT when I dug in the beginning so I had piled dirt right next to the ditch in a number of spots. My big back tires were climbing up those various piles at a sharp angle and all I could think of was sliding off into the trench where I would get both left tires stuck in the ditch. That would be very very bad. Perhaps even break something on the teramite itself as it slammed down into the ditch. Several times I had to use the backhoe arm to literally lift my back end up and move it over to re-center myself across the ditch. -Remember I was alone and I had no one to help me do this. I also had no other way to pull this thing out if I got it stuck! -So yes; oh yes... I was scared like you wouldn't believe.

Thirty minutes later there I was... next to the house finally!!!!! Thank GOD! I found the only way to keep the ditch clean was do it all in 1 continuous operation. You had to keep digging in 1 direction ONLY and keep pulling toward you as you went. Otherwise you would get piles at various places all in the ditch. This was the ONLY way I could ensure that my ditch was down to the proper 3 foot depth for the entire length. So about 2 more hours later the ditch was clean and I was at 3 feet the ENTIRE length!!! WOW that was nasty. Three days of work for 1 lousy ditch. -But hey... I learned one hell of a lot about digging ditches!

The second ditch was going to be a breeze after this!

I knew exactly what to do to maximize my time on the second ditch. I went right up next to the house and started digging out toward my garden. This second ditch went so smoothly that I was finished in probably just 8 hours of digging time. No mess, no danger. Solid ground under me for every foot of the way!

You can see my first ditch to my right as I'm shown here digging the 2nd one out toward the garden. I can say without a doubt, now that they're done, that I am soooooo glad I did put them both in. It will be great to have water directly out at the garden with no chance of freezing and no hoses sprawled across the yard.

I knew I would be happy with the finished product so yes it was all worth it in the end.

I did realize however that I should have dug the ditch to my garden first. This was mistake #2 that I mention above. The garden ditch was not as critical as the ditch to my workshop. If I messed something up in the garden ditch, it would mean at worst, digging up just the 1 line to re-do things. Messing up the workshop ditch would mean huge problems as I had both the power and water in the same ditch. Let's just hope the extra time I took to go back over the entire ditch was well spent. -I'm confident that my finished product is nearly the same for both ditches.