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Digging, Lifting, and spreading


HubbardRA

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Some of the Club Members know that I have been working on removing a large tree stump. The tree was around 30 inches diameter. I started digging around it and breaking the side roots last week. I kept working on it with the EF1, but couldn't get it to move. I finally came up with a way to do it. Manually operated hydraulic force. I modified my engine lift to put out 4 tons of force and also used my 3 ton floor jack. To my surprise they pulled the stump and a large ball of dirt out of the ground.


Here you can see the gap under the stump after it was pulled up out of the ground.


I couldn't flip the stump over, because of lack of traction with the bucket under the stump and the rear wheels out of the hole. A friend who was working across the street brought his BobCat over and flipped it for me. It was a heavier machine with all four wheels pulling.


I used the backhoe of my EF1 to chip the heavy dirt ball off the stump, then lifted it out of the hole and took it to the driveway to load on a friend's dumptruck for a ride to the dump.


While waiting for my friend to get here with the dumptruck, I put the dirt in the hole and leveled it. I had a small pile of clay out back that I dug up and put in the hole to make up for the size of the stump. I then spread the top soil out and leveled it.



I still need to do some cleanup and get rid of the old picket fence that I took down.
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Nice job indeed, by the size of the hole it looks like you used about 3 yards of fill. That EF1 looks like it is already earning it's keep. LOL.
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Looks like your ready to be a homesteader Rod, use what you have on hand to get the job done. Course, a backhoe and loader help a bunch.
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Josh, I barely had enough dirt to level the area where the hole was. I am sure that with time it is going to settle and I will be required to do some filling. After going without rain for a record of 34 days, I will have to wait to see what happens when we get some good rain. Soil was dry all the way to the bottom of the stump when it was pulled out.
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Rod, Looks like a fun project. It reminds me of the cherry tree stump we had in our front yard when I was a teenager. I didn't like the fact that the cherries went all over the basketball court (our driveway, really) so I sawed down the tree. My mother wasn't too happy. There was a stump in place, and she said I had to take it out since I cut the tree down. So, not realizing the damage dirt does to a chain saw... I used my father's construction grade chainsaw without his permission and sawed into the dirt. Got the stump out, but killed the blade. LOL The things teenage boys do...
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Rod, Congratulations on successful completion of a difficult project. ^ I like the first picture. Have never seen you doing manual labor before. :D Hope you are satisfied with the overall performance of the EF1.
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Roy, The guy who brought the Bobcat over was renting a Terramite to dig some footers with. After I took that stump to the driveway with the EF1, he said it was quite a bit stronger than the Terramite. He had figured that he would need to bring the Bobcat back over to take the stump out of the hole and load it on the truck. I am very happy with the EF1. It takes time to learn how to use the backhoe, but it does a good job once you are familiar with it.
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quote:
Originally posted by HubbardRA
Josh, I barely had enough dirt to level the area where the hole was.
Rod, one way to do this is to dig the hole deeper and bury the stump in the hole and cover it over. This way you have created fill and have dirt left over. Plus no need to haul the stump off to the dump.^:D
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Dave, The stump will eventually rot out and the ground will sink, if you bury it. I have cut the stumps of smaller trees below ground level and filled over them. They eventually rot out and the hole has to be re-filled. Didn't want to do too much digging in that area since I was working only a few feet from my natural gas line. I wanted to keep that area stable and not take a chance on the line being shifted and possibly broken. It worked out. Now I understand why so many people have their stumps ground down with stump grinders. Digging one up is not something I want to do very often.
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My house was built new in 1996 and was the first house built in a 15 lot subdivision. I had to put up with a lot of noise and blowing dirt for the next few years but my property value went way up after all the houses were in an all the landscaping was done. Buried stumps I think are illegal here, but I have them all over. It's a 1.5 acre lot and so far I have put in two, round, flower/herb gardens to fill in sink holes from buried stumps. One side lawn area about 25 feet across sank away after about 6 years so deep you could have used the hole for a real deep coy fish pond (there was more than a few stumps buried there). Took 40 yards of fill to level it back up. The latest and greatest is right in the middle of my asphalt driveway. The driveway is sinking very rapidly in a big spot where there is no other explanation; they paved over a stump they didn't pull out. I removed a good sized stump the size of what you had there. It was a big, white oak stump. I dug down and cut off the big side roots until I got down to the root ball and could also get a girdle of heavy chain around the base of the stump. I have a tow rope made up from about 15 feet of 2" nylon rope spliced to heavy chain and chain hooks on both ends. I had a 1966 pickup I only sold recently that my dad bought new. It had a heavy welded subframe for the receiver since the folks towed a big travel trailer. To do what I did you need a tow strap rated for the work and stick it into the receiver and secure it with the hitch pin. You have to pull directly out of the center of the receiver or you may bend the frame. I hooked the chain hook of the tow rope to the tow strap on the truck and the chain around the stump. I put the Chevy in granny gear and took off at WOT. When the slack came out of the 2" nylon tow rope it stretched for a moment and then that 2000 pound stump popped right out of the hole. It flew right over the truck and completely demolished my neighbor's new house which was under construction. I am kidding. It worked really well.
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Jonathan, The ground is very hard here right now. We have not had any kind of a real rain in 35 days. I don't think my stump could be pulled out by a 4x4 truck before I jacked it out of the ground. A little more sand and less clay down where you live.
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