Newbie, need tips for digging in sand :S L3301

[hotnoob]

total newbie here.

turns out i have 1 foot of hard AF ground, and right below that is SAND!
almost pure sand, with some small rocks / pebbles... and... i can't get past it!

not easily anyways.

just filled my tires with windshield wiper fluid, for ballast.
at least now i'm not tipping when trying to lift the sand lol.

but, with half a bucket full, i'm getting stuck... the tires dig more than the bucket!

in theory i could use my rear blade to dig very very very slowly...

i'd like to dig about 10-20ft down, 2000sqft, on budget. basically as far as i can go. building a bit of an experimental building / structure... and i'm super tight on budget.

like, i swear i can almost dig faster with a shovel than with the tractor cause it gets stuck with every scoop >.<

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Are you in 4wd?
I live on 100% sand and I can dig the living snot out of it.

Oh one trick is if it's powder sand, wet it down to get traction on it!

 

[BigG]

How deep is the sand? The idea of 10 - 20 feet down in only 2000 sq ft with a tractor does not seam feasible. The ramp out of the hole is going to be extremely long and require a great deal of expense. Also with the sand you must consider the danger of the walls falling in on you. I am in Fl and the soil is sandy. The utility company was digging a trench about 1/4 of a mile from my house and they were using a trench box, a structure to hold up the walls, as they were digging. The walls collapsed on top of one of the workers. They said on the news it was like being trapped in quick sand. It took most of the day and rescue squads from two different counties to extract him. They said he would recover but it damn near killed him.

Please consult experts in your area about the ground conditions before you attempt this and get hurt.

 

[SidecarFlip]

10 feet is trenchbox depth. Don't be a fool, you'll get buried.

 

[Palmettokat]

Will you be backfilling the hole or will you be building in the hole?

You might be best served to see about renting an excavator by the week or even for a month for that depth. An experienced operator would be much faster than a front end loader removing the sand but you would need something to load and haul the sand and be able to dump it.

How about seeing if you can find someone who would dig the hole for the sand? It does happen here but would be a smaller operation.

 

[BigG]

It has been a long time since I did any trig. To dig a 20 foot deep hole with a tractor with a ramp out at 10 degrees would require a ramp approximately 117 feet long. Just to build the ramp would require almost 347 cubic yards of dirt to be moved if you dug a ramp 8 feet wide.

2000 square feet 20 feet deep is 1481 cubic yards of dirt. That is a tall order for a relatively small tractor.

That is about 157 dump truck loads to move out then 19 truck loads to refill the ramp. That is using 18 cubic yards per truck load or what i know as a mini wheeler.

 

[miketrock]

Hopefully you mean you're digging out the side of a hill …?... not just a hole like the others also said. Letting the air pressure way down on 4x4's like jeeps helps a lot to increase tread surface area(floatation on top of the sand) and lower ground psi … but you're working with a tractor with a loaded bucket and that requires decent air pressure so you don't pop tires off the wheels. Something with TRACKS might be the best equipment. You might not be able to do it with what you have …?... Dual rear wheels ??.

 

[miketrock]

I know you said you're on a tight budget, but I'll post this just as much for everybody else to see, too. Mattracks, at mattracks.com, has tracks for tractors. The front track is a one size fits all in that category and they calculate and give you the right size rear track. They make the difference in the main drive wheel of the tracks(front to rear) match the difference of your factory tires(front to rear).

 

[hotnoob]

will be building in the hole.

It has been a long time since I did any trig. To dig a 20 foot deep hole with a tractor with a ramp out at 10 degrees would require a ramp approximately 117 feet long. Just to build the ramp would require almost 347 cubic yards of dirt to be moved if you dug a ramp 8 feet wide.

2000 square feet 20 feet deep is 1481 cubic yards of dirt. That is a tall order for a relatively small tractor.

That is about 157 dump truck loads to move out then 19 truck loads to refill the ramp. That is using 18 cubic yards per truck load or what i know as a mini wheeler.

good to know the dimensions of the ramp, i wasn't certain about how big that would be.

in theory i should have a lot of free time to do this, ideally i'd like to have this done before next winter. based on that, and my test hole (where i got stuck a lot), would be 50x 8 hour days assuming no improvement with my ability to handle the tractor.

~$1000 of gas and oil.

excavator rental looks like it would cost me $5k+/mo

yeah... 2-3 months with little tractor, definitely a tall order...
i wonder... what if i built a conveyor belt somehow....

 

[D2Cat]

I'd remind you like others have, don't dig a hole that can fall in. You'll save money killing yourself!

 

[hotnoob]

I'd remind you like others have, don't dig a hole that can fall in. You'll save money killing yourself!

man...

when i was a teenager, we slid down 100-200ft cliffs for fun all the time with my friends / scout group. Yeah, we were insane compared to the other groups of people...

i'm not gonna bury myself; you gotta be a complete idiot to just dig straight down that deep.

built a tiny house by myself, in 2 weeks, in the middle of no where.
am building a 16'x16' green house by myself right now.
gonna build a seacan house by myself starting in a few months.
gonna build a 2000sqft house by myself in a year or two.
gonna build a 1.5KM long brick road, made of bricks using the soil of my land, and it's gonna take me a year or two.
heck, if i'm bored enough i'm gonna build a 4KM long 6ft brick wall and call it the great wall of noob

gonna eventually build these underground green houses...

when you got no one for decades, you learn to do it all by yourself.

when your by yourself, you learn to live without @#$% up ever.
you watch the small ity bity mistakes, and never go past that.

i'll eventually dig it, and it will be fine, just may take forever.
hermit life. w00t...
where the point of your existence becomes to just build, cuz the world is so !@#$% up

PS-moderator edited NSFW language.

 

[miketrock]

Why underground ? So that they are naturally insulated by the ground and you can grow stuff all winter ?

 

[GreensvilleJay]

Building an underground house is GREAT from an energy viewpoint ! Go 6+ feet under and it's a constant 55*F so cost to heat/cool is minimal. There's whole towns in Australia build that way( carved caves).
Friend of a friend built underground. He bulldozed the material to open the south face of the 'house', fanning the material SE to SW, to capture as much daylight all year. No need to worry about the walls caving in, as it was open to the south. Once the house was erected, soil added to the roof area, grasses kept it there. it was also backfilled on the south wall cept the center secion where all the windows were.
A LOT of info about them online... and yes, 'sod houses' were the origins of this.
it'd be interesting to use 'seacans', dang STRONG and 'modular'. If I was 50 years younger, that's what I'd use.

 

[BAP]

man...

when i was a teenager, we slid down 100-200ft cliffs for fun all the time with my friends / scout group. Yeah, we were insane compared to the other groups of people...

i'm not gonna bury myself; you gotta be a complete idiot to just dig straight down that deep.

built a tiny house by myself, in 2 weeks, in the middle of no where.
am building a 16'x16' green house by myself right now.
gonna build a seacan house by myself starting in a few months.
gonna build a 2000sqft house by myself in a year or two.
gonna build a 1.5KM long brick road, made of bricks using the soil of my land, and it's gonna take me a year or two.
heck, if i'm bored enough i'm gonna build a 4KM long 6ft brick wall and call it the great wall of noob

gonna eventually build these underground green houses...

when you got no one for decades, you learn to do it all by yourself.

when your by yourself, you learn to live without @#$% up ever.
you watch the small ity bity mistakes, and never go past that.

i'll eventually dig it, and it will be fine, just may take forever.
hermit life. w00t...
where the point of your existence becomes to just build, cuz the world is so !@#$% up

PS-moderator edited NSFW language.

So let me get this straight, you want advice, but you do not want advice because you know better than others. So why did you ask in the first place? This is a family friendly site and no need to be rude and crude.

 

[Bmyers]

I noticed you listed your location as Canada. Does the Canadian Shield effect your ability to dig at all?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield