Moonshine Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 (edited) I am looking at the cut and fill of my site, in terms of m3 soil. I am looking at scaling up the in ground m3 by a factor of 2 to account for the increase in volume, and a soil weight of 1,800kg/m3. Can anyone shed any light on how muck away is calculated, by a loads m3 or weight per lorry? Also does the cost per load i have been seeing, e.g £190 per 16 ton lorry include soil deposal costs assuming it's inert? Any other costs that need to be factored in for muck away. E.g excavator for loading? Edited November 11, 2019 by Moonshine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterW Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 So I pay £160 for a 17 tonne load with a hiab loader, or £150 for 20 tonnes but is loaded by JCB JCB is £90 a day hired , or £170 with a driver. JCB can load the wagons in about 15 mins if it is a loose pile and space to move on site. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterW Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 Other option is find a local farmer and see if they want the soil for infill anywhere - cost will be lower but you’ll definitely need something to load it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moonshine Posted November 11, 2019 Author Share Posted November 11, 2019 13 minutes ago, PeterW said: Other option is find a local farmer and see if they want the soil for infill anywhere - cost will be lower but you’ll definitely need something to load it. I was chatting to someone about muck away and he did ask if I was friendly with a farmer as under a certain m3 you can get a permit from the EA, asking as it's inert. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 Unless like me you have 50 tons of clay that no one wants. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oz07 Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 Wouldn't waste too much time working it out. Rough and ready will do. End of the day it costs what it costs and you always need more than you think. Eh @Red Kite?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moonshine Posted November 11, 2019 Author Share Posted November 11, 2019 19 minutes ago, Oz07 said: Wouldn't waste too much time working it out. Rough and ready will do. End of the day it costs what it costs and you always need more than you think. Eh @Red Kite?! I disagree, as groundworks and foundations are the biggest question mark about our potential build, as its a sloping site and i want to be as forearmed as possible. I have a 3D model of the site terrain, and now i know the final design and levels i can cut chunks out of the 3D terrain which has been a quick and easy way to work out the cut and fill m3. I'm adding on 20% contingency to my calculated volume which should give a robust figure. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nod Posted November 11, 2019 Share Posted November 11, 2019 We had 750 tons of mostly Clay to remove by lorry 20 ton at a time I did a deal with a local haulier 3 lorry’s Each returning with reclaimed hardcore 130 per load of hardcore 130 Muck away We started in November Had we started on schedule in June We would have saved a third on the muck away Prices three years ago 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gone West Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 13 hours ago, PeterW said: Other option is find a local farmer and see if they want the soil for infill anywhere - cost will be lower but you’ll definitely need something to load it. Our local farmer took our excess top soil for no cost. He left a 3m3 bucket in our drive which we filled with a wheelbarrow and he took away with a telehandler. We did this six times. A while back we gave him all our excess crushed concrete using the same method. He also did a lot of our early rubble removal and digging out for the sewage treatment plant for which we paid him. Having a friendly local farmer can make life easier when doing building work. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moonshine Posted November 12, 2019 Author Share Posted November 12, 2019 well i have phone a coupe of places and the cheapest i have found is £400 + VAT for a 16T, not sure where the sub £200 came from! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oz07 Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 35 minutes ago, Moonshine said: well i have phone a coupe of places and the cheapest i have found is £400 + VAT for a 16T, not sure where the sub £200 came from! Where in country that sounds dear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moonshine Posted November 12, 2019 Author Share Posted November 12, 2019 10 minutes ago, Oz07 said: Where in country that sounds dear. South West Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Punter Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 £400 is robbery. Keep ringing round. Make a note of muck lorries when you are driving around. Work out how many you need. Get 20 tonne ones and load them with a large excavator as grab lorries are only good for a few loads. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red Kite Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 Yup, muckaway costs what it costs, same as everything. Question is what do you need to allow for and what things to factor in that are part and parcel of the dig. Based on our somewhat massive dig (see the blog) it aint as simple as it seems. These are non-expert observations and based only on what we have seen - your mileage may vary. Ours was approx 600m3 - 'as dug' or 'in the ground' gets a bit immaterial at that point - its just really big and expensive! Firstly you need to understand what the ground is like - to the depth you plan to dig (plus some), and over the whole site. Our clay was relatively easy to dig out but was potentially very messy and sticky. Also we know it was pretty consistent over the site but we did hit a patch of gravel in the clay that meant more sheet piling we had not accounted for. Not picked up on our soil survey btw. Then you need to calculate just what volume to dig (the obvious bit) - you will need at least 1m all round the outside of the slab to allow access, and then you need to batter back (i.e. create a slope to ground level) so it doesn't all fall back in (or sheet pile if you dont have the room). The batter angle (or technically the angle of repose ) depends on the ground conditions so you need to check with your SE on what is a safe angle. You also need to dig deeper than the slab as you will need a sub-base (Type 1), some blinding layer, insulation somewhere, the slab itself, screed, floor covering etc/ So work from FFL downwards and add the extras to the muckaway. BTW dont dig any more than you have to - you can't un-dig and any dug areas you dont need will probably need to be backfilled with brought in materials not your muckaway. As you say the 'in the ground' volume is not the same as the 'as dug' since it 'fluffs up'. I think this depends on the soil type - there are calculators that help (eg https://source4me.co.uk/calculate_excavated_spoil.php) determine volume and weights. Weight is also important as our lorries measured weight load and beeped when they were up to weight - even if there was space to get a few more bucketfuls in you stop at a weight limit. Wet clay is very heavy in winter - summer might have been better - or if you can dig and leave it for a few months to dry before carting it away I am told this helps reduce the cost/weight. I suspect that if you talk to muckaway contractors they will work that out for you - but it might 'fluff up' in the process. Drainage of the site, both when digging and afterwards, are really important - when you dig a big hole it typically fills with water. Our guys very early on dug a temporary French drain - a trench filled with gravel - round the slab. This then goes into a temporary sump and is pumped out and keeps the site dry-ish or manageable. You need to have somewhere to pump to btw. We will get a proper drain later but this temporary one is all extra cost - more digging and gravel in that you probably dont think about. You need to think about the logistics - our site looked huge but when it comes to digging and muckway its really tight. You need to have somewhere to stand the lorries to load them, and you need to make sure they dont get stuck in the mud - or leave half your site on the highway. Our guys dug an off road area, filled it with type 1 and then compacted it, just for the lorries. Hardly a drop of clay on the road - but more muckaway and costs - but a great base for our new driveway. Also there seems like there is a huge amount of skill in digging: first some digging, loading some, moving the digger, making sure you dont dig yourself into a corner and generally thinking a bit before going wild with a big digger. Our biggest time constraint while digging was getting enough lorries in a day - but we were close to the point of not being able to fill them fast enough. If you want to keep some topsoil for landscaping then you need somewhere to store it - or it goes into muckaway and then you buy it back! And you will need some storage area on site - so that might just be where you were planning to store the topsoil! So to summarise the simple steps - get a topo and soil survey so you know where you stand. Then you will need an SE to design the foundations / basement and he (or she) will probably have the biggest cost impact on your whole project cost (if I knew then what I know now!), plus a drainage engineer in our case. Then you work backwards from this and the Architects designs to the hole, how big it is etc etc. Then you can figure just how much it is likely to cost, and how the logistics might work. In our case our GW contractor wasn't able to price the job until the SE had spec'd the concrete and produced the steel bending schedule so it was unknown for a very long and worrying time! So good luck with the project, and hopefully all the above was just a recap for you - I would say that muckaway is the bottom of the iceberg! 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moonshine Posted November 12, 2019 Author Share Posted November 12, 2019 40 minutes ago, Mr Punter said: £400 is robbery. Keep ringing round. Make a note of muck lorries when you are driving around. Work out how many you need. Get 20 tonne ones and load them with a large excavator as grab lorries are only good for a few loads phew, phoned another place which is £270 for a 20T in 2020, which is a bit more in the realms of what i was expecting / hoping for. @Red Kite thanks for all that information, and plenty for me to digest, cheers 24 minutes ago, Red Kite said: So to summarise the simple steps - get a topo and soil survey so you know where you stand. Then you will need an SE to design the foundations / basement and he (or she) will probably have the biggest cost impact on your whole project cost (if I knew then what I know now!), plus a drainage engineer in our case. Then you work backwards from this and the Architects designs to the hole, how big it is etc etc. Then you can figure just how much it is likely to cost, and how the logistics might work. In our case our GW contractor wasn't able to price the job until the SE had spec'd the concrete and produced the steel bending schedule This is where i am at the moment, i have the topo survey which i created a 3D sketchup model of, and now i have a final planning house design, i have been able to work out the cut and fill volumes as below (may need refinement once the structural engineer has designed it). This is about 320 m3 in total, which for cost estimates i have added a contingency of 20% for the development currently has a out the ground m3 with contingency of 380m3. I haven't had a bore hole on site yet, and am in the process of arranging (waiting on specs / locations from a structural engineer), but know that its likely to be sandy from a historic bore hole 200m away. Assuming a sandy soil weight of 1800 kg/m3, and a 20T truck (well 19T load), that's 36 loads with the muck away at just under £10k (TBC). I need to get a soil/borehole survey arranged with screening for waste characterisation, asbestos, and WAC. This will go on to the SE who then can design the foundation/retaining walls, and then i can get that to the GW contractor to price the job. However in the mean time, i want to start getting a feel for what the GW cost is going to be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Punter Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 You can get the SE to prepare a tender package for the groundworks. If they are local they may have a few firms they will suggest. On the subject of muckaway but a bit off topic, a castle wall collapsed into the back garden of a building near me yesterday. They estimated 600 tonne of flint and chalk. It looks like it may be tricky to get at. https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18030513.lewes-castle-wall-collapse-devastating-drone-footage-lays-bare-destruction/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Naz Posted July 12, 2023 Share Posted July 12, 2023 On 11/11/2019 at 20:29, Moonshine said: I disagree, as groundworks and foundations are the biggest question mark about our potential build, as its a sloping site and i want to be as forearmed as possible. I have a 3D model of the site terrain, and now i know the final design and levels i can cut chunks out of the 3D terrain which has been a quick and easy way to work out the cut and fill m3. I'm adding on 20% contingency to my calculated volume which should give a robust figure. Hello, did you do this project in the end please, and what did it end up costing for the cubic metres? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canski Posted July 12, 2023 Share Posted July 12, 2023 3 hours ago, Naz said: Hello, did you do this project in the end please, and what did it end up costing for the cubic metres? Thanks I’m paying £220 plus vat for a 20 tonne load. Plus the time it takes to load the truck. I had a 14 tonner there last week and he loaded it with ten buckets. From now on I only have a 5 tonne machine that will take longer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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