Help please - how long to move 330cu m of earth by HAND 40m!!

[Haylingbilly]

So, due to issues with access, I am going to have to do my foundations spoil removal by hand and have 330 cubic meters of top soil and sand to remove.

Firstly I think it will bulk up and be roughly 30 grab lorries - does that seem right?

I would love to use a dumper or tracked barrows to move it - I might get away with tracked barrows but won't with a dumper. My experience of tracked barrows is on the level they aren't any quicker and for me there is limited space to turn around at the tipping point so I think would be very slow turning around so no faster than by hand.

So I I had 5 men with a high capacity wheel barrow each and one man in an excavator loading their barrows for them - each man has to wheel their barrow a level 40m and then tip it before returning. Is it realistic that each man can do the equivalent of a grab a day? And in which case this is a 6x5 man day for barrowing and 6 days of an excavator driver job?

I have looked into the cost of a conveyor belt and even a railway but both are double the price of doing it by hand unless I have my estimates of the time out by a lot!.

 

Really appreciate the build hubbers wisdom on this....

 

[Tennentslager]

I'm interested in the replies too.

My sisters build is at the back of this with the only access the width of a fat Wheely bin.

 

[Ronan 1]

20 minutes ago, Andy brown said:

330 cubic meters of top soil and sand to remove.

Firstly I think it will bulk up and be roughly 30 grab lorries - does that seem right?

Hi Andy if the 330m3 is an in place figure you are looking at between 380m3 and 430m3 bulked up dependant on the ground type and for a 8 wheeler lorry your talking 9m3 per load. 

[PeterW]

@Andy brown how far have you got to move it..?? Is the whole 40m narrow ..?

 

A Shifta will go 4m, 4 will cover 16m so you’re loading at one end and dumping at the other. 

Useful for going through houses too when you’ve got no access front to back ..! @Tennentslager this may help you too 

 

[Moonshine]

37 minutes ago, Andy brown said:

330 cubic meters of top soil and sand to remove.

I think it will bulk up and be roughly 30 grab lorries - does that seem right?

 

I have done a few calcs of my own for my plot and i think that your figures are off.

 

My stab at it.

 

**** back of fag packet calc starts ****

 

Soil density is going to be about 1600 kg/m³ depending on how wet it is.

 

So your 330m³ is going to be 528 tonnes

 

A 6 wheel grab lorry has a capacity of about 12 tonnes

 

So you will need about 44 grab lorries.

 

lets say a wheel barrow can hold a 100kg load, you are going to need 5,280 wheel barrow trips.

 

One man to load / travel / unload / travel back, say 5 minutes (bottle neck at loading)

 

8 hour day - 96 load per man per day

 

Call it 85 load per man per day

 

you will need 62 man days

 

6 man team 6-7 days going full tilt to shift it.

 

**** back of fag packet calc ends ****

Edited April 20, 2021 by Moonshine

[Moonshine]

36 minutes ago, Andy brown said:

So, due to issues with access,

 

what are the access issues?

[Declan52]

Could you raise the height of the site by a foot and spead over the full site maybe half what you dig out. Otherwise your going to have to figure out something about the access. 

500-600 tonne of soil will take a lot of men a lot of days to shift. My rough sums where near enough the same as @Moonshine.

[Haylingbilly]

Thanks for the feedback - to answer some of the questions

 

The access issues are that there is a pinch point which is very narrow that we have to take everything past - to one side is a 2m high retaining wall that is not sound (we are above it) and hence we couldn't get a tipper through. To remediate that wall we are looking at £5-10k and even then there is a victorian water storage tank that we have to go over which may or may not take the weight. For me these is just too much risk of using any heavy machinery.

 

I wish I could raise the rest of the site a foot - ironically I have 1/2 an acre, but most of it has a blanket TPO so tree officer won't let me dump any soil there. I'll be trying to lose as much as I can but. 330cum is realistic in what we need to remove

 

Moonshine and Declan52 - I don't think we are a million miles off our estimates (admittedly I am doing the classic client thing of underestimating!). The earth is very very free draining, is golden sand - you can't really grow anything on it so I think it will be lighter that you estimate - at say 20% lighter - that would put your estimate at touching 50 days.

 

I think the cost neutral point of getting a conveyor in if all goes as plans is the same as 65 days of heavy lifting, but with inevitable delays (breakdowns blockages, and such like) it could easily work out at 80 plus days.  If the consensus was at the level of 80 days then I would look at conveyor more seriously, but am thinking the thing to do, is get a team in for half a day and see what we can manage and then reassess.

 

 

 

 

[Temp]

Could you use mini digger to load it onto a conveyor belt to get it through the pinch point and raise it up into a skip/dumper to take it further? 

 

Never used one but Jewson has this for £200 a week. Are they just for bricks or can they transport dirt?

 

https://www.jewson.co.uk/p/miniveyor-portable-conveyor-JTH00226

 

Edit: This one for materials from HSS looks better..

https://hsstoolshop.co.uk/shifta-44m-materials-conveyors---110v-for-hire-1180-p.asp

 

Edit: im late to the party again. Seems you've already  looked at conveyors.

 

Says upto 60 ton an hour!

Edited April 20, 2021 by Temp

[Temp]

For hand digging.. 

 

http://www.planningplanet.com/forums/planning-scheduling-programming-discussion/560899/manual-excavation-duration-1-cu-mtr

 

Says allow 1 cubic meter a day unless you are Egyptian and they budget 2.3 cubic meters a day.

[Temp]

2 hours ago, Moonshine said:

you are going to need 5,280 wheel barrow trips.

.

2 hours ago, Moonshine said:

6 man team 6-7 days going full tilt to shift it.

 

I think at least double. If you said 5 mins to fill, move and empty a barrow and had 5 or 6 going at once that would be around one barrow every min on average. Still works out at  88 hours or 11-12 days. 

 

Would need a fit crew. I know I couldn't load 12 barrows an hour for very long, let alone push and empty them.

[PeterW]

I would be on the conveyors as far as you can get to create a “spoil heap” for a grab lorry and then use that.  
 

Other option is a skid steer with a bucket - a bobcat can carry 1/2 cube at a time but will need somewhere to drop spoil unless you go for 20 cube RoRo skips. 

[MikeSharp01]

10 hours ago, Andy brown said:

My experience of tracked barrows is on the level they aren't any quicker and for me

Mine takes about .9T and is only 800mm wide.