I will probably be digging foundations by hand, over a length of time, to save money. Any ideas for how to keep the trench in good condition, i.e. no crumbling sides, turning to muddy mess etc. Cheers, Simon.
By eck! your hands will be sore.
Boards over trench and as a good measure polythene over boards pegged into the soil.
Covering with something like shuttering ply will keep most of the weather out, if it still crumbles you might want to use shuttering too, if you're going near the water table you're not going to keep the bottom dry and you might have to pump it out. Considering the effort involved it might be better to get a man with a JCB.
I agree, the issue would be access for the JCB. Narrow side access etc. Simon.
Mini digger?
He said "save money", hence him digging it out. :-)
Might be worth getting some cheap labour in to help.
Also its worth working how to get the earth out if access is really narrow (bucketing that amount of material won' t be fun) and considering the disposal approach (Skip/Hi-ab/Trailer to tip etc).
HTH,
Alex.
How deep? Anything more than about knee deep should have side shuttering for safety and putting that in is a skilled job. It would be cheaper to hire a trenching machine.
Colin Bignell
A min digger is 60 quid a day, or 15 quid an hour round my way, much much less than the cost of a decent back specalist.
Make your saving elsewhere, or you will reget it.
Rick
A 750KG machine will go through a std front door, and still dig a decent sozed hole in a day.
Rick
Depends on the soil. Are you on a clay subsoil? You may need to dig in a sump to allow you to pump out any water which collects. How deep? You may need to angle the sides of the trench to improve stability.
Regards Capitol
A 1.5 tonne excavator for a week is only going to be a couple of hundred.
(Still I suppose it depends on what foundations we are talking about!)
if you are going to dig it out yourself its alot of very hard work which takes a lot of time. Diging by hand was beneficail for me as i had a myriad of drains to avoid, i'm sure the cost of repairing a broken drain would have made my digging by hand worth it. If you are going to dig by hand i found an irishman very useful and a good trench shovel.
I dug the footings for our extension by hand. Must have been about 100 foot long and 5 foot deep. A digger was ruled out partly because of access and mainly cost.
It was quite a job but I was very proud when I had finished, I still am in fact. Dunno if I would do it again though.
Best strategy was a mattock to loosen the soil and a long handled pointed shovel to lift the spoil up out of the trench.
I only used a conventional shovel to square up the bottom and sides. Aren't conventional shovel handles just too short? They kill my back and I'm only
5'10" I suppose that probably they are made to a pattern conceived back in Victorian times. To see our 6'6" builder use one was both comical and painful at the same time, the number of back problems caused by too short tools must be massive.Henry
You can't beat a good Cornish shovel for taking the strain off your back a bit - handy for leaning on too :-)
And what will it do to the carpets?
MBQ
I was going to dig out my garage base (3x5m) and trench foundations by hand. I spent a whole day getting not very far (clay and compacted soil with some old tree roots from felled trees). I had thought it might take a week to do. After my day I had a guy in with a digger. He spent all day (with few breaks) digging it out and shifting the spoil and he managed to sort out the roots from tree stumps etc. I thank god I didn't continue - the amount of earth removed is incredible and I think I'd have been there for a few weeks, let alone one week.
You might like to consider a bit of overtime to pay for a man with a digger. I had considered just hiring a digger, but having seen this guy at work I'm glad I didn't - he was very skilled and dug quite precise trenches and his digger (which wasn't a particularly small digger) did struggle at times with the compacted soil at the base of the trench.
Think hard about the logistics and whether it's really a cost saver to dig by hand. I'm glad I didn't continue, but if you have benign soiul then maybe it'll be the best plan for you.
Simon, if you'd like to see a picture of the trenches and the earth removed, I'll happily email them to you this evening.
Of course, if a digger isn't an option, good luck with the digging!
Paul
Nothing if you lay some scaffold boards for it to drive on.
......there is still the door to fix though ;-)
Probably best to take it off before it gets ripped off :-)
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