Clearing a roadside ditch

[William1]

In the past, I have used a trusty spade and sweat to dig out my ditch on my 1/2 mile long driveway, with Cool Hand Luke going though my head for the days I am working, thinking about eating forty eggs, having the mans dirt in the bosses hole and spending the night in the box.
Now with the BX and BH, I should be able to bang it out in a few effortless hours.
I was thinking that perhaps I should remove the teeth from the bucket. We've had tons of rain so the ground will be soft. I just want to remove a section of built up silt. I'd like to not disturb the bottom.
I have 2 buckets, the 8" and the 12" and plan to use the 12"

Opinions?

 

[meackerman]

I've got a driveway ditch that's probably 5-6 wide. My wife is convinced its filling in even though its covered with grass. I've been putting off trying to deepen it for a number of reasons...not convinced it is filling in, not sure how to deepen it, and not sure I'd make it better if I tried.

 

[William1]

Mine is def. filling in in areas. The slope varies greatly. The step parts are nice and clear, where it levels slightly, the original builder made the ditch wide and the run off slows and settles. Over the years, it is had been filling in but I need to keep a center part open. The spade works, just takes forever. The 12" bucket, just minutes I imagine. Two or three more years and the sides will be built up and this issue should go away.

 

[Benhameen]

I would say remove the teeth to accomplish the task at hand. A friend built an attachment for his backhoe from a section of blade I gave him. Its basically 4ft wide has no teeth and works great for work like you're describing, among other things. He made it so that it attaches to his bucket, so no taking the bucket off, one less step.

 

[William1]

Thanks for the confirmation. I figured the lip/'blade' of the bucket would be plenty durable to dig/scoop/scrape 'gravely-silt. It will not be a lot of material, probably just a couple of cubic yards.
Fortunately, I have a compressor and air gun easily capable of loosening the teeth bolts and a good torque wrench to re-attach.

 

[Tooljunkie]

Depending how much you need to do,my want someone in the tractor seat to move it over as you go. Unless you straddle ditch and clean a bucket width off the bottom. A much easier task with an excavator. Before, during and after photos would be appreciated.

Many cleanups just walk along back slope and smear the spoil alng the edge.

 

[Jaybird]

In the past, I have used a trusty spade and sweat to dig out my ditch on my 1/2 mile long driveway, with Cool Hand Luke going though my head for the days I am working, thinking about eating forty eggs, having the mans dirt in the bosses hole and spending the night in the box.
Now with the BX and BH, I should be able to bang it out in a few effortless hours.
I was thinking that perhaps I should remove the teeth from the bucket. We've had tons of rain so the ground will be soft. I just want to remove a section of built up silt. I'd like to not disturb the bottom.
I have 2 buckets, the 8" and the 12" and plan to use the 12"

Opinions?

"What we have here is a failure to communicate." Thanks for that rehash of my favorite movie.

 

[D2Cat]

William1, to give advise it would be nice to know the width of the ditch, how much you need to cut out, slope, moisture in ditch and on slope. Pictures might disclose all that!

Many times cleaning out a ditch can be effectively done with a 3 pt. dirt scoop. If you only need to clean out a 30" path. You can take a long, straight pull and set the depth easily. When full, just pull out and dump. Back in and do again.

 

[William1]

The problem with the ditch is one side is an embankment, 60 degrees steep and about 10' tall. The BX is small enough that I could run one wheel just on the edge of the embankment and the other on the road (keeping the tractor pretty much level right to left), and a more or less straight shot with the BH. I only need to remove 10" depth of material and 12" width should be plenty.
Even if I have to do it fully on the road with the bucket boom swung, it will be a lot easier than hand digging with a spade.
As far as moving the tractor as I dig, I've gotten very good at lifting the back in the air and using the BH to 'drive the tractor forward and backward a few feet at a time. Until I got a handle on that, it was extremely time consuming to get off, rotate the seat, drive forward five feet, flip the seat, repeat.
The wife will be driving the garden tractor with the 1 yard trailer. Four trailer fulls more or less should do it.

 

[William1]

Ok... some pictures.....

Views of the ditch that needs to be excavated. The Drain pipe and the other side of the pipe that needs to be cleared some.

The last picture is of my little tractor, 'Wally' residing in 'Wallys World, party on, excellent'.

 

[William1]

A while back, I was talking about moving rock with the BX and how easy it was. This was 4 tons. I need 4 more. I get it free from a neighbor so I have to be patient. But there is enough there now to deal with the occasional flooding (we just experienced 5" of rain and it did not crest the rock.
You may also recall I am excavating about a 50' circle to be a sort of silt basin. I have a tiny feeder stream I had to cross. First place I got the tractor stuck the day after I got it and had to get a neighbor to tow me out. Now there is a 8" pipe and lots of cement block there along with more Rip-Rap.
Next is a Downstream picture of my 'Canal' I built ten years ago at the waterfall toward 'the lake'. You can hear it clearly from the house. Followed by a view of the canal Upstream toward the bridge I built and then past that, is the Rip-Rap work.
The last picture I see from my office, where I get to work from home.

 

[Little Orange]

I have a 12" bucket on my BH and really wanted a clean up bucket, but the bucks were big. So took the teeth off and added a 3/16" steel plate 6" wide and 24" long, worked for all the projects that were on the go.....until it bent on a root or rock. So took it off and added a 3/8" blade 26" long and 6" wide bolted through the holes for the teeth. Works great for all kinds of digging needs.

Hope this helps.

 

[William1]

Ran the tractor almost all day.
22 bucket loads of lily pads I had previously rakes from part of my little lake, that took from 8 am to just before noon to pitchfork into the bucket and haul to the dump site. Ground sure is soggy from all the rain (5") we just got. Almost got stuck a few times.
Then I attacked the ditch. Using the 12" bucket, no teeth, and a garden tractor pulling a little garden tractor dump trailer, I cleared the forty feet of ditch. That took three hours to dig, haul the mix of sand/gravel/dirt to a path back in the woods and I covered/smoothed out an area where roots were making for a bumpy ride. Each cart is about 1/2 yard and I did six or seven carts full.
Then I excavated out the ditch on the other side of the drain pipe about 8" below the bottom of the pipe and about 8' long, seeing the pipe was about 1/3 filled with silt because the people that owned the ditch and drain pipe, never maintained it. Now with a good rain, it should self clear. I set the bucket down and drove away, using the bucket to scrape a ditch path.
All day, my neighbors little Yorkie was with me, chasing me, bringing me pine cones. Such a good little fella.
All done, just in time for the wife to come home and assume I was lounging about all day.......