Excavation with a Dingo

I was working too hard to take photos so I found this short video on You Tube that shows basically what I was doing all day. Not using the rotary digger but just the excavator on this Toro walk behind tractor.

This was another rental from Arvada Rentalls because I just got tired of digging out the slab area for the spa by hand. I basically gave up and called the rental place and this hand excavator/loader was available for today. I woke up bright and early to get there by opening at seven to rent the excavator. They rent it with a tilt trailer so I just needed to have a big enough truck with a 2 inch ball hitch.
It took me about 2 hours to get the slab area excavated and then I had to set up the forms. Then I lined the form with 6 mil plastic to help keep the spa warm and used the excavator to pick up and dump the free pea gravel into the bottom. I used almost all of the stone for about a 2″ layer of stone in the form.
I used 2 x 12’s for the form because we had them. Two eight footers and a 12 footer. But I decided to put the edge of the slab back a little bit from the edge of the patio wall so the final slab will be about 11′ 3″ x 8′. I’m thinking I will try to use up the waffle boxes that are left over. There are 10.
I will definitely need more stone and will have to rent a tamper to be sure it is settled under the concrete. I will also call about getting a load of stone for the front patio area. I also excavated that, and cut some of the grassy path back to make the patio a little larger with less grass to maintain. Maybe we will plant along the flagstone path as a border between that and the patio. I put the extra dirt on the bottom of the patio area and used the excavator in reverse with the blade down as a grader.
Although I only used 4.5 machine hours I think I got my money’s worth out of the 8 hour rental, about $212 with the gas. I have to wake up again bright and early to return it by 7:30. I love having a rental place close by. So many expensive toys to bring home to play with. And it helps to get a task done from that infernal list.