Due to the scarce nature of this machine, those of you that work in areas with dense rock, what method or machine do you use to cut through that type of material?

 

If you find a way tell us.
We trench the easy then use a excavator with a rock bucket and another with a jack hammer. Around the lake we have rocks that are 1-3 feet thick but 20' across. We just end up beating the hell out of them till they give.

 

How come every single job you guys do is a one-of-a-kind absolute crap show? Thats seriously impressive.

I'd think that sooner or later you would have a job where it wasn't 2ft from the edge of the pool or digging a ditch across the lava crust on Mars.

 

How come every single job you guys do is a one-of-a-kind absolute crap show? Thats seriously impressive.

I'd think that sooner or later you would have a job where it wasn't 2ft from the edge of the pool or digging a ditch across the lava crust on Mars.

I really feel like Captain Quinn from the movie Jaws. Everyone turns down the job and they end up with us and have to pay the price. Lol

 

No coral rock, but we have caliche over here.

Sometimes they use a jackhammer attachment on an excavator depending on how far they are going, other times they use a wheel trencher like you have posted for longer runs.

You can't be the only contractor in your area dealing with the stuff, is there an excavation contractor you can sub, that'll have the equipment to handle it?

 

We have a sub we call for missile bore jobs. Maybe they cut rock too.

 

When I lived in central Oregon, I'm pretty sure that the lava rock around there went all the way to China..........

I would often use the DuPont Bro's. Excavation Company...........dynamite........

I don't know how this would work in coral but in lava, a good-size dozer with a single ripper tooth on the back would cut a trench about 3" wide and a couple of inches deep with each pass.

 

My mom lives in Bend, I'd have to agree with the lava rock to China comment. I'll bet driving ground rods around there isn't a popular grounding method either....

 

I would attempt it with a backhoe (CAT 426?) with a narrow bucket with rock teeth and have a quickie saw with a diamond blade to cut the edges (only after I could not find an excavation contractor to do it).

 

We ended up with a backhoe and a 12" regular bucket.
We scratched our way through it.
The good news is we have some nice fill for our slab base.

Thanks for sharing this. Curious, were rock teeth available or did you decide to just not worry about it?

 

What are the dimensions of the trench?
What are you burying?
Concrete cutting specialty contractors are something to consider.

 

I reached out to our underground bore sub. They flat out refused any job with coral rock. He did say if we had success with a certain type of machine, they would send us all of the work we could handle.
that rock cutting wheel machine I saw on EBay was $14,000. Sunbelt rents theirs for $1,000 per day. It might be better to just buy it if the job was any decent size.

 

My Sunbelt rep said they just put a rock chain on a trencher and that seems to work.
the coral rock isn’t as hard as boulders but, I remember working with my dad as a teenager, they had a job at a state park in Everglades National Park. They had the same kind of rock there. The great trophy on that job was a pick that has the end curled like something out of the Nightmare before Christmas logo.

 

My Sunbelt rep said they just put a rock chain on a trencher and that seems to work.

True but it beats the heck out of the operator and will shake the trencher until something rattles loose.

 

Only way I’ve ever seen was hitting it with a ship.... Then again it end so well.... View attachment 151551

 

How come everyone is trenching? A directional boring machine is easy and cheap.

Well so much for not reading the entire thread.

Rock-Solid Drilling Tips

The saying "patience is a virtue" is certainly true when it comes to drilling through rock. Whether it is sandstone, volcanic rock, coral, or granite, these mineral...

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You might want to call Vermeer and Ditch Witch for advice.

 

How come everyone is trenching? A directional boring machine is easy and cheap.

I've never heard that before. What do you think it costs to bore versus using open trench?

 

Dunno. I've never trenched. We always used directional. Especially on this one job where they had fiber everywhere and no one absolutely no one knew where it was.

 

We decided to use a backhoe with a 12” we took a 3 ton Kubota mini excavator with a 24” bucket out to the site.
We were able to scratch down 6” with just about 3 passes. I think a heavier marking with a smaller. Bucket will get us where we need to be in a day.

 

Get the rock teeth if they are available.

 

We ended up with a backhoe and a 12" regular bucket.
We scratched our way through it.
The good news is we have some nice fill for our slab base.

 

I used to use a ground cutter (trencher), now I do trench work with a backhoe loader

 

The equivalent of the Caterpillar D-9 will do it in short order. Now there is all these other foreign machines that use different model numbers than Caterpillar , but any good ground man knows what is what when somebody say's D-9.
It's how to cut a service trench thru solid lava flows in Kona and Maui.