Backhoe Rental

This time of year the weather can be fickle, so when I saw a favorable forecast for the weekend I took a chance and rented a Backhoe to clear the building pad and take care of some left over trash (cement and bricks) from the previous owner. At the top of the list was removing that stump and since I'm nowhere close to being an expert at the backhoe, I called a friend of mine to see if he could come over and take care of it for me. He was available and all was set!

The backhoe was delivered Friday afternoon for a week's worth of time. Travis wasn't coming over until Saturday afternoon, so I took my time and dug a big hole in the backyard to burn the pile of small branches in the background of this first picture. I also needed a hole to throw the stump into later on.

When I was all done, I ended up with a good sized pile of clean fill to use on the pad later on.

Travis digging out the stump

It took over an hour

 But finally, it came out

...and was pulled over to the backyard and dropped into it's final resting place where it will rot away and create a big sinkhole to deal with later on...

Once the stump was removed, I back filled the hole and then started to work on scraping out the building pad.

The topsoil was hauled over to the back yard to fill in a shallow trench: 

Then I went over to the back corner of the yard and dug several large holes to bury the trash left over from the previous owner:

Overall, a very productive weekend! I rented the Backhoe for a week, but it only took two days to take care of everything I needed, so I'll get a little bit of money back on the rental charges.

This morning it was forecast to rain, so I got out at first light and finished just in time. I took this  last picture to show a before/after from the first picture.
I ended up scraping approximately 6" (150mm) off the top of the pad.

The bottom edge of those batter boards represent the top of the slab.
The ground at the South West corner (far left batter board) is 17" lower than the North East (near right batter board) corner, so it'll take quite a bit of compacted fill to level things out.

Now I'm waiting for a couple loads of fill dirt and some crushed rock.