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PSA: My buddy said to skip the post hole digger for rocky ground, and I should have listened.
He told me this last spring when I was starting a job up in the hills near Boulder. The ground looked tough, but I figured my auger on the skid steer could power through anything. I mean, it always had before. So I went for it, and within the first hour I hit a seam of sandstone and completely wrecked two teeth on the bit. That was a $300 fix right there, not counting the half day I lost. He just shook his head when I told him and said he uses a demo hammer with a spade bit for that stuff, breaks it up first. I tried it on the next section and it was way slower, but I didn't break anything else. Has anyone found a better middle ground for that kind of work, or is it just a slow, careful process?
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matthewh286mo ago
Forget the middle ground, you need to scout the site better first. Grab a steel probe bar and spend ten minutes jabbing it into the dirt where you plan to dig. You'll feel the big rocks before you hit them with a machine. It saves so much headache and downtime, letting you pick your spots for the auger or plan for the hammer.
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burns.ruby4mo ago
Oh man, I gotta push back on that a little. I mean, jabbing a probe bar around for ten minutes doesn't guarantee you'll find everything, especially if you're dealing with a spot that's got scattered rocks or old tree roots below the surface. You can easily miss a big one that's sitting just a few inches over from where you poked, and then you're still stuck with the same problem once the machine starts. Idk, maybe it's just me but I'd rather just fire up the auger and deal with the surprises as they come, because half the time the probe gives you a false sense of security and you waste time avoiding ghosts.
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