Expert Test Pit Excavation

do you want smaller bites so when we dig a test pit to determine if the lot is buildable we've got to be careful that we don't just go gouge into the dirt and move mass quantities of dirt I want the engineer to be able to see the stratification in the soil because that's going to help him determine if the Lots buildable or not now I'm gonna be guessing Alex is sweating bullets right about now because this is actually his first time ever digging with a backup [Music] now you see that wobble right there in the boob that means our pins are loose and that actually adds a little extra layer of challenge to it making precise excavation even a little bit trickier so you can't hear it in the video but Brian the soil engineers already caught on that alex is a green operator [Music] so it's actually kind of keeping track and it was two scoops in Brian figured it out and by now it's starting to test his patience I know the thumbnail of this video says failed but what's happening with Alex is not the fail part this is part of the learning process skip to above the 14-minute part to see an epic fail and that one is actually on me and what you're seeing right now is what every good backhoe operator started out there is not a single operator that's read any piece of equipment that wasn't at this initial awkward stage so there's absolutely nothing wrong with this but with so many eyeballs on them I wanted to take the pressure off from them so I'm gonna hop into the cap with the soil engineer the developer the Builder and potential customer are all watching I thought it might be a little bit easier if we let Alex step to the side and watch how to do the dig and then when there's not so many people standing around and he's trying to perform in front of them he can then be in a more relaxed environment to start to do the excavation so now it's my turn [Music] now digging a test pit is actually a lot different than digging a basement digging a trench digging anything else because as I'm digging I'm actually as the operator also looking for layers of stratification in the soil and what that means is I'm looking for a change in color a change in the feel of the material anything that's going to tell me that there could be potentially unsuitable soils beneath the existing topography or the existing level of the ground and if I spot that I want to be able to point that out to the soil engineer so I'm not just digging I'm actually actively working with the soil engineer trying to…