Winter Excavation is tough on equipment and guys

winter conditions can dramatically change what would normally be a pretty easy job into a difficult task look at this excavator it's working on a footing it's just a normal 48 inch brass fitting that should pop right out of the ground but this 36,000 pound machine can't budget because it's efficient is what can you expect if you get into winter work now every area is different but Mother Nature still affects your bottom lines whether your winters are rainy or if you're like us frozen solid it can have a dramatic impact on your profits at the end of the season take a look at this shot from the book this machine can barely puncture this ground now here in Minnesota we need to have what we call a Frost Ripper thumb to really get through this on this particular site we were hoping that the heat from the building would be able to compensate and keep the ground thawed enough to allow us to get through this project but unfortunately we had about a week where the high was negative eight negative ten and even colder and that cold snap froze the ground solid which made our job even more difficult so make sure that you take into consideration pre-existing conditions before you go into a bid especially in the winter time or and any time when you could have possible issues with the weather now our job today is to remove all of the final debris the frozen foundation of the house that we have just been tore down traction as well as Frost is a major issue take a look at this tract skid loader typically during the summer spring summer fall this machine absolutely rot but in the winter time it's a completely different story as you watch this video pay attention to how the tracks operate in the snow both on that T 180 skid loader and on the excavator you're going to see that we can't get any traction with these equipment that's why when the excavator is grabbing in this soil you see the entire machine sliding around it's not the operator trying to do that it's actually the fact that those steel tracks as well as those rubber tracks just can't fight in these kind of conditions now there's dirt on that street that machine should be able to get it but there's just a slick enough layer of snow and ice keeping it from really being able to take up what happens is it slows down our progress on the job sites and you'll watch this excavator right here sliding all over those excavators are like having a giant snow board underneath your machine or a giant set of skis on a thirty six thousand pound machine you just can't stay still spring summer fall that machine wouldn't be moving wintertime we've driven that machine up onto a trailer on a flat surface and had it slide off the trailer sideways there it's that dangerous the dirt looking inside the tracks you'll see that the dirt sticks in there and then it freezes and keeps the tracks from actually getting any bite in the soil below it it's tough to see in the video but you pay close attention to that frozen dirt in there and that acts just like the wax on the bottom of a set of skis and you just can't get anywhere with it what he's working on there just a normal footing should pop right out be able to snap break in half but it's actually frozen into the bank next to a senato is he trying to remove that footing he's got to separate it from the from the ice that is holding up holding it in place right now making the job even more difficult than it needs to be hey I want to take a moment just to say thank you to everybody that subscribes and to all my subscribers to all you fans out there that are sharing these videos that means a world to me if it wasn't for you guys subscribing sharing commenting and liking I would have quit this a long time ago so a big thank you to all of you for everything you guys do for sharing these videos on Facebook and for sharing them on the different lawn and landscaping forums thank you so much and your house is really appreciated you can really hear the strain the machine is putting on just this one small piece of frozen foundation now imagine having to take up the entire basement so what you're gonna see next is our cheap move what we do is we grab a piece of that foundation lift it high up in the air and let her go when it hits the bottom it should spiderweb if this was a concrete pool this is how we take up the concrete pools we remove we use a big boulder now in this case it still works but it's not very effective because the ground is so frozen but you still keep struggling away you can see how much longer it takes to do a job