Yeah, this is a much more efficient way of doing it.

Thanks for watching!

Thanks man!

Thanks man, I appreciate the feedback!

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the video!

Digging a crown is very much a geographical thing. Certain areas of the country leave the crown, others like it flat. It's yet another example of how interesting this industry is in the way we approach projects and what the "norm" is. Thanks for the comment!

@@DieselandIron Was thinkin about scaling down to a 160 machine so I can tote behind the dump truck. How big of a bucket will your rig handle ? Been running a sh200 sumitomo for years, same thing as a 9030 or 2800

@@telecastinater Those were solid machines. There are a lot of guys that don't want to let those go. I want to say we had a 36" or 42" bucket on our machine and it was throwing it around just fine. If you heaped it up with clay it would get a little light but it was comfortable to operate with.

If you are digging a square house then yes. The footer (10 inch deep part) should follow the footprint of the basement. We dig the footer 4 feet across, centered on the wall line. I would think these guidelines would work for MN. These basements are in Michigan where we have frost as well. I would assume you could call an inspector and get the actual guides for your area.

Sorry it's taken me so long to respond. The main reason we dig them at the same time is for the sake of speed. You already have the large excavator on site so it saves a lot of time and money to not have to bring a second machine back. Another reason we don't fool with it is because we don't have to dig an access ramp for the mini excavator to get in and out of the hole. Finally, if there is enough rain and enough water in the hole to cause problems, it is way faster to come back with a small machine and dig a sump hole next to the footer that we can use to pump the water out.

Sorry for taking so long to reply! The best place to start is one of the corners. Your footing grade is usually 14 inches below the finish concrete floor level. You have a 10 inch footing and then a 4 inch basement floor that will be poured.

+24bosoxfan It's a lot like driving a car. When you first start it's a little overwhelming but then it just becomes second nature. You stop thinking about the controls and instead start thinking about the machine as an extension of yourself. The reason we don't use a trackloader is for several reasons. With a trackloader you would have to cart the dirt out of the hole which wastes a lot of time. The second reason is the fact that a trackloader would just be too big to get down in the hole for a lot of our digs. One of our subdivisions we dug basements in had very small lots and it didn't make sense to try and stuff a trackloader down in the hole. Excavators are very efficient machines for doing this type of work.

Does he look like the fucking landscaper?

In this particular sub it's a sand/clay mix all the way down. There's not really any good topsoil worth stripping.