Home Built Pit Bucket

[Creole]

We thought someone here might find this useful. We built this bucket for our tractor so we can scoop out our pits without renting equipment. It works fairly well after some practice and with our tractor required about 1000 pound counterweight on the 3 point to keep the rear wheels on the ground. We can't quite get all the mud out of the pit, but we believe we will save money not renting a track hoe or hydrovac truck to do this job. It cost us around $300 in material and an afternoon of welding in our shop to build.

Creole

 

[MEP001]

That's pretty cool.

 

[DiamondWash]

Make a video of it in action.

 

[Creole]

I will video the next time we use it if I don't forget.......

 

[copperglobe]

What size tractor is that? Very nice.

 

[Earl Weiss]

I always felt Pits could have liners. At the Dole plant in Hi the trenches had basket liners. They would simply pull and dump the baskets when they got full of pineapple Pieces. One or perhaps 2 liners in a pit with a ring or Bar on top that a tractor or engine hoist could pull out and dump would seem a great easy fast way to clean a pit.

 

[Creole]

it's a 3032E 32 HP hydrostatic drive. could be a tad bigger though LOL

 

[Creole]

hope this works

Ok not sure how to upload video from hard drive. LOL

 

[Creole]

Maybe now......[video=youtube;vAauYmhHZVA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAauYmhHZVA&feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

[Earl Weiss]

Luv it. After visiting the dole Pineapple plant where their drainage trenche ere line with baskets that caught pineaple pieces I always thought Car wash Trenches could do the same. Have a series of baskets and buckets with handles that lined the trench and use an engine hoist , Back Hoe or tow truck to lift them out. Dump them or let the stuff dry in the liners while you put in a spare set.

 

[MEP001]

Earl, I used to run a wash that didn't have pits in the bays, instead there was a drain in the center of each with a bucket that caught all the debris and almost all of the mud. It took maybe five minutes for all six bays once a week to empty them on the bay floor, scoop it into a bucket and put it in the dumpster. The main trap only needed to be pumped about every 10 years.

 

[Ric]

Very cool! Where do you dispose of the dirt?

 

[Creole]

Right now on my own property a block away. I'm using it as fill for a low spot. Usually it goes to a landowner outside of town with a dump trailer to be used as a road base. We've not used this bucket with a dump trailer yet but should be able to do so.

 

[copperglobe]

That looks like it works great. Questions: What do you do with the mud after scooping it out of the pit? How deep are your pits?

 

[copperglobe]

That looks like it works great. Questions: What do you do with the mud after scooping it out of the pit? How deep are your pits?

You answered where the mud goes, sorry I should read closer. How deep are your pits?

 

[Creole]

Our pits are 4 feet deep. This actually took a little bit of playing to come up with a full bucket each time. there's 6" side clearance on each side of the bucket and the pit wall. It works best to push the mud all the way to the end of the pit, allowing it to flow around the sides of the bucket as the bucket fills. At the end of the run the bucket is full. We can't get all the mud out of the pit, but we can get as much as we could when we rented a track hoe. The only way we've gotten them completely emptied is with a vac truck. With the machine rental savings, this is working out nicely. We haven't tried pumping the water off before digging them out with this bucket and will probably try it that way the next go around. The only thing is with it being so long, the hydraulics are really fast, it's hard to get used to making small moves to keep from throwing the mud everywhere.

 

[rph9168]

We always used to pump the water out of the pits before removing the mud. We did it on a regular basis to avoid having the mud pack down too much which made it difficult to remove.

 

[Creole]

We also pumped the water off before removing mud with a track hoe, but kind of got out of the habit of doing that since we've been having it sucked out with a vac truck and they add water to wash it in the truck anyway. When the pits are pretty full of mud there's usually not much water standing. We emptied some of the mud this week to make sure they didn't fill up while we were gone a few days and have some one else watching the wash, so I didn't take time to do anything but dip out about 4 loads of mud per pit. Should buy quite a bit of time .