Backfilling

These pictures from Sept 16th. 

Oh, no! There's a bobcat in my house!

With the forms removed, the trenches had to be backfilled and packed. Use was made of the piles of clay around the site, and loads of sand brought in and dumped into the interior. Three machines on the site for this day, and this was a rare sighting of all three in close proximity. They do a pretty complicated, well-choreographed dance around the site as they all do what needs doing without getting in each other's way. 

This tool is a mini-roller for packing the dirt into the trenches. The tractor drove in close to the house and the articulated arm is flexible enough to be positioned into the trenches and rolled back and forth. 

 Many loads of sand and gravel were brought in, but with the driveway still unstable, there was also a lot of scurrying around by the bobcat trying to keep up with smoothing out the ruts. At one point, the dump truck got too far over near the edge of the driveway and sunk into the softer dirt up to his axles. 

His load had to be dumped there to lighten him up, and the excavator came to the rescue. Must not be too uncommon of an event as the truck has a tow-strap handy, and a massive hitch point on the front bumper to attach it to. That's the biggest tow strap I've ever seen!

By the end of the day the house was backfilled and smoothed, but the shop was not. They also got a start on the final grading for the yard in general, and worked on distributing the extra clay out in the field where they've been staging equipment.