Rototiller HP

How many horse power required for a 5 foot Rototiller. Soil
we have is clay.

HP is not that important as ground speed you need a real slow gear. You mite need to make more that one pass.

I have 24 hp Kubota with 5' tiller. Only problem I have is if soil is worked fine the tiller will work about 8" deep. Will suck the engine down quickly. Black soil in WC Illinois. 5 more horses would be good for that depth.

(quoted from post at 16:17:56 02/20/17) How many horse power required for a 5 foot Rototiller. Soil
we have is clay.

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10hp per foot would be a good start in clay. A lot depends on the tiller and the speed. I run a 5' Howard (1000+ lbs) and a 62 pto hp tractor and have killed it in wet clay. I don't run real slow, but this Howard has a speed selection that I have set to the high side. That said, if you have a lightweight tiller, creeper gears you might get by with 30hp.

Fred The guys are giving you some high figures in my experience but each to his own. I have been a KUBOTA dealer for over 28 years and sell a lot of rear mounted tillers. Lots depend on the transmission of the power tractor. A hydrostatic tractor of 24 pto hp will drive a 72 in tiller, however I usually put a 60 in on them. The 30 hp with any kind of slow transmission will work fine. Hydrostatics work better because you can use high engine speeds and still have slow ground speed.

(quoted from post at 16:53:35 02/20/17) Fred The guys are giving you some high figures in my experience but each to his own. I have been a KUBOTA dealer for over 28 years and sell a lot of rear mounted tillers. Lots depend on the transmission of the power tractor. A hydrostatic tractor of 24 pto hp will drive a 72 in tiller, however I usually put a 60 in on them. The 30 hp with any kind of slow transmission will work fine. Hydrostatics work better because you can use high engine speeds and still have slow ground speed.

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Ahh, but I till a garden 3 times faster and twice as deep as my Kubota competition

Gene you are the first one who said make several passes. Congratulations!

We sold a lot of Howard Rototillers for Ag application. Farmers wanted to travel at least 4-5 mph, work 8" deep and get good tilth. That being said a S model tiller with "C" blades required 1HP/inch of width. The bigger M series tillers with heavy duty "L" blades required close to 160HP for a 130" machine.
Loren

I run an Allis 5030 with a 36" tiller. But with the ground speed selection it has it would easily handle a 60".

Gearing is everything.

Back in the '70s my brother ran a Howard K series 80" wide with a late John Deere 3020 and it was all it could do to handle it in Low Gear. Not to mention needing a stack of 9 front weights to keep the front end down. But it sure worked up soil well.

(quoted from post at 17:25:16 02/20/17) I run an Allis 5030 with a 36" tiller. But with the ground speed selection it has it would easily handle a 60".

Gearing is everything.

Back in the '70s my brother ran a Howard K series 80" wide with a late John Deere 3020 and it was all it could do to handle it in Low Gear. Not to mention needing a stack of 9 front weights to keep the front end down. But it sure worked up soil well.

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I have an 80" Howard on this AC 185 Diesel (75 pto hp)...it pulls it well. It became my favorite last year...I bought the tiller at auction for $500 and have $2100 into the tractor. I make over $125 an hour tilling gardens with it pricing by the square foot. I'm usually 25% less than my competition.

Biggest thing with a roto tiller is being able to go slow enough or it won't do a good job . I pull a 14 foot lelley roterra with a 100 hp

I have a 66 inch and a 48 inch tiller. 54 hp. will run the 66 inch in about anything I've run it in and not be working too hard. My 39 hp. tractor would run it ok in most all conditions and my 30 hp hydo will run in it ok but would be working it hard with slow going. The 30 hp tractor plays with the 48 inch tiller in most conditions. You need a hydo or a geared tranny with some slow speeds, as others say, is the key. I do some custom work and I try to stick to the biggest tractor to do so. Less wear and tear and much better on fuel than working a smaller tractor hard.

If your just using a tiller for a garden and such I would just stick to something that would cover your wheel tracts. You will still be surprised how much ground you can cover even with a small tiller.

I run a 5 foot tiller on my IH B275 that has 33 PTO horsepower. Low range, 1st gear, at 1.5 MPH in heavy clay. Works it hard but does the job.

I run a 5' tiller with a NH TC29 (29 hp). Runs it very easily. Been using that combination for about 15 years with zero problems.

If I want to till deep and pull the tiller right doing primary tillage I like about 8 to 10 HP per ft.Cultivating or light tilling 5 HP per ft will work.

If it is counter rotating (not many are)(mine is) traction is an issue, need front wheel assist. I pull a 4ft with counter rotating tines, which is best, with a 20Hp 4w hydrostatic drive. It does a great job in tough soil.

I have Houston Black Clay. I recently bought a TSC 6' tiller (my first) and have used it a few times now. Tractor is a Ford 3000 somewhere around 35-40 engine hp. Tiller is a no brainer on power requirements. Where I had steel in the soil approximately a year ago, in 2 passes I had a planter ready, mulch bed running around 4" or so deep...buried a finger in it and then some but I may have been able to go deeper.

3 pt setting and skids on the implement control depth....forward speed just determines how long it takes to get to your desired depth with available soil conditions. I was primarily on the learning how it operates curve so I didn't pay that much attention to actual depth obtainable. On the clay that hadn't been touched in over 40 years, I ran over it twice with a Hay King Pasture Renovator, (coulter, deep soil ripper) and then twice with the roto tiller and achieved better depth with results planter ready also. Could have run a spike toothed harrow afterwards for a baby's hiney smooth surface but didn't.

The trick here is that ground speed needs to be slow to give it time to work and you can set the depth of penetration, another variable that you can select if using low hp tractors. This means that you don't need all that much hp to run it. The 6' weighs a little over 700# so assuming 5/6 of that for a 5 footer, you have no problem with a 30 hp tractor in my opinion with a 5'. If you get down to 25 hp, the frame may be so low that you can't lift it high enough when in the transport mode, but maybe not if you have proper ballast forward, like a FEL and maybe full of dirt. I have a 24 and it would require the 5' width to cover the tracks but I also have a 30 hp Ford so there is no reason to test the 24 if I chose not to use the 3000 tractor.

I now have a lot full of ground tillage implements that I thought I needed for soil prep. that are obsolete. These three implements, ripper, tiller, and harrow are all I need to go from actively growing vegetation to drilling......course this suits my application. Obviously what I said isn't true in everybody's application as all are different and have different tillage requirements.