Levling site for barn

The front is level and it slopes off about 2' to the back of where the barn will sit.

I've been quoted $1,800 to have it done by a professional but this will get me some loader time and help me justify the expense of the tractor to myself and my wife.

The first thing I need to decide is if I should just have fill dirt brought in or if I should move the dirt over from somewhere else.

It will take about 40 yards of fill the way I calculated it. The first 10' is flat then it slopes down 2' over the last 30'. 30' X 30' X 1' average fill = 25 cubic yards. I guess I need to have it slope down away from the building so assuming it slopes on a 4 to 1 ratio I need another 10 yards or so for that. (6.66 on the back and 3.33 on the sides) Plus I figure another 5 yards at least for extra.

I have a local gravel pit that has some stuff they call cement waste that I think would make excellent fill. They have a deal with the local concrete places to come and clean up their dump sites when the truck comes back from a job with leftover cement or they just wash them out. They screen it and it is really nice material and packs excellent with lots of fines and a little bit of gravel in it. It is kind of expensive though at $200 per semi load delivered vs. about $100 delivered for just regular topsoil. They said a load would be about 20 yards.

I really don't have anywhere close that I want to dig out to use my own fill. I have a pit about 100 yards from the site that I want to put the building but I would have to dig a road up out of that part of the pit because the road going into the pit would be about 300 yards. That would be quite a haul one bucket at a time with my FEL. I don't have a dump trailer or a dump truck to move the dirt with.

To put it down I've been told to spread 6" deep and drive over it with a bucket full of material back and forth to pack it in. Then spread 6" more etc. Does that sound right? How many times do you need to pack each layer and should it be watered down between packing?

I think that should get things started. I appreciate all input and suggestions.

Thanks, Nathan

Good luck Nathan.

Mark

If only 2' of fill build the building first then do the filling in. That's what I did on my last building.

First off I'm not a earthmover by trade, so I'm not pushing their "cause."

If you are putting up a 30 x 40 metal building I'm pretty sure you want to have the best possible building when it is finished. A big part of that is the pad. If it is not done correctly you will not be happy with the end results. It appears that for now you want to leave the floor of the building dirt or covered with rock/stone of some sort. However, if sometime later you want to cement the floor it will be even more important to have a good pad.

The first question I'd ask is how much time do you have to devote to the pad preparation and then I'd ask you how good you are with a loader? Unless you are pretty good with a loader, it will probably take longer than you anticipated and will be harder to get "right" than you anticpate.

If you want to get some loader time, I'd recommend that you use the laoder to finish off the floor and the driveway after the building is constructed.

Bottomline, I'd bite the bullet and pay the $1800 to get the pad professionally prepared.

Have the big dogs build that pad for you.

They can see all kinds of things that you won't even think about. Like level, square to the world, drainage, erosion, approach way, etc. A ‘do it yourself’ pad almost always leaves something to be desired.

Nice part is that they can have 'er ready to build on in just a few short hours.

Allan

I'm not Mr. Lighnting with a loader but thought this might give me a chance to use it some. No big hurry, I thought I could spend a few evenings on it and a couple Saturdays maybe.

I realize that the pad will be important to the finished project but my understanding is that I will be doing basically what they would be and I might be able to spend more time packing and watering it and waiting for it to dry than if they were going to do it.

I've used that cement waste on other projects and it really is good stuff. I thought about building the pad with 1 load of cement waste then putting topsoil on top of that. I would want topsoil around the sides of the pad where it slopes off so I could plant grass on that.