Using a minidigger - how to shift spoil?

[htgeng]

Im going to hire a minidigger to dig out the raised area of my back garden (will post pics later this week). A local guy said I can get one for £65 a day which seems ok. He said he would give me some instruction, so Im up for trying it out.

The next problem will be shifting the earth to the front garden. Its around 12 metres distance. I thought I would be smart and look at conveyor belts but they work out around £70 per 3 metres, per day! The HSS guy suggested a powered barrow which is around £40 per day.

I also need to provide a new retaining wall which will be around 1 metre high. I don't really want to build a brick wall. The kind of thing I would like is the purpose maded stacked blocks that they use for building roadside embankments. I have looked at caged gabions, but that would take up too much room in the garden. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[Static]

Retaining wall options, brick, timber post, cribloc (interlocking timbers), gabion, brick with concrete pockets, concrete, precast concrete, cavity filled, engineered embankment... few other more expensive large scale options.

 

[WabbitPoo]

Shifting soil - the powered wheelbarrow is quite a good option in that it saves your back but can be slow to manoeuvre. Just make sure you can do it all in one day and not over a weekend and you'll minimise the cost.

Other than that, get some mates round with barrows and just do it manually. The worst part about shifting soil is shovelling it into the barrow, so given that you can use the digger for that then its not too big a deal (unless its uphill!)

 

[noseall]

at our local tool hire shop you can hire a mini excavator plus a mini, skip loading dumper, which is the same width as the digger.

it is by far and away the quickest, most effortless and economical way of moving spoil.

don't hire the power barrow, they are very un- wieldy.