OT: Building in isolated location

[pete]

A trench for power is a lot less demanding than water or sewer Bill. When your digging that trench you'll want to seperate any larger rock away from the rest. That way after they or you have placed crush below and above the power line you backfill with the fine material you removed and the larger rocks get put in almost at the top of the fill. You don't want the large rock anywhere close to any line because normal ground vibrations can cause them to migrate onto the line. And they will wear through. Marker tape is a good investment and is usually placed 8"-12" above the line so when or if someones digging in the area at some point in the future there's a visual warning of a buried service. At only 2' deep you can just backfill but drive the tractor multiple times up and down where you've filled to help compact the soil. It's called wheel packing or track packing when there's no wheels. Then backfill to final grade. Doesn't hurt to wheel pack it some more. Saves having a long low spot showing up later since it will slowly settle on it's own.You'll never get it as well as mother nature will, so you can expect some low areas to show up later anyway. But the wheel packing helps a lot. Oh yeah, DON'T try to pry rocks out with the bucket. You will bend or break the teeth off. Dig around them then lift them out it will save you a lot of money in repairs. Your machine is pretty light duty and not really designed for rock so you need to be gentle with it. But no machine is designed to take prying on rock. I've seen teeth adapters and bucket lips bent on 1100 Hitachie hoes.

Slowing down while swinging? Again it wasn't me and I never heard a story of exactly how it happened that was believable. One of the "operators" up at Kemess mine sheared the stick right off a 450 Hitachi hoe. One pivot ear was sheared off completely, the other bent over at about a 60 degree angle. Those machines weigh around 45 tons so you can imagine what it took to do that. But the bucket had to have been full, extended out and at full power and speed while swinging to do that. Some of the bent steel was over 2" thick. If I remember correctly that machine spent over a week in a welding bay then they had to bring a company in from over 600 miles away and line bore the repair. Plus a new stick cylinder, new hard lines and hoses. I'm rough guessing 30k-50k in repairs. My 450 had a hydraulic quick change on it, my cross shift didn't visually check the clamp that holds the bucket after changing it out. Bad thing was he was digging above the old pit that was about 1100' deep, with maybe 300' of water in it. Dropped a 15k bucket off the end of the stick and it hit the water. Mistakes can happen pretty easy so you need to be careful.

[seal killer]

Jerry--

Thank you.

It is certainly tranquil. When the wind is still I can hear the creek far below on the south side. If I move over to the north side, I can hear that creek, as well. Turkeys abound as well as deer. There are black bear; we have even seen one; a very big one. There are cliffs to explore and huge rocks to wonder about and climb.

--Bill

[TomB]

Having owned a ski area with lots of buried power lines, some snowmaking guns require 480V 3P, I can attest to the need for non sharp fill around the line but at only 2' deep I really suggest conduit. Anytime I had to dig and repair a line I tried to afford enough conduit to armor the section before it was refilled.

[warmstrong1955]

Off on a tangent here, reference to Pete talking about the Hitachi.
We finally got a Hitachi at a minesite that always had been renting or buying Caterpillar. Rather than send them one of our EX400's, we sent out a shiny new EX450LC. One of the first out. We put a thumb on it, and on the barge she went. We wanted to make a good impression.
A few months later, I got a call from Hitachi in Houston, and an emergency fax, about a problem with the main hydraulic valve. Seems it had a flow problem, that caused the boom lift spool to spin in the body. Not good. It would damage both the spool & the bore, and the first symptom, was the boom would creep, or actually fall back down.
An hour later....we got a call from the mine. Again.....not good.
The mine was remote, to say the least. Got to say a lot for Hitachi. They air freighted a 1200 lb valve from Houston to Alaska, and paid all expenses for us to change it out, including the 'crane'. The crane we had to use.... was a helicopter. I had two mechanics get the vale ready to come out of the machine, and had the new one in town, ready to sling and haul out to the mine by A-Star when they were ready.
Fantastic pilot....did the swap without a hitch.

Back to your regularly scheduled topic....

By the time you get done diggin' holes & ditches....you'll be a whole bunch more skilled Bill!
Practice does it, but doin' it does it better! Just don't get in a rush.


Other Bill

[pete]

A bit OT but.
Ours had hydraulic thumbs as well Warmstrong. I really like those 450 LC's.Nice size and comfortable to sit in all day. We finally got new ones with AC and they were really nice. I do like the 750's better tho. I've run a hell of a lot of Cat equipment but few of there hoes other than a 235 that was old enough not to have the track pedals, only sticks. Sounds like that was a gold mine. Largest I've run was an old Hitachi 1100 and one of there 5500 hydraulic shovels. Actaualy that 5500 was the very first one off the line and had a placard in the cab saying it was the worlds largest hydrualic shovel at the time. We got it from I think Suncore in Ft. McMurray.

[warmstrong1955]

In Southeast AK, EX450 was as big as we did. And we put thumbs on everything....from our little Takechis & up. They were almost mandatory for the area.
The mine was underground, but they were upgrading surface tails & waste rock disposal areas, which is they rented a bunch of surface equipment. We rented some A25's at the time too.
There were some EX1100's at Isbelli....maybe Red Dog too....not sure, That was in the interior, so not my territory.
Greens Creek mine on Admiralty Island, out of Juneau. Silver, Gold, Zinc, and Lead. Hi-grade, and quite an ore body. Geologists dream.....
No need for A/C there.
There were some 235's still running around the area when I was there. Old tech...and before Cat bought Mitsu.

Hitachi had a EX5600 at MinExpo last year. They just keep getting bigger and bigger.
Not my thing though...I'm an underground guy..

Oops....still off topic huh....


Other Bill

[seal killer]

Bill and Pete--

Fascinating stuff! Keep it up.

I'm on my iPhone so can't contribute much … but I can read! I'm looking up the machines you've mentioned.

--Bill

[pete]

Well since you don't mind going a bit OT Bill,
Today the 5500 and 5600 models are pretty much classed as medium size. The one I was running had twin V16 Cummins in it. 4 turbos on each engine.Other than the cooling rad fans and alternators all they ran were the hydraulic pumps. I had a main line blow on me once and dumped over 7,000 galoons of oil out in less than a minute before I got a warning in the cab. Those pumps could really move some oil.I believe O&K had or still is the largest hydraulic shovel made.The current tire technology limits the truck size, that limits the shovel size.Have never worked underground only construction, a bit of logging and open pit. Have run up to Cat 992 loaders so about the only thing underground I could run is maybe the scoop trams. Even as far north as Kemess was temps got into the high 30's C but still had frost almost every night in the summer. AC was nice for keeping the bugs out as well.

[warmstrong1955]

I have never worked in an open pit mine, other than a small silica mine in Arizona. They used silica as flux in the blast furnaces for the copper mines back then.
I did work at some mines that also ran open pits, but that wasn't my thing, and not why I was there. All underground. Surface equipment to me was support, and for exploration.
As up close & personal as I've been with a 992 or 994....was sitting in the cabs at MinExpo. Same with the big excavators. My avatar is more my line of equipment....yes....scooptrams. I worked at the company that built those in the pic. I took the pic.... Just a front end loader you sit in sideways....with mine design criteria. To give you an idea....an elephant, is a horse designed for a mine.
My experience in logging, was at the dealer I worked for in Juneau. We rented & sold road builders, EX400's, and shovel loggers, Pierce Pacific & PSM fronts on EX400's. When I left there, I went back to a hole in the ground where I belonged.

Kemess.....there was an open pit copper mine in BC....north of Smithers named Kemess. Last I heard they were going to go underground. That Kemess?
Was Royal something....not sure anymore, but I know it changed owners a while back....maybe more than once.


Other Bill

[pete]

Other than the equipment there's no difference between open pit and underground at night.

Yep that Kemess. Royal Oak owned it before I got there. And afaik they are or have gone underground. Too political to go into here, but Kemess as a company won't open another mine in Canada. We bankrolled there buyout of a couple mines in Australia before closing down and they sold the Kemess property to some underground company. Pretty rich gold/copper deposit. Not many or any shovel loggers around the Princeton area. All hoes, feller bunchers, processors,skidders and usually cat loaders for the landings and truck loading. But the wood is fairly small in this area. I worked a season at the north end of the Dean River inlet around 1996 running Cat road graders. It's about 100 miles north of Bella Coola. Mostly hand falling, yarders and grapple hoes on the landings in that steep ground and big wood. Tough road building as well. A whole lot of drill & blast just to get a road in.The Pacific off road logging trucks would take a real big loader so the grapple hoes work better.A rare day when you hadn't seen half a dozen grizzlys. Same up at Kemess along with wolves etc. Had to have your head on a swivel when out of the machine and outside the main pit. I had one wolf who I guess trusted me and used to sleep almost under my hoe in the winter for the engine heat while I was loading trucks. As soon as he heard the machines travel alarm he'd get up, wait till I got repositioned again then curl up under the counter weight. The cookshack food I'd pack for him every shift helped keep him around as well. He seemed to like it a lot better than we did.

[warmstrong1955]

That's it....Royal Oak. Then it was Northgate I think. Not sure now, I forget....but I think I read somewhere like InfoMine the new owners got their permits to go underground.
Princeton......Copper Mountain Mine? Guessing.... Sorry....I keep up a bit with the mines...or did. Kinda semi-retired now. :
Landscape is quite a bit different there than than most of southeast AK, as well as the trees. Lot of big ones, as well as some steep country in SE, and way too much muskeg. We were an IR dealer as well, and sold a lot of track drills for road building too.
If you want to see brown bear, Admiralty Island is the place. More Brownies there per square yard or square mile....any way you figure it, than anywhere on the planet, so they say. I don't doubt it. Every vehicle and piece of equipment that roamed on the surface, had a radio. If you broke down, you didn't hoof it out. Not a good idea. Those Alaska brownies out there weigh a good 1000-1200 ponds, and are mean ugly. Not a lot of wolves though...but there are plenty of 'em there. I think they were hidin' from the bears so they laid low.
I've seen coyotes do stuff like that, but not wolves. That's interesting!

Other Bill

[seal killer]

Bill and Pete--

These are great stories!

--Other Bill