[AT] Hey Ralph!

[Alan Nadeau]

Here in NW Vermont, right up against the Canadian border, we try to get 
water lines down 6'.  Very rare that they freeze at that depth.  House 
footings are safe at 5' in unheated buildings, less in the case of a full 
basement that will see heat all winter.

When I first got involved with construction, in 1969, it was rare that any 
residential building was done in the winter.  Housing starts just stopped 
about Jan 1 and would restart in mid-late April.  At that time the cellars 
were excavated either by bulldozer or a 'dozer working in conjunction with a 
tractor backhoe.  Tractor hoes were pretty small and wimpy compared to what 
we have now so a foot of solid frost would defeat them.  There were no 
hydraulic excavators in this area other than a few operated by major digging 
contractors.  Even those had to be handled with kid gloves to keep them 
starting during the winter.  Moving them required a detachable gooseneck 
trailer due to the size.

Now there is a proliferation of hydraulic excavators in the 12-16 ton range 
and either hydraulic breakers of rippers which can deal with just about any 
digging conditions.  They can be hauled on a, very common, 20 ton flatbed 
equipment trailer behind a tandem dump truck.  Those machines have allowed 
residential construction to go on all winter.  Worst case is that you might 
take a bit to get a hole through the frost but once through, where you can 
apply the breakout force of the bucket, they will do anything needed.   The 
only caveat to that is that the site has to have been snow covered right up 
to when you start to dig.  Ground that has been kept cleared can still put 
you back into some serious work to get through it.

In January, 2013 I ran a 26 ton Cat working in frost which was maybe 18" 
maximum.  That thing just hauled it out in big chunks.  The Cat was bigger 
than usual and had to come on a detach but I needed all the reach available 
and that was the only option.  A 12-16 tom machine could have pulled that 
much frost with ease.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ATIS" <yostsw at atis.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Saturday, November 21, 2015 7:57 PM
Subject: Re: [AT] Hey Ralph!


> Best frost guide is house footings.   Code will provide a depth that will 
> never freeze. Bottom of footings have to be 24" below undisturbed dirt 
> here in Forsyth county(this was when I built my house 25 years ago.  Not 
> sure if that is still accurate).  Yes the inspectors showed up with tape 
> measures.  I've heard of 5-7' footing depths up Ralph's way.
>
> Spencer Yost
>
>> On Nov 21, 2015, at 8:29 AM, charlie hill <charliehill at embarqmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>>
>> The frost line here is published at 8" but I don' remember the ground
>> freezing that
>> deep since I was a boy, more than half a century ago.
>>
>> Charlie
>>
>> -----Original Message----- 
>> From: jtchall at nc.rr.com
>> Sent: Friday, November 20, 2015 6:04 PM
>> To: Antique tractor email discussion group
>> Subject: Re: [AT] Hey Ralph!
>>
>> Rare for the ground to freeze real deep here. Often times it will over
>> night, but thaw on top by mid-morning. I guess the fields were fairly 
>> flat
>> or he would have had trouble with the picker dog-tracking?
>>
>> John
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message----- 
>> From: Don
>> Sent: Friday, November 20, 2015 9:57 AM
>> To: Antique tractor email discussion group
>> Subject: Re: [AT] Hey Ralph!
>>
>>> On 11/20/2015 8:18 AM, charlie hill wrote:
>>> Ralph,  is there any chance that just after the freeze up you can get in
>>> the field and harvest it before it gets snow covered?
>>
>> Sometime in the mid 50s we had a very wet fall so could not get in to
>> pick the corn.  This was before combine shellers, we used a two row
>> picker and stored corn in a crib.   My uncle made skids out of old dozer
>> blades and when the ground froze enough we used his D4 to pull the corn
>> picker.  It was not many years later we bought a picker sheller.
>>
>> A huge corn crib we built was still standing when we visited the farm
>> last summer.
>>
>> -- 
>> Don Bowen       --AD0NB--
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> AT mailing list
>> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> AT mailing list
>> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> AT mailing list
>> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>