When it comes to digging in new waterlines, setting cistern tanks, creating small ponds, excavating footing trenches for new buildings and even planting large trees at your place, nothing can beat the compact excavator for efficiency. These digging machines are designed to do one thing and they do it well. I recently spent some quality time with the Bobcat 418 compact excavator – it is really on the miniature end of the compact excavator range – and found it to be capable and a breeze to operate. In fact, I wouldn’t mind having a Bobcat 418 compact excavator of my own – just to play in a big-boy’s sandbox with. Seriously, I can think of plenty of uses for the machine around the farm.

The Bobcat 418 compact excavator is small enough to get into barns for digging in that new water hydrant and it’s narrow enough (with tracks retracted) to easily scoot through a 30-inch gate. A skilled operator could get the machine through a 28-inch wide opening, but I know I would scrape something in tight conditions like that. If you think about it, you could pretty easily drive the Bobcat 418 compact excavator through the front door of your house and tear up the living room floor to excavate footings for that new masonry chimney you have planned.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that the Bobcat 418 compact excavator is too small to get much useful work done. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This excavator weighs in at more than 2500 pounds, has a digging depth of 6 feet and a bucket breakout force of 1,865 pounds per foot. Tree roots, stumps and thin limestone layers are no match for this excavator. The Bobcat 418 compact excavator also swings within the footprint of its tracks when they’re extended, which eliminates tail overhang and decreases the possibility of the excavator’s weights and engine compartment coming in contact with buildings, fence posts or other nearby objects.

Operating the Bobcat 418 compact excavator was a breeze, thanks to a pair of joysticks that controlled everything from swing to boom crowding to bucket curling. The seat is comfortable, the noise level is low and in the event that you do wind up topsy-turvy, this excavator is equipped with a tip-over protection system (TOPS) that will keep you from landing on your head.

If you have a significant amount of backhoe work to accomplish in a relatively short period of time, I would recommend renting a Bobcat 418 compact excavator or another machine in the same class. If you anticipate a lot of backhoe work over a long period of time, it might make more sense to purchase the little excavator new or used. Check with your Bobcat dealer for more details.

Read Part two of this pond renovation series here. 

 Day three of this pond renovation project began with the installation of the new plastic overflow pipe. This 8-inch diameter pipe is smooth and will flow more water than the old and larger diameter corrugated pipe system. Installing the pipe was as easy as dozing out a groove in the top of the dam at the correct elevation and angle, setting the pipe, and carefully packing it into place. A water-stopping collar was also installed around the pipe on the pond side of the dam.

It didn’t take too long after installing the pipe to get the new spillway grading completed and to spread topsoil over the dam’s surface. The topsoil will give the grass seed (soon to be planted) a fighting chance to produce a soil-holding stand of turf. I don’t know when I will get to it, but I will report on the grass planting when it happens.

Now all we have to do is wait patiently for the renovated pond’s level to increase. It is moving up by inches per day at the moment, but it would come up rapidly with a single spring rainstorm.

I will report on constructing a new pond from scratch next week. Ironically, the new pond’s cost will be lower than the pond renovation, but it won’t be as tricky to accomplish.

Read part one of this pond renovation series here.

Read part three of this pond renovation series here. 

With the heavy machinery in place, it only took a few hours to pluck the 30-year-old hackberry, Osage orange and mulberry trees from the dam during the pond renovation. Jay, our excavator used his 3-in-1 bucket equipped track loader to grab the trees, wrench them from the ground and move them up the hill so I can saw fence posts and firewood from them. Meanwhile Jay’s partner, Ben, used the D-6 Caterpillar dozer to begin reshaping the dam and spillway, and to make a cut to help remove the corrugated drain pipe.

The first full day of pond renovation concluded with the vertical portion of the drain pipe still in place but all of the stumps and voids in the back side of the dam face removed, and the dam’s top re-contoured. Since removing the vertical portion of the drain was the riskiest part of this project, Jay and Ben felt it would be better to knock off early and start on it fresh the following day.

On the second working day of renovating our pond, Jay used the track loader to remove all the water-saturated soil behind and below the rusted out drain. Jay then pulled the drain from the dam, while Ben pushed dry clay into the void. They both admitted that the process made them nervous, but they were careful and quick, and it worked … very little water was lost from our pond. The rest of the day was spent repacking dry clay into the void left by the rusted out corrugated drain pipe.

All that’s left with this pond renovation now is to install the new overflow pipe and find enough clay to build up the dam’s height a few feet, reshape the overflow spillway to avoid soil erosion, and coat the entire earthworks with topsoil so that the grass seed I plant has a chance to take hold. Stay tuned, I will report on that tomorrow.

Read part 2 of this pond renovation story here. 

Read part 3 of this pond renovation story here. 

We have several old human-made ponds on our Osage County farm. All hold water for part of the year, a couple of the ponds hold water year round; all leak considerably. Since water is a valuable resource in our part of Kansas, where the rural water supply is maxed out and a potable well needs to go down about 300 feet, we decided to invest in renovating at least two of our ponds. The first is our largest. It was formed by damming the deepest, steepest draw on the property around 40 years ago.

Since that pond has been surrounded by grassland for its entire life, it isn’t silted in too badly so our pond renovation won’t include dredging. This pond (Kate calls it draw pond) has maintained a level about 3 feet below the top of its drain pipe for the past couple of years. We determined that at least part of the problem relates to the corrugated drain pipe’s rotting away below ground … inside the dam. The other issue relates to the 30-year-old trees growing on the dam’s downstream face. Roots penetrate the dam and provide channels for seepage.

Since renovating this pond required moving a lot of dirt and trees, we hired a professional for the job. Pond renovation such as this requires heavy equipment in the form of bulldozers and track loaders … machines that weigh in the vicinity of 55,000 to 60,000 pounds each. They don’t come cheap, but they get the work done incredibly quickly, so the overall expense isn’t bad. And since it takes some effort to get the machines to your place, it doesn’t hurt to have several pond renovation projects on tap.   

If you have ponds that need renovating, be sure to shop around for a knowledgeable excavator. We learned that the reason our other ponds leak is because they weren’t built correctly. I will write more on that after we get this pond renovation completed.