How to Dig a Basement | Heavy Equipment Operator

good morning guys mike simon here aka dirt perfect back here on the heavy heavy metal learning channel and today we're going to go over the basics of how to approach digging a basement [Music] so guys this is the basement we're going to be digging today this plane's a little bit skewed here this is actually crawl space that is actually garage we are going to be digging this section of the house right here this will be a basement so for starters what we have done there are several different ways to lay off a basement total station and gps are probably the two best ways we're going to be a little bit old school on this one we just use chains or tape measures and what we have done is we actually come up here and actually laid out the entire basement perimeter on the ground you see that'll be staked by white flags and the orange mark now that is the actual wall this customer wants a three foot over dig my bucket is three foot wide so we will come in here and just basically dig down this side and that will provide the over deck now the next thing you got to figure out is the elevation of the basement some contractors will give you a benchmark in this situation they want a daylight drain out to that ditch so we actually went down to that ditch got us in elevation figured out our one percent grade for slope and come up here and we're gonna be about six and a half almost seven feet deep in that corner now the way i go about approaching these is the first question you need to ask yourself the homeowner or the contractor whoever is overseeing the job is where is the dirt ending up at if you're loading this out in trucks usually you want to start from the farthest point away and work back towards where you're loading so your trucks don't have to back across the hole because they can't float in this situation here they want the majority of the dirt in that scenario in that position over there so we're actually going to start on the back side and work towards the pile that way now what i do on these and i'll show you guys here as we go i'll actually come in here and dig the perimeter and leave the center and then after we get the perimeter dug we'll come back and hog out the center really helps keep your lines gives you a lot of good references to where you're at and uh keeps you trucking on so this job here first thing we got to do is pop a few stumps out because this used to be a wooded area and then we'll come in here and start digging this perimeter and i'll show you guys how we tackle that so guys there's our first line our first line of the basement right there that's actually degrade i'm going to come back in here and dig a step or a terrace or whatever you want to say it's we don't have to worry about this thing caving in on us we're only about six feet deep so i'm gonna dig a three foot wide terrace now about a foot and a half two feet don't quote me on the exact rules because i'm not 100 familiar with the momentum the most soil is you're allowed to have a four foot deep trench and then you've got to offset back four feet and go again so [Applause] we'll get that cleaned up we'll change directions and think the next one [Applause] as you guys can see we got the perimeter dug around there we got our terrace in this is pretty close to being on grain that line right there is our three foot over dig i've actually dug around all these offsets and coming back around over there i still need access in and out of there these are straight lines here so i have not done that yet what we'll do now is we'll get the machine set up here in the middle and i've got this to where i can sit here and hog out this center and get it back behind me over there and actually reach outside the basement once i get to that corner i'll turn and go down that way and we'll continue to get the center of this basement out of there and get everything down on grade so away we go you guys can see i got what i got my first set out right there i've dug as much as i can and reach the throat behind me so before i started on this second one right here i'm actually going to take the time and level me up a pad to sit on the more level or the leveler i can get this machine whenever i start digging it just makes it that much easier to keep it bottom that hole on grade that's kind of what i was talking about at the beginning of the video so instead of getting in a big hurry and just holding dirt out right here i'm going to take a little bit of time kind of level up my machine let my machine get get good and solid nice and flat and level where i'm not teetering i'm rocking back and forth and then once i get up there and get set we'll start swinging dirty just like that there we go [Applause] so we're about halfway done with digging this base but i'm gonna take a second here and kind of show you how our uh how our plan is coming together so first things first we're on this set here just want to kind of point out how i've taken the time i got the machine the ground angle is like this and away machine is sitting in there pretty much perfectly level what it allows you to do is get a really nice flat bottom ditch now i'm a one-man show today so i'm actually running grade for myself so what i'll do is i'll come down here and normally what you'll find you'll hear the laser beeping if it's beeping it's basically within an inch which is kind of our tolerance on this [Music] so what you'll usually find is is the closer you get to the machine the closer you get to the machine your grade kind of starts wanting to come up so excuse the beep and i apologize so we are good from about here to about here so all i do is a very simple method actually i just take into the grade rod and i'll scratch me a line right on the ground where i'm good to on grade and then i'll know whenever i reach back out here and start digging not to cross that line and from there over is high now as we're working our way out of here like i said we've got about half of this basement excavated so let me put that grade rod down you can see this is actually the deeper half here so i've been able to keep [Applause] here bro i started digging down this line i dug that offset and i started a straight wall and i still have this corner here marked so what we'll do is after we get this dug back i will track forward and dig this out and actually finish up on this corner here because all the dirt is going that way that's where i'm trying to stress the importance in the order and how you dig can make this an eight-hour job or an 18-hour job so kind of setting it up having a picture of your mind of how everything needs to work out is uh is pretty important now this line here is a straight line i did not dig that perimeter but what i can do is i can dig that as i hog this section out and work all the dirt that way hopefully that makes sense to you guys final set up here so this here is all on grade and just the way we need it this is our final pass here this is the line going that way what i have done is i've dug this over far enough that i can sit here and reach and bring that dirt back to me head out that way in one way so the other way this machine will travel at this point is straight on back just continuing to throw the dirt back behind us and exiting on out i've done everything i can to keep good reference marks keep a good few known points all the dirt we moved i still had a flag right here marking this corner i still had a stake over there marking that wall so we lined the two up went ahead and painted that line in right there we're all about ready to finish up on this one so let's dig her out and see how she turns out [Music] all right guys there you have it that is the final product that's approximately a 2 000 square foot basement right at seven foot deep on average dug down on grade if you guys seen the pattern we dug we started here worked our way across then dug out the purpose for that was to get the dirt spoils over here the reason for that is after the foundation's in the contractor will use that to backfill up against the house hopefully you guys found this video somewhat helpful somewhat educational if you'd like for us to elaborate on some part of this video in a future video comment down below and let us know again mike simon aka dirt perfect on the heavy metal learning channel thanks for watching guys

Channel: Heavy Metal Learning

Views: 84,574

Keywords: How to dig a basement, digging a basement, basement digging, excavating a basement, land survey, home foundation, building a foundation for a house, dirt perfect, excavation, basement dig out, excavator videos, basement dig, grading land, heavy equipment operator, construction trades, heavy equipment, construction, basement perimeter, construction contractor, in the field, foundation, heavy equipment operator training, how to operate an excavator, excavator training

Id: rAmAoxmWkLI

Length: 9min 17sec (557 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020