Tamping a berm..... Equipment?

[snoozer]

I asked my son how hard they are to handle and he didn't think it was too hard. Said you need to find the right speed and it would be fine. He said the medium speed can kind of jerk you around a bit. If you are looking to rent, find a contractors rental place.

 

[Mmathis]

I asked my son how hard they are to handle and he didn't think it was too hard. Said you need to find the right speed and it would be fine. He said the medium speed can kind of jerk you around a bit. If you are looking to rent, find a contractors rental place.

Thanks! I've tried searching for info about using a "jumping jack," but not much out there (or I'm not using the right search keywords). It's comforting to know that they do have different speeds. We've located a rental co. -- we're going to see about renting one on Friday. That way we can keep it over the weekend at no extra cost.

Now, the ironic part: We have a huge pile of clay-dirt left over from the renovation -- that's what got the sand & Portland tilled into it and was intended for the berm. LOL, what looked like WAY TOO MUCH dirt, may actually not be enough, esp if we super-compact it. Who'd a thought!

 

[Mmathis]

Cheap: Home Depot

Free: Invite your neighbors' kids over. Berm party!

Option #1 -- we'd have to buy a few more of the "hand" tampers to have enough -- then Hubby would complain that "we have all these extra tools that we're never going to use..."

Option #2 -- not a bad idea, but the attention span is too short, and we'd have to provide for potty breaks, snacks, etc. And they'd prob end up DIGGING more than tamping (not to mention all the "surprises" that would be buried in the berm.....)

 

[Mmathis]

If enough room, enough work to do and you have restricted the horizontal spread of the soil the HD tamper is the max otherwise the hand tamper should be good. I know nothing about the other device.

Btw, the best tamper is one that someone else is using.

LOL, Lou!

I got creative on finding a way to restrict the horizontal spread. I want the berm to be about 10"-12" high [but due to the contour of the yard, some spots will be a little lower than that]. Any kind of flexible bender board-type stuff that I found was only about 6" high at most. I ran across an old post in a forum [some construction forum] where someone suggested using the pegboard stuff that you put on your garage walls to organize tools. I happened to be in LOWES at the time I was googling this, and they had some panelling sheets that were 4' x 8' that were under $10 a sheet. I bought 2 [and by the hardest, got them loaded in my Highlander....]. Cut them into 8' long strips and they are perfect! Plenty of flex for the curves and sturdy enough to hold back the dirt.

@Big Lou -- so thanks for motivating me to persevere and come up with a containment method! Much easier now to load & pack the dirt. I would say this one intervention has made an 80% improvement in my frustration level!!!!

Still have a few more inches of dirt to go.....

The 2 levels of cinder block are holding the dirt back on the pond-side. I sunk a yardstick down to the collar between the berm and the cinder blocks for my reference point of the 12" height, and used that to get my "level" reference point.

Now, just need to complete the job before the paneling deteriorates, LOL!

 

[Big Lou]

Best wishes for continued progress. Glad I could help in a small way.

 

[Mmathis]

An update......

The "jumping jack" tamper thingy was a total bust -- at least for our purposes. And it probably has a lot to do with our berm-prep set-up [and maybe our expectations....?], though I don't have enough knowledge about these things to say just what went wrong or what would have made it turn out better, if anything.

Rented one to use over the weekend. We were shown how to use it -- basic operation is fairly straightforward. But when we set it up on the berm and started it up, it pretty much destroyed the berm as well as the forms we had to confine the dirt. You might say that it was over-kill.

It did compact, but it did it in such a way that the dirt went out laterally, in all directions, despite our walls. So disappointed, as it really seemed like it was going to do the job for us. Maybe if they made a smaller version.....but that probably wouldn't be practical from a construction standpoint, so.......it's back to hand-tamping!

This would be perfect -- a powered version of the manual tamper. I going to call every rental place in town tomorrow and see if ANYONE has one.....

 

[snoozer]

Oh no. I am sorry it didn't workout for you.

 

[Big Lou]

Sorry! Was concerned it would be too powerful. Better luck moving forward. Chin up!

 

[Dave 54]

Maggie so sorry to hear that we were expecting to hear great things today

Dave

 

[JohnHuff]

The "jumping jack" tamper thingy was a total bust

Have you tried this?

 

[Mmathis]

Have you tried this?

LOL!

This one really is called a "pogo stick" tamper: