Hi everyone. So, some quick background. I live in Iceland, have a piece of land, and have an unusual homebuilding project in its early stages. And the project involves more excavation than your average home, as it's an underground "dome" house. A simplified version:
1) A natural low point is leveled and contoured
2) The foundation is poured
3) Earth is piled up and packed to make a mould of the house.
4) Forms are set up around the edge of the mould wherever the angle of the slope is too steep to prevent concrete slump
5) Concrete is poured onto the mould
6) After it hardens, the dirt inside is excavated from within and relocated to the top of the house (it's being designed such that without the interior walls there's enough space for a small excavator to drive around).
7) The concrete interior is pressure washed to remove the interior cement, leaving only aggregate visible (aka, like a cave)
(This is the approach recommended by my concrete guy)
Honestly, I like working on my house - I've worked on a bunch of side projects already, like my underground shed/workshop. And my architect costs have been coming in higher than were budgeted for, so I've been thinking
about where I could save money. One thing that I keep coming back to is the possibility of doing some of the excavation myself. But there's just one little problem.
I don't have any experience in excavation! ;)
Which is why I came here, to get your opinions on the subject. Here's part of the problem: let's say I wanted to make up the money issue by taking on some remote contracting work in my normal field over the weekends. Assuming I could get some, the government would take over 60% of what I earn (I think the current rate is about 65%). Then I take that 35% and I pay someone. The government charges me 30% or so on top of that. So only 25% of what I earn goes towards actually paying someone else's salary. Meanwhile, if I do it myself, I pay zero in taxes. Hence, even if I'm a lot less efficient in terms of time than a professional, I still get more accomplished.
But of course, it's not that simple.
Obviously, excavation requires hardware. I could rent, which would cost an utter fortune. Even coming to some sort of time-sharing agreement with someone in the area would be a bit awkward, as my job splits up my free time - after-work time and then either weekends, or periods every 2-3 days, depending on what cycle of my job I'm in. So for example, if I were to arrange a deal to borrow or rent an excavator but had to drive it there and back each time, that would be very inefficient. More realistic seems to be buying and then losing depreciation, as well as paying maintenance - and then selling it when I'm done. Either way, I'd have to pay maintenance and fuel. If I'm less efficient at working than someone with more experience, then the fuel and maintenance/depreciation costs go up. So the equation includes, how efficient am I? In the beginning, I imagine I'd be a tiny fraction as efficient as a professional - maybe get 10% as much done per hour. After 5-10 hours, maybe that's improved to 20-30% as efficient. After 40 hours, maybe 60% as efficient. After 200 hours, maybe 80%. Etc. Such a job would be hundreds of hours - not just for the house, but also trenching for power/water lines, trenching for the greenhouse supports, digging for the septic system, driving fence posts, fetching piles of composted horse manure from the neighbors, etc. So for most of the time spent, the efficiency difference wouldn't be tremendous; there would be a great bit of "training" time. In such a scenario, however, I would still leave the "detail" work to someone with more expertise, anywhere that a false move could damage something (or damage myself) or where high accuracy is required - perhaps an 80-20 or 90-10 split.
As for what I personally would like? I like learning new skills. I like working outside. I like having connections with the house project. I'd certainly prefer it to, say, picking up some contracting project working on a database backend for an accounting system, the sort of thing that most reasonable-paying programming contracts are like. More "fun" jobs like developing video games or working for NASA or whatnot are usually a combination of rare and/or poor paying. And all that assumes that I'd actually find extra work. Also, it might be nice skill to have for future projects.
What do you think? Should I consider doing part of the excavation work myself, as much as I feel comfortable with? As for the current situation, I don't think my current excavator guy is being unfair in his fees - he charges 8900 ISK/hr for a 5 tonne komatsu and 16500 ISK/hr for work with a 23 tonne excavator - that's about $71 and $132, respectively. And I know he knows his stuff, I've seen him do all sorts of detail work (he's done some work for me already, setting up my cold water system, making my driveway, and a few other things). The downsides with him are that sometimes it's really hard to get in touch with him. :Þ
If you think doing part of the work myself might be worth looking into, what sort of excavator arrangement do you think I should look into? And what sort of excavator? There's the obvious dichotomy that a small excavator would be better for trenching and interior dirt removal while a larger one would be better for bulk earthmoving on the site. And I'm still trying to get a general sense of just how fast can one move earth around a construction site with an excavator (flat, loose ground (glacial till), but of course the house mould itself will quickly become "not flat" as it grows). I know it depends on the operator, the machine, the task, and all sorts of other things... but am I right in thinking that an X tonne excavator might move in the rough ballpark of about X cubic meters per hour? The numbers I've seen often seem to fall in that range.
You guys are the experts :) What are your thoughts?
1) A natural low point is leveled and contoured
2) The foundation is poured
3) Earth is piled up and packed to make a mould of the house.
4) Forms are set up around the edge of the mould wherever the angle of the slope is too steep to prevent concrete slump
5) Concrete is poured onto the mould
6) After it hardens, the dirt inside is excavated from within and relocated to the top of the house (it's being designed such that without the interior walls there's enough space for a small excavator to drive around).
7) The concrete interior is pressure washed to remove the interior cement, leaving only aggregate visible (aka, like a cave)
(This is the approach recommended by my concrete guy)
Honestly, I like working on my house - I've worked on a bunch of side projects already, like my underground shed/workshop. And my architect costs have been coming in higher than were budgeted for, so I've been thinking
about where I could save money. One thing that I keep coming back to is the possibility of doing some of the excavation myself. But there's just one little problem.
I don't have any experience in excavation! ;)
Which is why I came here, to get your opinions on the subject. Here's part of the problem: let's say I wanted to make up the money issue by taking on some remote contracting work in my normal field over the weekends. Assuming I could get some, the government would take over 60% of what I earn (I think the current rate is about 65%). Then I take that 35% and I pay someone. The government charges me 30% or so on top of that. So only 25% of what I earn goes towards actually paying someone else's salary. Meanwhile, if I do it myself, I pay zero in taxes. Hence, even if I'm a lot less efficient in terms of time than a professional, I still get more accomplished.
But of course, it's not that simple.
Obviously, excavation requires hardware. I could rent, which would cost an utter fortune. Even coming to some sort of time-sharing agreement with someone in the area would be a bit awkward, as my job splits up my free time - after-work time and then either weekends, or periods every 2-3 days, depending on what cycle of my job I'm in. So for example, if I were to arrange a deal to borrow or rent an excavator but had to drive it there and back each time, that would be very inefficient. More realistic seems to be buying and then losing depreciation, as well as paying maintenance - and then selling it when I'm done. Either way, I'd have to pay maintenance and fuel. If I'm less efficient at working than someone with more experience, then the fuel and maintenance/depreciation costs go up. So the equation includes, how efficient am I? In the beginning, I imagine I'd be a tiny fraction as efficient as a professional - maybe get 10% as much done per hour. After 5-10 hours, maybe that's improved to 20-30% as efficient. After 40 hours, maybe 60% as efficient. After 200 hours, maybe 80%. Etc. Such a job would be hundreds of hours - not just for the house, but also trenching for power/water lines, trenching for the greenhouse supports, digging for the septic system, driving fence posts, fetching piles of composted horse manure from the neighbors, etc. So for most of the time spent, the efficiency difference wouldn't be tremendous; there would be a great bit of "training" time. In such a scenario, however, I would still leave the "detail" work to someone with more expertise, anywhere that a false move could damage something (or damage myself) or where high accuracy is required - perhaps an 80-20 or 90-10 split.
As for what I personally would like? I like learning new skills. I like working outside. I like having connections with the house project. I'd certainly prefer it to, say, picking up some contracting project working on a database backend for an accounting system, the sort of thing that most reasonable-paying programming contracts are like. More "fun" jobs like developing video games or working for NASA or whatnot are usually a combination of rare and/or poor paying. And all that assumes that I'd actually find extra work. Also, it might be nice skill to have for future projects.
What do you think? Should I consider doing part of the excavation work myself, as much as I feel comfortable with? As for the current situation, I don't think my current excavator guy is being unfair in his fees - he charges 8900 ISK/hr for a 5 tonne komatsu and 16500 ISK/hr for work with a 23 tonne excavator - that's about $71 and $132, respectively. And I know he knows his stuff, I've seen him do all sorts of detail work (he's done some work for me already, setting up my cold water system, making my driveway, and a few other things). The downsides with him are that sometimes it's really hard to get in touch with him. :Þ
If you think doing part of the work myself might be worth looking into, what sort of excavator arrangement do you think I should look into? And what sort of excavator? There's the obvious dichotomy that a small excavator would be better for trenching and interior dirt removal while a larger one would be better for bulk earthmoving on the site. And I'm still trying to get a general sense of just how fast can one move earth around a construction site with an excavator (flat, loose ground (glacial till), but of course the house mould itself will quickly become "not flat" as it grows). I know it depends on the operator, the machine, the task, and all sorts of other things... but am I right in thinking that an X tonne excavator might move in the rough ballpark of about X cubic meters per hour? The numbers I've seen often seem to fall in that range.
You guys are the experts :) What are your thoughts?
Hi (new here!) Excavation advice needed.
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