Big Pile of Dirt

The B.P.O.D is essencial equipment for a site! It's what creates the dust or mud, a building site is not an official site unless it has large quantities of dust or a minimum of 4" of mud on the ground! If a builder goes home clean, he would get a talking to from the missis, but if he is up to his eyebrows in dust or mud then it's been a hard day regardless of what hes done!

So who do you think has been on site out of the two above?

I don't know about bringing in rubble. and carting it away later. It sounds irregular.

The topsoil is usually moved to a heap and eventually used at the end for rehabilitating the balance of the site. In SA this is actually prescribed by law.

You are partially correct. The contractors usually do skin off the top soil, and as the project progresses they charge the job/customer to haul it away. Then when it comes time to do the landscapeing they charge the customer to bring in top soil.Usually your own or some that is nowhere near as good as what they originally hauled away. Just another way for contractors to double dip, and screw their customers.

In two words, it's "mo' money" for the contractor.

Regards,

Ing. Robert Forbus

What??????

Hilltopper nailed the reason. Screw the customer.

omw7 gave a good answer. Usually the pile is topsoil. The contractor is required to take off the topsoil because it has organic material in it. If it is left inplace it will rot and leave a void and thus cause a weak spot under the foundation, slab or pavement. They usally save it until the end of the project for distibution over the grass areas. During that last process, they have to dispose of the excess topsoil. Sometimes they sell the topsoil or take it to a job where they need it.

Sometimes it's just excess soil.

However, there are times when those pile of earth are use to compress the soils underneath, instead of digging it up and recompacting it.

often times while excavating, the contractor may use his head for something other than having his hard hat rest on his shoulders and he will stockpile the site with fill. Show up with gravel, remove topsoil, return with gravel ... lay pipe, backfill ...efficient trucking.

I've seen that, too. I'm talking about a B.P.O.D. in one corner of the lot, that stays there for 8-12 mo., then is removed just before pouring the parking lot.

There are so many piles of soil and aggregate materials on a construction site e.g Overburden, stockpiled top soil, suitable engineered backfill for replacement of unsuitable materials, unsuitable materials for used landscaping fills, aggregate subbase, aggregate base, and contaminated aggregate subbase and base which can not be used. I am surprised to here they pour a parking lot, it is atypical to use PC concrete for a parking lot, usually use asphaltic concrete.

Post 7 was outstanding!

The first thing that happens on a construction site is a survey and soil samples.

We just did a construction project. Our dirt is basically Gumbo (exessively soft). They removed dirt from the building site down to 8 feet deep. When they backfilled it with "select fill", they brought the elevation up 2 1/2 feet from the original elevation.

There are elevation rules (laws) for any new construction project for flood protection.

Reading the answers to this question was amusing. Ignorance is bliss in many ways.

Contractors starting a new building site, even residential ones, must remove a portion of the existing soil. This is called over excavating. They collect the soil in a pile, remove rocks and crud from it, called "processing", and add some moisture or allow the soil to dry, depending on the need. Then they relocate the soil in the hole they removed the soil from, running over it with "scrapers" and "blades" which weigh many thousands of pounds each. This is called re-compacting the soil. They must achieve a compressive strength specified by the "engineer" who made the site plans. They then may have to over excavate the area where the pile was located, place that dirt on the newly compacted area, process that dirt, and replace and re-compact it in the hole made where the dirt was removed. In other words move from side to side on a tight area. The do this work so that the compaction of the site is adequate to support the structure being built, including all the weight expected to inhabit the structure after completion. If they don't do this work that seems so ridiculous to some of you, the building would settle, crack, and possibly become unstable. It's a bad day when a building collapses. Unfortunately, digging in the dirt makes dust, and sometimes mud. But ... wouldn't you love to have a great big machine at your command so you could play in the dirt too?

HarryBurt,

There are as many answers to your question as materials that might be encountered at a construction site or specified by the ............well, who ever designed the project. Try these:

If your pour concrete and have no place for the transit mix truck to wash-bpod.

Some county / state environmental departments actually require this.

As mentioned, structurally unsound scrapings, unsuitable fill, replacement structural fill-multiple bpos.

Got block masons, they need sand-bpod.

Need roads to get equipment and trucks through a soft site-you guessed it.

Septic system or drain field involved is excavated dirt and replacement rock.

Existing sites generate great bpod in the form of broken asphalt or concrete (kept separate to cut down on disposal cost).

How about the old gas station that use to site on the site. Big contaminated bpod.

Base material before the asphalt goes down is a bpod.

There is nothing worse for a contractor than moving dirt twice. Most of the time I think you will find it comes out of his bottom line.

If the big pile of dirt is there it's probably because it was in the specification. Wonder where they come from.

Errrr............ in review this sounds like a rant which was not my intent. I've had a hard day moving those bpod's in the hot Florida sun. I forgot to mention the part where the contractor screwed up and ordered too much material.

Pepper