subject: Using A Backhoe For Landscaping [print this page] Sometimes the cost of renting something exceeds the cost of purchasing it yourself. If you have a landscaping or construction business you may be facing decisions like that every day.
Do you rent the particular piece of equipment often enough to eliminate rental costs and invest in a big-ticket item? Or is it financially smarter to continue renting and grouping jobs together to maximize rental time?
Newman's benchmark for buying versus renting: If the cumulative cost to rent a piece of equipment is more than one-half its purchase price, you may be best off to consider buying it.
For instance, one piece of equipment is a backhoe. Even do-it-yourselfers, depending on how long the job will take, consider buying backhoes to make their jobs easier.
When a large scale landscaping project is started, a backhoe is a great tool to have. This is a specific machine that moves the earth when excavating.
It is also known as a rear actor, extractor, or back actor. It has a bucket-shaped scooping tool attached at the end consisting of a digging bucket on the end of an artificial arm.
They are mostly used in constructing roads or large buildings, but are efficient at moving large amounts of earth around. This system is attached to a vehicle which enables the machinery to shift from place to place as required.
It almost mimics the human hand by digging, lifting and dumping material. And so a backhoe consists of three parts that could be considered similar to a human arm:
1. The Boom. It is attached to the tractor and is like the upper arm.
2. The Stick. On one end it is attached to the vehicle and is like the forearm
3. The Bucket. The other end of the stick is attached to a hand shaped bucket.
There is also another attachment to the tractor that is called the loader. The backhoe does the digging, lifting and dumping work, and the loader shifts the dug material to a different place.
So basically, the backhoe gets to things underground and the loader moves things around above ground. When used together, a job gets done much easier than without it.
There does need to be a driver of the vehicle who is the operator and has three responsibilities - to move the vehicle, to make the backhoe work and the loader to shift the material.
The control panel on the dashboard of the tractor helps the driver operate all three of his jobs. The loader does not require much application, but the operator needs to have good hand/eye coordination and be intelligent enough to run a piece of machinery like this.
When the operator parks the tractor two leg-like supports come out that are affixed at the sides of the tractor, giving it extra strength and stabilizing. Once that is done, the system is ready to work.
There are buttons on the dashboard to use the arm to pull out to the required point of digging. Then the operator uses another lever attached to the hand-like bucket to touch the earth from where the material is to be lifted.
And again there is another lever which is for the digging action. This lever will force the bucket to dig into the earth.
This fills the bucket with the material you are working with. The material is then lifted with the same levers to a dumping truck or is dumped somewhere nearby.
Like the skid-steer loaders, compact wheel loaders and trenchers, there is also a type of backhoe called the compact backhoes. Such backhoes use light attachments and are efficient in digging and faster loading.
They easily dig 6-8 feet depths and weigh less than 5,000 pounds. These backhoes are very user-friendly requiring minimal time to be detached from the tractor.
Apart from being versatile, a compact backhoe is also a heavy-duty earth-moving machine. And even though a compact backhoe may be small in size, it can be used in very challenging applications, thus making it a great machine to use for landscaping your yard.
