4 Uses Of a Dumper/Excavator On-Site

4 Uses Of a Dumper/Excavator On-Site

Of all the equipment available to the UK construction industry, an excavator and dumper are the two pieces of machinery that should be considered a must-have on all but the smallest of sites.

In many instances, by hiring in the right size dumper, and the correct type of excavator, all or most of the hire cost can be recouped, from the money and time saved if two, four, or six men were undertaking the same task manually.
 

The versatile dumper truck and uses of an excavator

Dumper trucks come in all shapes and sizes, wheeled or tracked, and capable of tipping to the front or side. They can be small, where the operator walks behind the machine, and large, where the operator rides on the machine and can move tons of material at a time. Open cast mining and quarrying uses some of the largest dumpers in the world.

The following, combined with the uses of an excavator, are four construction site tasks your everyday dumper can be used for.
 

Site preparation and soil removal

Most building sites require levelling, clearing, and other preparation before any construction work can begin. Using an excavator to do the scraping; turf, rubble, tree roots, and other materials can be scraped and lifted by the excavator, loaded into the dumper’s skip, and dumped into a builder’s skip for removal from the site.

When the hard work starts, so do the excavators. The majority of sites require some sort of excavation, be it trenching for footings or pipelaying, preparation for a concrete base, or a hole for a cess pit or ornamental pond.

Most excavators operate with different sizes and widths of buckets, that the operator can change onsite. If pipelaying or foundation trenches are being dug, a narrow bucket will be used, while large excavations will need wider, deeper buckets. As the soil is removed it is loaded into the nearby dumper, and moved around the site for disposal or reuse.
 

Gravel, hardcore and ready mixed concrete

If the pipework trench requires a layer of gravel, an experienced dumper operator can drop heaps of gravel straight into the trench a few feet apart. Making it easy for the pipelayer to just rake it level to the required depth prior to laying the pipes. Likewise, hardcore can be dropped straight into the excavation from the dumper, allowing a manual worker to level it and tamp it down with a vibrator.

The use of ready-mixed concrete can save a whole heap of time and effort. Whether concreting in pipework, laying footings, or filling a concrete base, ready mix can be loaded straight into the dumper and transported to the job, where the groundworkers just have to rake it out and level it.
 

Hard landscaping

Although government legislation continues to improve health and safety on UK building sites, there are still far too many accidents. Back injuries caused by heavy lifting continue to blight lives, and cause premature retirement for men up and down the country. Professional landscaping companies especially, are prone to losing workers due to back injuries. Working day in and day out lifting heavy paving slabs, ornamental rockwork, heavy sculptures and fountains around a site, takes its toll. In many instances, the combined use of a dumper and excavator can take much of the load off. Excavators can do all the hard graft of digging and excavating where required, while dumpers can remove the soil, and move paving, large rocks, and other materials to where the landscapers are working. Minimising the need for any heavy manual lifting.

Site clearance and waste disposal

On completion of the project, and prior to handover, the site needs to be cleared of all accumulated rubbish. On a large site especially, what’s more efficient? A dumper driver and mate going round site and loading the heaps of rubbish into the dumper, for transporting to the skip. Or half a dozen men walking back and forth to the skip with half-full wheelbarrows.

If you think hiring a dumper and/or excavator may help improve the efficiency and viability of your next construction job, explore all of our dumpers and excavators here. Alternatively, call PSM Plant and Tool Hire to discuss how we can help take the load off.