Batters.How to do 'em

[68a]

This should prompt some reaction.....
Some pics of a batter that nobody wanted to do for some reason that escapes me.
Words to follow.
Pics show the previous efforts of sorting this job out.The D8 at the bottom left of one pic gives an idea of the scale of them.In one pic the D6K driver has even tried to topsoil the batter by running up and down the slope vertically.It's a mess.Another pic shows the heave of muck on the top tier and another pic shows where an attempt to topsoil horizontally has gone wrong.That was done by a 'seasoned operator'.He was about 60 and imformed me that he had been 'driving D8's since I was shi#ing yella'.....Well,not my D8's mate.....

[68a]

Pictures don't really show them very well,but I can assure you all that they are all bent out of shape.
They are around 135 vertical feet and done in 2 tiers with a 16 foot road at the middle.They are done as steep as we can get in most parts but this current project has been avoided for months.
I have pulled the batters here for 5 years with the D5H and pat blade but I pulled it out a couple of years ago due to the fact it is just too old to be buggering about with batters of this size.It's to be used on haulroad and tip maintenance only.It has a good operator but I used to go down myself to do the batters.Contractors with new Cat and Kommie dozers do laugh abit at me still using old kit and allways fixing them at night so I decided to let them have all the glory instead.

[68a]

Anyway,for the last two years not a lot of muck has been shifted due to the accountants deciding that we had 'enough sand uncovered to last 18 months'.They were right of course but we tried to tell them that it was because we had some first class retired operators that drove the old machines on a part time basis 'little and often'.I advised that we keep going at this steady rate to keep on top of things.......but noooo!
I managed to keep my kit on hire on a part time basis but somebody decided that my own personal services were 'too expensive' and it was decided to 'simply train our own men' (their words) and everything would be allright...........
Due to the lack of activity the batters took the last two years of block tipping and occasional ironing out with one of the D8's or the D5 but nobody wanted to hire in a new dozer to trim them.
Fast forward to June of this year and I was asked to 'pop down to the quarry and take a look at a batter'.As the country recovers from the recession sand sales are up 30%,there is no overburden removed and they need to start stripping new fields....but....they need to get the reclaimed parts of the quarry passed off from the planners.Funnily enough,the batters are a total bombsite.Bin Laden could have done a tidier job with a fu#kin Scud.

[68a]

As I looked at the batter with the new quarry foreman I firmly imformed him that it wasn't simply a job of trimming up for a couple of shifts.I advised that they were out by a couple of meters in some places and that cut and fill was initially required by the D8 way before trimming and this would amount to around 20,000 cube being moved by my rough guess.After he recovered from his choking fit I then gave him more bad news by reminding him that he would have to hire somebody else in to trim them as the D5 was finished from batters.This didn't faze him so much as he said they would simply hire in a dozer and put one of their newley qualified drivers on it........Ok I said.
My 'method statement' that I had to advise him of went something like this......'first of all,get that halfwitted c##t on the D53 Kommie off the batter,secondly,'keep out of the way whilst I get the D8 fired up onto it'.Simple.
The new Komatsu D53( with pat blade,aircon,heated seat,stereo and Bluetooth) was sent on haulroad duties and the old stinky D8( with a seat and some windows) chugged out onto the batter.

[68a]

He returned a few hours later and was already happy with what I had done.'Can you start full time?'he didn't actually know who I was but I assured him that I would come back myself until the batter was passed off and then hand the task over to my stash of old men.'Great' and that was that.
That weekend the Komatsu and 'driver' went away.
More pics and story another time.

[jcb4cx]

absolute class mate

[essexpete]

We must have some photos post D8!

[68a]

some more

[innes]

He returned a few hours later and was already happy with what I had done.'Can you start full time?'he didn't actually know who I was but I assured him that I would come back myself until the batter was passed off and then hand the task over to my stash of old men.'Great' and that was that.
That weekend the Komatsu and 'driver' went away.
More pics and story another time.

Hi Nicky, I went to Coulport base many moons ago to repair an excavator and gave a lift to a dozer driver who was starting that morning on a D6, when I came out of the site a couple of hours later the operator was at the gate waiting for a lift again, it had been raining there for about three weeks and the operator was told to trim some batters,he was a good operator and he tried but could not achieve anything as the muck was like porridge, he told the foreman that he didn't need a dozer operator but a plasterer and was promptly sacked, happy days
Innes

[68a]

The 1st job with the D8 was to tart them up to appease the planners.The D8 civilised them although they were still out by a country mile.You can see the D8 giving it a gentle slope although a steep gradient is actually required.This made a large visual impact and pleased the powers that be and allowed us to start much needed stripping in new fields to access sand.
A couple of months later I tackled some more of the batters with the D5 ripping the swelled clay at the lower part of the batters so the D8 could shove it up.This made them much steeper as was required.I had the bizarr problem of the top of the batters being massively over filled with a huge hollow in the center that you could stick houses in and then the bottom was overfilled again.The D5 was pushing the top overfill into the hollow voids and the D8 was pushing the ripped clay on the overfilled bottom uphill into the void to hopefully meet in the middle.
This operation was only partially successful and both time consuming and hard on the dozers.The D8 was deliberately overfilled with both engine and tranny oil and both tractors coped well.
After half a shift I made the decision to fire the dumptrucks up top and simply push everything down hill to make a huge pile of clay at the foot of the batter.I wasn't happy to get the muck all the way to the top only to shove it all the way down to the bottom again but in doing this I was able to fill all the voids and put some sort of vague shape to the job.
After a week of this 'rough shaping' it was time to get the D6K and the so called veteran operator to jump on the side slope and trim it all.He didn't,so I suggested to the foreman that he be fu#ked off the seat and give his tractor to me as once the weather breaks for winter it would be left unfinished which may lead to the planners stopping the job or water getting in and washing it away.
Half an hour later I was at the controles of a Cat D6K lgp with pat blade and all the toys.
I sat in the cab for half an hour wondering how the hell to start the bloody thing.Eventually a dumper driver came down and educated me on how to rev it up and move it backwards and forwards.The other driver had the throttle on 'economy'...what the fu#k????.I had the thing turned up to 'kick arse mode' and took it for a test drive.
Within half an hour I had mastered the little tyke(I also figured how to turn the radio on) and took it to the very top of the batter and spent the next 3 days spanking it's ass cutting the entire batter horizontally from the very top to the bottom with all the surplus spoil being hoovered up by the D8 and swept along the toe of the batter to form the bottom of a new tipping area.
This put smiles on peoples faces.This is what we're paid to do.
Their only complaint(and it was a joke) was that the previously good fuel consumption rate for the D6K had been totally arsed by me.Apparently....it's quite thirsty when it's put to work properly.