Towable Hydraulic Earth Auger, Help Needed.

geraldooka

Hello all,

Thanks in advance for reading my post!

I run a small reno business and have just started doing fences. Previously we have done a lot of deck work. For decks we put down Bigfoot footing forms and have our mini excavator guy do the digging for us.

For fences his services are overkill and he doesn't have a unit that can handle an auger.

I have rented a hydraulic towable unit from HD and while it had the power to drill the holes, I had a very hard time getting down to 24" (clay) because the bit just would not grab the earth. It took me bouncing on the handle and a lot of hand digging just to get to 22". The auger bit it came with was in poor condition. Would this have anything to do with it? Is a bit supposed to grab and pull itself down the hole?...

No one around here seems to have a planetary drive type earth auger. So the cheapest I could get for someone to come down with a mini skid is 4 hours at $260 (includes their travel time) and 140 for the auger rental. Thats for 8 holes...

I guess my question is if I can find a sharp auger bit do ya thing that would do the trick?

Thanks again.

Michael

firemike

Hi Michael

Like any bit, if it ain't sharp, it ain't gonna cut. A good rental company (yes, that leaves HD out) that actually takes care of their equipment would know better. A dull bit really has to work to get through clay. I had a 24" x 60" bit for my backhoe and you could tell when it was getting dull just by the way it was digging. Same with my hand-held auger. When the cutting edge is getting dull, it really labors to drill the hole.

Also, if the cutting teeth/edge is not the same width as the auger, it will cut really slow. The cutters will cut their diameter fine, but then the auger screw is forced to scrape the side of the hole to its final diamater. Hard work and wears the heck out of it.

I had a friend that had a two-man post hole auger, took him 8-10 minutes to dig a 42" hole. Looked at the bit, the end was worn down so bad there was barely a cutting edge left. Cut the worn end off, fabricated and welded on some new cutter mounts, installed the new cutters, and it drilled a hole in less than 2 minutes. Here in Michigan we have everything from sand to hard wet clay, even from one end of a yard to another you can change soil types. It pays to keep the bit(s) in good condition just in time savings.

__________________
-Mike-

bcf

Those two behind units look to be balanced to pull the bit up, therefore you probably always need to keep a good bit of downpressure. But bit sharpness is really the key, as mike said.

__________________
Matt Ehrenzeller-General Manager
A Great Divide Fence Company
www.agreatdividefence.com

BuiltByMAC

I have been told by my rental company that augering out the hole with increasingly larger bits works well to get deep with the handheld augers. Start with a 10", auger hole to depth, change bit to 16-18",run into hole again, change to 24" for final hole width.
I personally have not tried this method (of course I asked about options after spending a day of wrestling with the auger!) but it sounds reasonable.

And I don't think you're assured any higher quality machine renting from someone other than HD. I have yet to find really high quality anything from a rental shop, be it HD or a standalone. Rental shops run their machines into the ground before they replace them and many, many renters don't respect the machine (or know how to use them correctly) so the rental machines get trashed quickly.

I agree with the others in that, like any cutting tool, the sharper the cutting edge, the less muscle needed to make the cut.

Mac