Tons of Dirt

When your neighbor comes back from the nursery with a pile of mulch or topsoil in the back of his pickup, you are looking at approximately a half ton to a ton in weight. At the Ark site, we needed to move approximately 1,500,000 cubic yards of dirt, which is equivalent to about 2,700,000 tons.

Imagine how long that would take your neighbor to move that much with his pickup! He’d have to get 20 more people with their trucks hauling 10 loads a day, 7 days per week, for 35 years! Obviously, we needed some bigger machines to move dirt at the Ark property.

A wheel tractor-scraper would get lined up and then two dozers would help push it as it scraped up tons of dirt. There are only about 200,000 tons remaining to be moved.

The Ark Site excavation is done, and we are finishing up the parking lots now. Here is a picture of a utility pole at the original grade.