Best Practices

Best Practices for Working in Sandy Soil

It doesn’t matter if you’re digging, loading material, or simply driving through the site, working on and in sandy soil can create problems with traction, trench safety, and other aspects of earthmoving and construction jobs. To help you avoid issues and costly downtime, we put together some key tips and best practices for digging in sand and operating on sandy soil as effectively as possible.

Use the correct type of CTL and excavator tracks

When digging in sand or driving on sandy soil, ensuring adequate traction can be difficult, especially when working on an incline. We suggest choosing wide, high flotation CTL or excavator tracks. Wide tracks create less ground pressure than narrow tracks, helping reduce the risk of sinking into soft sandy soil.

Choose the best skid steer tires

When operating non-tracked equipment, like skid steers, both solid and pneumatic tires can deliver sufficient traction in sandy soil. What you want are skid steer tires that have deep tread patterns, which will deliver the traction required to maneuver effectively on loose ground like sand, gravel, and similar types of terrain.

Excavate slowly and carefully

When digging in sand, it’s very important that your operator prioritizes precision, caution, and gentleness. Looser soils are easy to disturb, and cave-ins are much more likely than when working in more dense soil. By slowing down and steadily digging out material in smaller scoops, you will increase stability, reduce the chances of dangerous and time consuming collapses or cave-ins, and boost your productivity on the project.

Make sure you use the right bucket

Equipping your machine with the correct excavator bucket or skid steer bucket is important for successfully completing any digging or loading application. When it comes to loose, sandy soils, choosing a general purpose excavator bucket or skid steer bucket with wide teeth and curved edges is typically the best choice. This type of bucket will reduce soil disturbance while still helping you dig and move large volumes of material.

Clean your tracks regularly

Sandy soil will often cause grinding between components, leading to an increase in wear and tear on CTL and excavator tracks. Whenever possible throughout the day, use a shovel to clean out the undercarriage and a pressure washer to blow out sand and dirt from harder to access areas.

Use a lot of grease

Because of its abrasiveness, sand can be very hard on your undercarriage, bucket, and the bushings and pins. We suggest ensuring that all these components are well greased and lubricating them multiple times throughout the day or about every five hours. This practice will help keep sand away from sensitive components, and any sand that collects on the grease will be purged when you pump in the new grease.

Implement the correct trench protection systems

Installing trench protection is especially critical when operating in sandy soil. Sloping and benching, which involve cutting back the trench wall at an angle to create a slope, then developing steps to travel in and out of the trench, is typically less effective when you’re digging in sand, because the ground is too loose and the particles don’t stick together very well. Instead, we recommend using shoring and trench shields. These systems utilize metal supports to shore up the trench walls and help prevent cave-ins on your digging jobs.

Conduct soil testing

Soil tests are extremely important for jobsite and building safety, and they are even more critical when working in sandy soil. These tests help the on-site expert understand what type of benching, shoring, and sloping are required to avoid cave-ins during the excavation process. By knowing the physical and chemical makeups of your soil, you can calculate whether it can bear the weight of the excavation and any construction work, as well as how much compaction will be required.

If you have any questions about operating on or excavating in sandy soil, which excavator bucket to use, which skid steer bucket to use, or digging in sand in general, contact our team today.