Drilling post holes???

[Ed]

I had a friend call yesterday, he's trying to drill post holes (54 of them) for a pole barn. It has been extremely dry here this summer & the ground is hard as concrete. My friend tried to drill the holes with a 3 point auger on a tractor & couldn't even get the thing to start in the ground.  :(
He wants to rent an auger for my Bobcat & have me drill them, figuring I can get some down-pressure on the auger from the loader.
I've used the auger attachment several times, but never in ground this hard. There is no moisture for 4' down around here.
Anyone have any luck trying to do this before? Any suggestions??

Ed

[floyd]

Wet the area where you want to dig the holes. Drip on it wil be more effective than sprinkling.

[Sunfield Hardwood]

Special Ed. I hear ya about the ground being hard , I also am in Mid Mi.. I welded a bracket on my three pt auger on the outboard end [ past the auger bit itself ] and I hang two 100lb tractor wts on the bracket. It makes all the difference in the world, It also keeps me from climbing on top of the thing while its running to try to get it to dig.  :'(Ive got pure clay around here and it's about like concrete since its been so dry, good luck, oh yeah I think the skidsteer auger would work fine.

[Dana]

I drilled post holes for our new pole barn this summer in heavy clay/rock using an old utility pole auger. It went very slow until I tried using my smallest bit (6") first . Sort of like predrilling a screw hole!

[beenthere]

I recall seeing a special auger with a few extra cutters at the business end. While I don't think it was made for rock, I believe it was designed to get through the tougher, harder ground that you speak of. Maybe a Bobcat rental place would have some idea if they've heard of such a thing.

I know a Bobcat with an auger is a world apart from a 3pt auger. The ability to reverse it is one great feature, plus I have found that moving around a bit while boring is helpful to get past some tough spots, like with rocks.

Short of that, can he get any dynamite?  ;D I've used that for holes when I hit large boulders. (Only problem was being adjacent to a barn full of chickens, and they seemed to want to fly to one end, and stack up in one huge mass of chicken feathers. Not pretty, but got a chuckle just the same  )

[Furby]

Don't ya still need a hole for that method ???

I remember many years ago putting in post holes for my parents deck.
My Grandpa, the wise man that he was, said no more of this trying to dig with a shovel.
He went and got an electric drill, put a big spade bit in it, and we proceeded to "drill" our holes! ;)
An 1 1/2" spade bit does pretty good, just gotta clean the hole out with a tin can as you go. :
Needless to say once we made it far enough down that we couldn't reach any farther, that was deep enough! ;)
And of course the bit was never the same. :D

[SwampDonkey]

Was asked if I had a post hole digger to erect some signs around the yard of the marketing board. Yip, can get my hands on one in a jiffy. My grandfather had a manual post hole digger we used around the dog kennel and out buildings to put up fencing and jack up the buildings. Well the soil we dug in around home was nice, soft, loose loam. In the yard where they wanted to erect the signs it was hard pan clay with alot of stone mixed in. Needless to say we had to hire an hydrolic post hole digger mounted on a 3/4 ton truck. Four holes and $1600 later ...........  : :

[Ed]

Thanks Guys!
I'll suggest adding weight on the 3-point auger, maybe I can get out of doing this.  :D
If that don't work, he better get the garden hose out, make it as easy as possible on me. ;D

beenthere,
I can see them chickens now.... :D :D :D

Ed

[Phorester]

This is probably not available for us average people, but maybe it will give you an idea of what you can use.  A soil scientiest friend of mine got hold of a discarded hand operated soil auger.  If you haven't seen them, they look like a 4-foot long drill bit with a foot or so of twist threads on the business end,   are an inch or so in diameter, and have a T-handle on top.    They are already designed with the right pitch for boring into the ground.  He cut the T-handle off it and used it in a 1/2" drive electric drill to predrill post holes.  Worked like a charm as long as he had enough extension cord.  This was before battery operated drills.

To make the water-softening idea work better, You might want to predrill a small hole with one of the things already mentioned, then put the garden hose in down the bottom of that hole to soften the ground before digging the "real" posthole.   

[GareyD]

Have ya considered using the skidsteer to apply downpressure to the tractor mounted auger??

That's how I do it...can be hard on the point of the auger though

[Egon]

There are hyro drills that use a water jet. Usually they are commercial sized.

Egon

[GF]

I use the same method as GaryD, I used the front end loader of another tractor to push it down.  Went down through hard dry clay no problem, before it would just spin and go no place. 

[sawdust]

My father-inlaw is a farmer, showed me a trick. Use a steel bar and a jug of water. couple hits with the bar to create a small hole and add water, pound and add water, pound. Unbelieveable how fast this will go down. fill the entire hole with water and let it sit over night, next day you can drill easily.

Sawdust