By Chip Brown | Maynardville@gmail.com

I arrived on the building site Friday to find a huge change in the lot. But what surprised me most was that the only equipment I saw running was a very small dozer. Now on the site are a couple of trackhoes, three dozers (all bigger than this one) a huge pan and assorted small equipment. They all sat facing this little dozer as it worked. It almost seemed as if the large equipment was watching their little brother do all the work.

But with the amount of the hill gone that was there at my last visit I knew this certainly couldn't be the case. The fact is the other equipment was being serviced that morning in preparation for the heavy work to come later that day. The small dozer was preparing the surface. Next would come the pan to move the top of the hill.

Superintendent Beeler walked over to give me an update on the progress and told me the purpose of the little dozer. When I say little dozer  I suppose i should explain that "little" is relative. The dozer I am calling little is the size we often see on sites of homes being built. This dozer is only little when one goes to the excavation site and compares it to the other equipment on hand.

Now with that said I asked about what the different equipment was for.

The trackhoe is like a huge backhoe on tracks. It will be used for various digging jobs on the site. If an area is found that the soil is deemed unsuitable (compaction issues etc) the trackhoe digs that out. I guess its kind of like a dentist when he finds a cavity. The bad spot has to be removed and then the hole filled with good usable material. Once the trackhoe digs out the bad soil, good compactable material will them be moved in to fill the space. This insures that the investment Union County has made does not sink or crack.

The small dozer is used for fine work and to prepare surfaces for the larger machines. The medium size dozer does the work we normally find dozers doing. Then we get to tiny. Now at forty-five years of age I am still a boy when it comes to big yellow machines. I often search YouTube for videos of excavation machines working. The bigger the machine the more I like to watch it. If you look in the encyclopedia under big you would find "Tiny". Tiny is a seventy-five ton Dresser Dozer. Tiny moves things the other machines can't. For instance if they encounter a large rock, Tiny is moved in and the rock is gone. Let us speculate that they hit a layer of slate, we all know it is common in the area. Tiny will move in with its ripper and break the slate up to be removed by the smaller machines.

The compactor is the machine that does just what its name says. It can take four feet of soil and reduce it to two feet. The reason they do this is to make fill dirt hard. If you fill a hole in your yard with dirt a couple of years later the hole has returned. Now we know that nobody stole the dirt, it settled. If you have ever seen a new building that the walls are cracked in, one of the common causes was that the soil was not compacted after the site is filled. If an area has to be filled, proper compaction of the fill dirt is the key to a good foundation.

I suppose the most visible result this week compared to last is that more of the hill is gone now. But if you move around to the back of the site you find that much of the little valley is gone. I was wondering what they had done with all that dirt that used to be a hill. Once the pan removes a layer of the hill it is deposited around back. There the medium sized dozer spreads the removed soil out evenly. Next the compacter is brought in to mash all that new soil in.

I asked if the whole valley area would be filled in. But was told that while it would be, a natural slope would have to be maintained. If the slope is removed water would not drain well from the properties north of the school. Therefore, a collection area and a drainage spillway will be added. This helps drain water from the north of the property in flood times and prevents run off from the new school property.


Image 1 depicts the site from across the HWY 33.
Image 2 depicts the small dozer preparing the surface for the pan.
Image 3 depicts compactor condensing the new soil coming off the hill being removed.
Image 4 shows a back view of the lot. on the right you can see the original slope.