Problems with Trenching
Problems with Trenching
- Cannot turn to install J-hooks and smiles now required in most SWPPP's and ESC manuals
- So many locations where trencher cannot manuever at all makes trenches not feasible
- Requires extra crew members
- Work-stoppage in wet conditions or complete inability to operate
- Slow and costly excavation
- Cumbersome backfill and compaction (leaving a half empty trench is not longer allowed)
- Expensive and frequent high cost maintenance with claims and hydraulics
- Moving chains and throwing rocks is hazardous to employees and increases insurance
- Incalculable lost profits from time lost and customers lost
- Expensive call backs from washed-out silt fence
- Poor visual installation if constructed on a windy day or with 10 feet post spacings
- Inability to service customers in a short time - either before a coming storm, after a significant storme, or between storms
- Al the extra cost with more employees - overtime, workman's comp. payroll taxes (15%) insurance base on payroll, rainy days lost, etc.
Hassles of Trenching
- Excavation in sod, rocky soil, wet conditions
- Trencher getting stuck in soft soils
- Hand-digging many locations
- Management of more employees
- Time-consuming over-lapping joints
- Lost partial rolls and needs for extra stakes
- Cannot manuever around obstacles or trees
- Backing up and causing damages
Customer Comments
Because we manage all SWPPP compliance activities at our clients’ job sites, we believe in installing silt fence that works. We’re big believers in the tommy™ Silt Fence Machine, and the whole concept of eliminating the use of failure-prone trenches for silt fence installation---because it’s simply a better way. A more cost-effective way, a more productive way, and a way that provides better compliance for our clients---what else can I say? We love the tommy™. Two years of daily, high volume, heavy-duty use has proven the tommy™ to be an absolutely reliable workhorse. It’s never let us down. Silt fence wouldn’t be the much-maligned BMP that it is today if more installers used the tommy™.
Robert C. Adair
Construction EcoServices, LLC
Houston, TX
