Two-shelf Drainage Ditch Cleared after Debris Buildup

Anyone with the right equipment can clear flat land. But Isaac Weber isn’t intimidated by working on more diverse landscapes. In fact, his company, The Weber Company, is garnering a well-earned reputation as the go-to resource for land clearing work in hard-to-reach places. Drainage ditches, gullies, hills, valleys, slopes and any other tough topography is just another day for Weber. Why? Because his company comes prepared with the equipment and expertise to tackle tricky terrain. 

The Archbold, Ohio-based company was tasked with clearing a tricky two-stage drainage ditch in Lucas County’s Monclova Township. The goal of the project was to clear the ditch that feeds into Swan Creek to allow for better flow after at least 20 years of debris buildup. Weber’s team worked on a 6,000-foot stretch of the Van Fleet Ditch that was five feet deep with a 2:1 slope with a three feet shelf that ranged from 10 to 20 feet wide on each side featuring a 2% slope. After coming up with their equipment game plan, it was time to dig in on the northwestern Ohio project. 

 Two shelves Bring Double Trouble

While two-stage ditches offer logistical challenges to clean, they also offer more area and holding capacity to eliminate downstream flooding. But first they must be cleared of vegetation for better flow. In this instance, both ditch shelves were lined with dogwood and cottonwood trees with the occasional hickory tree and elderberry bush.  

“There were some trees that were about 40 inches in diameter that we used the feller buncher to drop down. Anything that was left was 10 inches and smaller,” said Project Manager Nate Meyer. 

It was so dense that the creek could not be seen at the beginning of the project. After the feller buncher cleared out the large diameter material, the Weber team cleaned up the remaining vegetation with a pair of excavators mounted with Fecon Bull Hog forestry mulchers. 

The Bull Hogs were paired with Case 210 and Case 130 excavators, which provided adequate reach into the ditch to shred growth along both shelves of the ditch and dip the ditch with little to no repositioning needed. Two months of mulching prepared the site for the next stage of the project which included stump grinding with a Bandit wheel-type stump grinder, then removing roughly 17,000 yards of dirt, before adding rip rap to prevent future growth and erosion. Much of the soil removal was accomplished with 6-foot and 42-inch tooth Werk-Brau ditching buckets.   

“The smooth edge makes the ditch bottoms look really nice,” said Meyer, “and they hold up really well in all types of projects.” 

Werk-Brau hydraulic quick couplers allowed Weber’s team to switch out the ditching buckets with toothed buckets in spots where it was warranted, like popping out smaller stumps, or placing rip rap in certain areas.   

Working in a two-shelf ditch means dealing with two slopes and potentially twice as many hard-to-reach places. To help keep his team on track in this environment, Weber used Leica GPS (Global Positioning System) technology to ensure precision of their excavation efforts. 

“We’re set up on our excavators with dig technology to input all of our numbers, and then our system just tells us exactly where we are in the grade,” he said.  

To wrap things up, the team at Weber installed around 500 tons of rip rap between the culverts and the check dams. This, in addition to cleaning out the Van Fleet Ditch, was to help prevent future flooding of Swan Creek and the surrounding farmland area. Having the right equipment and the experience to know how to use it allowed the Weber team to tackle this tricky two-stage ditch project efficiently, so that they can get onto the next project. 

An arsenal of land clearing tools paired with the right technology allowed The Weber Company to clear a complicated two-story ditch over a few months. Not all ditches are created equal, but they can all be cleared the same way with the right tools and knowledge. 

Harry Wahl, is copywriter and content developer for Wahl Marketing Communications.