Man Digs Out Basement Using Radio Controlled Toy Tractors

Phurge pointed out a story about a man with a fleet of remote control toys and a lot of patience. "Excavating a basement using professional machinery is nothing new but doing it with radio controlled (RC) scaled models is something unheard of. Welcome to the little big world of Joe, from Saskatchewan, Canada. For the past 7 years, Joe has been digging out his basement at an average annual rate of 8 to 9 cubic feet using nothing more than RC tractors and trucks. And we're talking about the whole nine yards here — he starts by transporting the excavator on an RC truck to the basement, unloads it, digs and uses other trucks to transfer the dirt up to the ground through a spiral ramp! He even has a miniature rock crusher! 'I feel quite fortunate to have stumbled onto this basement excavation idea, it's been a great past time to date dreaming up new ideas to tackle different projects along the way,' Joe wrote on the Scale4x4rc forums where he also posted pictures and videos of his feat."

Re:Math seems wrong

[Mr Z]

There's a more detailed article that the first one links to. In the more detailed article, it says:

Every year, I excavate about 2 to 3 cubic yards of material. I mine it from the walls during the winter, put it through the crusher, screen it, and then haul it out during a summer’s worth of Sundays.

So what we have is a unit conversion failure in the first article. 1 yard = 3 feet, but 1 cubic yard = 27 cubic feed. 3 cubic yards is 81 cubic feet, then.

So 7 * 81 = 567, which gives you a cube just over 8' on a side, as you suggest.

Inspiring story

[hashless]

This type of do-it-yourself story is what we like to see on slashdot. Inspiring, nerdy, and a bit over the top.

Re:Interesting idea

[mpoulton]

Radio controlled equipment is already used in construction. Working in trenches is dangerous and required elaborate and expensive safety precautions. To avoid this, contractors use methods that avoid putting people in trenches. This usually involves equipment with long arms to manipulate things (like a robotic pipelayer) but some equipment is remote controlled. Like this compactor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc18eKDyMlc [youtube.com] Radio control of large pieces of equipment like concrete pumps is also common, but for the opposite reason. It allows the operator to be at the location where the action is happening rather than in a cab far away.

Re:pointless. automation woulda been cool tho

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the fact that he does this for *RECREATION*, he even removed a conveyor belt assembly for helping to speed it up too much. (As well as making the basement difficult to traverse). This guy is a FARMER, and if he's to be believed has limited time off-farm for recreational purposes, so this activity fills that gap for him.

No different than the time many people invest into model trains or dozens of other activities that provide no 'measurable' productive expenditure of time, but through which they derived immense satisfaction in the process of doing.

Re:Math seems wrong

[Mr Z]

Yeah, like nobody ever made the same mistake converting between cm^3 and m^3. 1 cm^3 = 1mL, and 1000 cm^3 is 1 L. 1000 cm = 10 m, but 10 m^3 is 1,000,000 L. But, folks in chem class made that mistake readily. Metric doesn't magically make the "forgot to cube the ratio" problem go away when dealing with volumes.