MOVING BIG ROCKS

I do not have a front end loader, and want to move some big rocks to the front of my house to keep people from driving on the grass. My question is,..."can I screw a hook, or an eye hook into such rocks to transport them around using my boom pole?" I thinking of rocks up to maybe 500 lbs.

Thanks!

Not sure about that, but I have heard of using tire chains to tie them down for hauling. Seems a wide enough pair of tire chains underneath them would give you something to lift with. That is assuming you live somewhere where tire chains are used!

I have moved hundreds over the years with nothing but a chain or two. Once they are out of the ground chain around them using the slip hook. You will have to make two or three wraps sometimes and take it slow so they don't bounce or sway.

How about a nylon strap rigged as a choker? Might be less
apt to slip out than a chain.

No.

Like Paul, I have moved many, many large rocks with nothing more than a couple of chains and a boom pole. Sometimes you need to make a makeshift sling from the chains.

Dean

What kind of rocks are soft enough to do that?

I have done this for the local Library and another
lady in town. Your boom should do just fine you
just need something with the capacity.

Don't mess around with drilling and putting in a
eye. This is what I did. Take a chain and wrap
around the bottom where the rock contacts the
ground hook this one onto itself so I won't pull
around the rock (tight but you don't need a
binder. Then hook three or four chains to this
chain and the boom in equal lengths. Lots of
times I will use the loose end from the chain
wrapped around the base as one of the chains going
to the boom. If you have done it right you will
cradle the rock. Takes longer to describe than to
do it.

hth

jt

Just to pile on a little, I agree with chain sling.

--->Paul

A lot depends on what tractor you have. A 500lbs rock on the end of a boom pole behind an 8N is going to have you doing wheelies but on say a 4020 JD then maybe. By the way if you figure the rock is 500lbs best add half again to it. I have a rock that I can shake with my back hoe on my 8N ford but the Cat 950 loader machine I have will not even begin to move it. I know since I hook up a chain around that rock and all I could do was lift the rear end of that 950 off the ground and that is a big 40,000lbs machine with a 2.5 yard bucket

Well, first off,...thanks for all the responses, I appreciate it.

As for the type of tractor I have, it is a Ford 641 Workmaster. If I do recall properly, I think I have lifted several items up to 500 lbs with the boom pole? Heck, ...even I can lift a 200 lb rock by myself, so I don't see why I couldn't do 500 lbs with the 641?

But then again,..Old seems to be pretty accurate in most cases?

(quoted from post at 22:01:42 05/31/12) A lot depends on what tractor you have. A 500lbs rock on the end of a boom pole behind an 8N is going to have you doing wheelies but on say a 4020 JD then maybe. By the way if you figure the rock is 500lbs best add half again to it. I have a rock that I can shake with my back hoe on my 8N ford but the Cat 950 loader machine I have will not even begin to move it. I know since I hook up a chain around that rock and all I could do was lift the rear end of that 950 off the ground and that is a big 40,000lbs machine with a 2.5 yard bucket

Click to expand...

Also,..I think much depends on how long one's boom pole is. I feel funny saying this, but my pole is not that long.

Of course you won't life the rock out at the end of your short pole, but all of them have a mid-way hole for a chain and that is where you can probably lift the 750 lb rock you thought was 500 lbs.

--->Paul

I don't know how heavy the rocks were but I moved some with my carry-all. They had to be shaped right to fit between the forks.

Larry

Use a stone boat. I"ve heard that an old car hood can be used as a makeshift stone boat.
HTH, Hendrik

We use wedge bolts for such things when needed at work. As they're one-time use only, it can be a little pricey for moving rocks as well as the hammer drill and bit to prep for them.
Wedge Bolt

took the words out of my mouth.

Doesn't need to be pretty, just a few wraps of chain and it'll usually hold.

Drive it like you expect the rock to pop out at any moment, and you'll be fine.

Unfortunately you can't pile large rocks along the road to keep people from driving in your yard. Local law enforcement, code enforcement, and/or your insurance company will insist that they be removed immediately.

It's BS, but the claim is that the rocks were placed there to intentionally cause property damage and bodily harm or death. Doesn't matter that they're driving drunk, driving recklessly, and trespassing. Doesn't matter that they never should've been there in the first place. It's your fault for putting the rocks there. You have to let them drive on your lawn and/or crash into your house.

Businesses can put up bollards in front of their stores, and that may actually become a legal requirement soon, but you can't protect your own home with some rocks. Maybe you can put in bollards?

Make a sling with tire chains

That is one of the easier ways to move pulled stumps and large rocks. Truck hood rigged skidded behind tractor.

I moved a big rock last fall. I had rented a small track hoe to do some trenching work and thought I would use it to move this rock while I had it. Rental guy said he had moved all kinds of 500 to 800 lb rock with one. Would not bugde mine at all. My rock was about 2 ft tall. 4" across and 3" from front to back. They weighe a lot more than you might think. Ended up useing a pry pole to tip it up a little and get it on a pallet. I then moved it with ease with a chain wrapped around the pallet with a farmall C. I did tear up a lot of sod though.

Yes it does depend on how close you can do the lifting from on a 3 point as to how much you can or cannot lift. But again I have moved many many tons of rock but then I did work for the state sort of and drove a dump truck. Reason why I say sort of is because I worked for a place that in turn subcontracted to do state hwy jobs and I hauled many loads of what we call shoot rock and you could have most any size rock

Granite is 100 lbs per sq foot.

Cubic foot.

on the east coast we use 145 lb per cf for concrete and 176 lb per cf for stone when doing calculations.

Granite weighs 166 lbs per cubic foot in NC.

Big rocks in the front yard are a pain to mow around, but are effective at keeping people from driving across your yard, intentionally or not. Or else you find out who is victimizing you because their car ends up sitting high centered and stuck in your yard.

If you already have the big rocks loose from where they were, and can roll them over, it wouldn"t be much of a trick to roll them over onto a junk car hood or something you made as a sled with 2x6 or wider planks bolted together. When I was a kid, we removed hundreds of tons of rocks from our fields with a stone boat my Dad made. It had metal runners on the long boards that touched the ground and I think it had a metal hitch. At any rate, we could pull it with our VAC Case and handled some rocks that were probably weighed more than 1000 lbs by using long bars as levers to roll the rocks onto the stone boat. Later we got a Ford with a loader and found that it was a whole lot easier to unload that trip bucket than it was to roll or throw rocks off the stone boat. But for only moving a few rocks, an improvised stone boat is probably the easiest and cheapest way to go.

It is not all that easy to keep a chain around a rock to try to drag it. I have used chains to help me pull some large rocks out of the ground after I had dug around them, but couldn"t get them to lever loose. But pulling a rock any distance has meant resetting the chain over and over. Annoying and slow, but a way to move some large rocks that are too big for the loader to handle. But hopefully not too far.

I wouldn"t worry much about liability from having large rocks displayed in your front yard. It is not like you are putting chunks of metal pipe sticking out of the ground a foot and then painting them green to camouflage them in the grass. If the idiots cannot see the large rocks that are well off the road right-of-way, they shouldn"t be driving, and certainly shouldn"t be driving on your property.

I know a guy in the Spokane Valley who lives right where a long straight section of road stops and the arterial goes 90 degrees. Over the years his house was hit twice by errant drivers. So this guy built a rock garden between his house and the road, with some really big rocks included. Drunks have hit the big rocks a couple of times, but the house has remained safe since he put in his "rock garden". Something to think about...

See if you can drag it with a chain. Or roll it with a front loader, or snow plow. Or if you have several rotund friends, invite them to sit on the front of your tractor!

Oh hell, thanks to you all for the very valued information. ....DETMURDS