Air Spading

T

TimberJack

Participating member
Location
Westchester County, NY
This week I learned to Air Spade! Kinda fun at first not sure I'de want to do too much of it but it is a great tool to learn. I was wondering if any fellow buzzers had any tips or tricks to make me an air spade expert.
 
Wet the ground thoroughly the night before you're going to run the air-spade.

I've also found that a double ring of 5' wide landscaping cloth, tacked to the ground with landscaping staples,with the outer ring overlapping the inner ring, makes clean up a relatively fast and easy process.
 
PPE for the nose, neck, and all other areas.

Pack a pick and use it if going gets slow.

This time of year the air can blow the skin off of roots.
 
I bring stakes and plywood, and set up a perimeter where I'm working, and blow towards the walls. If trenching, I set up a narrow "hallway" of plywood to contain the debris, and makes backfilling super easy. Dont forget its like a giant leaf blower, makes dusting the lawn/driveway/whatever off a quick and easy process. :-D

Work the tool in a circular motion, pinning it in one spot doesnt do much good, rapid movement of the tool, close to the soil is key in breaking up heavily compacted areas. Clay sucks.

If incorporating compost or just breaking up compaction over a large area, get a spot loose, and then keep the tip of the tool buried and keep working that circular motion. Keeps flying debris to almost 0, and works deeper to boot. Repeated trips over the same area will continue to work material deeper, and break up soil deeper. If using an airspade, I prefer to sling it over my shoulder and keep the handle up by my neck and shoot straight down for "air mixing" compost. Its more awkward with the air knife though, so I usually reserve the spade for composting and compaction, and the airknife gets pulled out for trenching and really heavily compacted areas typically. We have several of both.

The air spade is a shovel, the air knife is an excavator, if you get what I mean.
 
Thanks for the tips. It almost is as simple as pull the trigger and spray air but over a weeks worth of air spading I did pick up on some techniques that make it more enjoyable and productive.
 
If you don't own your own hose and compressor I always suggest renting an extra 50-100 foot of hose. Just the other day I was able to up sell some vert mulching that would have been out of reach otherwise. And you never know when a hose will blow. The other thing I notice is that when doing trenching you will never have enough material to fill the trench back. So bringing top soil or extra compost is a must.
 
We spent two weeks doing RCX work. All of the trees were planted so deep that we didn't need to scrounge up any additional topsoil for backfill. The 'extra' blew away and we just top dressed with mulch.

A couple of days after doing the work I found that where the hoses were laying on the grass the heat from the hoses had burnt the grass. This might be a concern for residential clients. Be careful.
 
[ QUOTE ]
PPE for the nose, neck, and all other areas.

Pack a pick and use it if going gets slow.

This time of year the air can blow the skin off of roots.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just like the bark slipping off in spring.

Makes sense.

BTW Guy, I'm impressed to see you willing to use lingo like "skin" - LOL
 
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