An attachment sold for land clearing spends half its life doing something else
American contractors work through the end of summer clearing sites for winter starts, and much of what has to leave those sites is not vegetation. A root rake is bought for brush and roots, and it turns out to be the correct tool for rubble as well.
The reason is the same in both cases. Spaced tines pass fine material and retain coarse material, and whether the coarse material is a root or a piece of a foundation makes no difference to a sieve.
That makes the root rake considerably more versatile than its name implies. Anyone who has bought one for clearing regrowth generally discovers the second use within a season, usually while cleaning up after something was knocked down.
Root rake for demolition cleanup solves the problem a bucket creates
A bucket clearing a demolition site takes rubble and everything underneath it. The truck leaving the site is carrying soil as well as concrete, which is paid for by the load and disposed of at rates set for construction waste.
The proportion is worse than most people estimate. Rubble sitting on soil picks up a substantial share of that soil when it is scooped, and a load that looks like broken concrete is frequently a third dirt by weight.
A rake picks up the concrete, the brick, the block, and the reinforcing steel and leaves the dirt on the ground. The same number of loads leaves the site carrying several times as much of what actually needed removing.
Disposal is priced by weight, and soil is heavy
Mixed loads also cost more per ton than clean material at most facilities, because separating them becomes somebody else’s job. A load that is genuinely rubble can often go to a crusher rather than a landfill, which changes the price rather than reducing it.
Clean material has somewhere better to go
Concrete and masonry free of soil can be taken by a crusher and turned back into aggregate, which is a different destination and a different price from landfill. Contamination is what closes that option, and a rake is what keeps the load clean enough to qualify.
How to separate rock from soil works the same way on stony ground
Land being brought into cultivation, a pasture full of glacial stone, or a yard being prepared for gravel all present the same problem. The stone has to leave and the topsoil has to stay, and every tool that lifts the first also lifts the second.
Repeated passes work better than one aggressive one. Stone rises through a profile over years, so a paddock raked once will produce more the following season, and owners generally treat it as an annual operation rather than a single clearance.
Working shallow is what makes it work. Tines set to skim just under the surface catch what is sitting in and on the ground, and dropping them deeper begins excavating rather than raking and fills the tines with material that should have stayed.
Reinforcing steel changes how a load behaves
Rebar protruding from broken concrete tangles between tines and holds a load together in ways vegetation does not. That makes the rake carry more per pass and makes it considerably harder to release cleanly at the pile.
Releasing a tangled load takes technique
Material held together by steel does not simply fall out when the attachment is tipped. Shaking it, or setting it down and backing away with the tines low, separates the load, and forcing it with the tilt cylinders is how tines get bent.
Frozen and hard ground defeats the geometry
Tines rely on penetrating slightly to get under material. On frozen ground, hardpan, or compacted fill they skate across the surface instead, and the attachment pushes the load ahead of itself rather than gathering it.
Late in a northern season that becomes the limiting factor rather than the machine. Ground that raked easily in October refuses in November, and the work either happens before the freeze or waits until spring.
The answer is machine weight rather than hydraulic pressure. Down pressure on a 72 inch skid steer root rake comes from tilting the attachment and letting the loader’s front weight bear on the tines, and forcing it with the cylinders bends teeth.
Width has to be read against the machine, not the pile
Seventy two inches gathers a wide swath and puts that load further out in front of the loader. A rake full of concrete at full reach is a different proposition from the same rake full of brush, and the tipping load is what governs.
The carrier decides how much of the width is usable
A full width load of dense material at reach can exceed what a compact loader will hold down. Operators on smaller machines fill the middle of the rake rather than its full width, which is a limitation of the carrier rather than the attachment.
The pile is part of the plan
Material picked up has to go somewhere reachable by a truck or a grapple. Deciding that location before starting is what stops a site being cleared into three piles that then have to be moved again, which is the commonest wasted day on this kind of work.
Slow forward speed does most of the sifting
Material separates as it moves across the tines, and that takes time. Driving through a pile quickly produces a rake full of everything, while a slow pass with a slight shake as the attachment lifts drops most of the fines before the load leaves the ground.
Site cleanup divides by what leaves with the debris
•Bucket: fast, takes the soil with it
•Root rake: debris only, soil stays
•Grapple: carries large pieces, no sifting
Where the rake earns its place and where it does not
•Strength: separates debris from soil in one pass
•Strength: cuts disposal weight substantially
•Limit: skates on frozen or compacted ground
•Limit: small fragments pass through the tines
Weighed against a bucket, a rake costs a slower pass and returns loads that are worth what they cost to haul. A demolition contractor in Michigan switched after weighing two comparable jobs and found the difference was mostly dirt.
Waste is being sorted at the site rather than at the gate
Rising disposal costs and tighter facility rules have pushed separation back onto the job, which has moved attachments that sort material ahead of the ones that simply move it into a truck.
That change in how sites are cleared is why the machinery attachments TMG Industrial supplies are described by what they let through as much as by what they pick up.
