15 things you can do with an excavator

The excavator is the workhorse of the construction site, helping crews dig, lift, break and move all kinds of material.

Both small and large diggers will help you work through your project at a cracking pace, especially if you take advantage of some of the excellent purpose-designed attachments available on the market.

Matching the right attachment to the job can shave hours or even days of time off your project.

Let’s take a look at some of the tasks you can do with an excavator and the attachments that make this work easier.

What can I do with an excavator? 

Like a lot of earthmoving equipment, excavators are designed to be versatile and flexible, adapting to different site needs and conditions.

They can be used to complete a wide range of tasks on your site, from digging trenches to levelling a road, drilling a hole or breaking up rocks. Excavators can perform all kinds of jobs, including:

• Lifting building materials 
• Backfilling trenches 
• Drilling holes 
• Digging trenches 
• Loading trucks 
• Shifting stockpiles of gravel or other materials 
• Breaking rocks 
• Compacting materials 
• Creating batters and slopes 
• Demolishing buildings 
• Laying pipelines 
• Ripping out trees and bulk landscaping jobs 
• Cleaning up your site 
• Cutting rocks and concrete 
• Sifting soil and removing large sods and rocks 

Of course, for any of these applications, the right attachment is essential!

What excavator attachments are available to hire? 

Because excavators are compatible with such a wide range of attachments, it’s easy to swap out a bucket for a breaker, or a ripper for a rock saw.

Hiring the right selection of attachments when you organise your excavator rental will help you save time on site, speeding up the job and keeping your customer happy.

Here are just some of the excavator attachments we have available to hire:

Buckets

• 4 in 1 bucket: This jack-of-all-trades features a dozer, a serrated edge, a box blade, and a bucket. It’s great for jobs that need a little bit of everything. 
• Tilt buckets: The original attachment; great for grading, backfilling and finishing slopes, boxing out, drainage applications and site cleanup. 
• Sieve bucket: If you need to sift and sort soil in landscaping applications, or sort through rock and large items in demolition, a sieve bucket makes the job much easier. 

Grabs

• Rock grab: useful for so much more than just rocks! Choose this attachment if you need to lift and shift trees, debris and large items in demolition or building work. 
• Multi grab buckets: a hydraulic grabbing attachment allowing fine control to pick up and place objects. Great for lifting steel beams, purlins, placing rocks or landscaping components, tree and shrub work and more. 

Cutting, drilling and boring attachments

• Rock saw: does what it says on the tin… saws rocks with ease! Also great for concrete cutting and certain applications in trenching and footings. 
• Auger drives and drills: Need a hole? Use and auger drive and drill bit to make light work of post holes, screw piles and footings. 

Ripping and wrecking attachments

• Ripper attachment: Indispensable if you need to pry out rocks, rip through tough ground, roots, concrete and more. Great for where normal bucket penetration just doesn’t cut it. 
• Pulveriser: Specially designed for demo jobs, this excavator attachment allows you to crush concrete slabs and easily separate our reo for recycling. 
• Hydraulic rock breaker: basically a jackhammer on steroids. Designed to break hardpan, sub level hard rock and concrete with ease. 

Compaction attachments

• Compaction wheel: With a padfoot profile, the compaction wheel provides efficient soil compaction for road construction, on landscaping jobs and more. 
• Compaction plate: this vibrating unit is great for use in trenches, in batter construction and other awkward spaces. Suitable for a range of different sized excavators. 

Hire excavators and attachments in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane

For more information about our complete range of shoring services and equipment, visit your nearest branch, email [email protected], or call our friendly team of experts at 1800 UR HIRE.