I'm Aaron Graber with Ventrac and today we're going to mow
a retention basin with a tractor and our tough cut.
The purpose of a retention basin or sometimes referred to as a retention pond
is to collect rain water and runoff from anywhere where there's been a construction site.
So typically around commercial buildings especially all of those properties that
build parking lots or anything where the rainwater would run off and overwhelm the
sewer system there has to be a retention basin to collect that water and slow that flow down.
This particular site is a great example of a site that presents all the challenges you might face
when taking care of one of these areas. There's a tree line to the south of this site immediately
and that keeps the sun from hitting the basin all the time. So right now even though this
basin is dry some parts of the year we've been in a pretty rainy spell and it's not getting
any direct sunlight. There's about four to five inches of water in the bottom and it's very mucky.
Also just like any other water management basin has very steep sides and like this
one most of them will have a fence around so it adds that obstacle to work around as well.
We get a lot of comments and questions asking about why we would even bother taking care of
areas like this and even some suggesting that mowing these areas causes ruts and causes problems
with the management of these areas themselves and what a lot of people don't understand is
that you have to mow these areas regularly for two reasons. One it's often regulatory so whether
it's a municipal ordinance or it's local site owner that wants to maintain things it's often
mandated. And two it's just good general practice to mow these areas down so that you don't have
problems with plants growing up and developing root structures. Over here you can see a sapling.
Pull it out of the ground here so this is the start of a little maple tree
and this may be a year old only. If you didn't maintain this area at all and you just let it grow
it wouldn't take more than a couple years for this to be a proper sapling and then a bigger
tree later and eventually what would happen is it would develop a root structure at the base that's
heavy enough and robust enough that it would displace the ground and cause rain
ruts and ultimately lead to erosion and lack of actual basin around this area. So the best way to
stop that and keep that from happening over time is to regularly maintain these areas. Typically
it's once or twice a year depending on how fast it grows and that keeps things like trees and other
invasive plants from establishing and causing infrastructure problems later on down the road.
The Ventrac is a perfect tool for this job because it handles steep areas well.
It handles wet area as well. And it's highly maneuverable.
You'll see all of those things coming into play as I mow this area.
The approach today is to mow down all of the sides and then get as close to the middle as I
possibly can. We'll try and mow as much of the bottom as possible. There might be some areas
we can't get into because it's a little bit too wet and those will have to be hand work.
The exact property we're on today is maintained mostly with a zero turn on all of the regular
grass areas there's a couple open fields or some sports complexes but obviously a zero turn is not
going to work to mow these areas. You're going to have to use only hand labor if that's the
equipment you have available to you. So in a case like this if you're a contractor that doesn't
have the right equipment you're going to have to have this subbed out to a different contractor.
Some of these spaces are in public areas and the municipality will take care of them
but oftentimes when it falls on the contractor they are using just that hand labor. I mentioned
maneuverability at the beginning of this and that comes into play as well. Since we're an out front
mower you have control of the deck much easier than you do with most other machines. So if you're
trying to get in here with a with a rear mounted three-point tractor or something like that first
of all it wouldn't be stable enough but second of all difficulty in moving around things would make
it almost impossible to do a job especially like this one where it's a fairly tight area. This isn't
a huge area this isn't a huge retention basin so having that maneuverability makes a lot of sense.
Also in every one of these areas there's going to be some amount of drainage equipment inlets,
outlets, various pipes, and things working around all that stuff is much much easier when you have
an attachment on the front of the machine and you have easier visibility of it easier control of it.
If we were going to do this property with a string trimmer it would probably take me alone
three to four hours. Typically you'd probably see two or three guys on the project at once and they
might get it done in a couple hours and go on to the next one but that's a lot of man-hours.
The bottom line is if you own a property that has a retention basin or a detention basin or
if you're managing a property that does you want to make sure the right equipment is on
that area so that you can actually use it long term for what it's intended for.
And if you're a contractor that's on the other side of that equation actually doing this work
then using something like the ventrac is going to be imperative to make sure that
you're as efficient as possible and you're making the most money as possible but also
providing the best service for your customers. You want to continue to maintain these basins
year after year so that they stay in spec and the best way to do that is with specialized equipment.
So we are done now and this took about 20 minutes which
obviously not much time at all with a capable piece of equipment like the Ventrac.
You can see what you've got left here cattails some native grasses that you'll just let there.
There's really no risk of any damage being done there because no trees or anything are going
to grow in there. What we didn't see before we started actually made this a much more difficult
job than I would have expected so the one inlet the furthest over that direction.
It starts at the very top of the fence and it tapers down to a very steep
kind of ditch and it's lined with rock. All of the other inlets are a little easier to get around but
basically what you have to do is just cautiously approach those and work your way from outside in
to make sure you don't run into them over them around them crush anything but oftentimes you'll
find exactly what we did here a lot of rock things sort of lining the path of water into the basin.
And you have to be aware of that make sure you don't hit the rock and displace it and also make
sure you don't do any damage to the equipment. And this is basically done now. I would probably
run a string trimmer around the outside perimeter real quick just to clean up some of the edge lines
and uh the stuff in the bottom can stay it's never gonna get any taller or different than
that. It's gonna stay on those cat tails and uh come back and do this again in another year or two.
Okay so when you're on the internet and you have a big following like we do you take the opportunity
to sometimes rant for a little bit and I think I'm just going to do this every time I find the stuff
because it annoys me. So I know in the past I have made mention of the fact that you
shouldn't throw garbage out your window driving down the road in your vehicle or wherever you
happen to be. Don't throw trash away just find a waste can preferably recycle it whatever.
Just don't throw it anywhere because when you do throw it somewhere you know where it ends up in a
retention basin. There is so much garbage in here like no joke we would spend as much time picking
up trash in here as we would actually maintaining the area. It's just not cool don't do it.