I just watched this video, and yes that method will work too, but geotextile fabric isn't cheap. I'm doing a major project near the local airport covering 5 acres with nonwoven fabric right now. That could surely help your compaction, but the method I mentioned in last post, basically building a dam around your pad with dirt that sticks together better, will provide similar results and you have the soil stockpiled anyway, so use it. When I do high lifts like that for a section of a parking lot or building pad, I use the stripped off topsoil from clearing the actual pad or lot, and as I said use it to dam up the sand I haul in so it can't keep settling outwards.
Thank you very much for your input, what you say makes sense and is pretty much what I'm doing.
Regarding the fabric, looks very interesting but it makes me nervous to use something "creative" for this. I'd rather keep in conventional and not be able to build as close to the edge then to risk some unknown side effect of the fabric, mostly due to the risk of me not installing it right.
I'm up to 500 yards hauled and compacted now, ended up expanding the fill area a bit more and happened a big burn pit's remains that I had to dig out and refill with sand. Lot's of metal appliances and car parts. I even found a Ford catalytic converter which was odd since this house was built in '76.
I can now back the dump truck fully loaded over 75% of the site and I've got a surplus 9hp fire pump going to wet it down. It has been dry and warm here and it was getting impossible to keep the sand wet to the point of puddles with my harbor freight sprinkler pump. Even at idle it moves a butt load of water. While driving my loaded pickup back and forth I just let it idle and keep the ruts flooded. Clean sand like this is best compacted when either completely saturated or bone dry.
I'm getting sick and tired of pulling the plate compactor around for 2 hours every time I lift 3" so I'm going to build a larger plate compactor for the 3pt of my tractor. Wish I'd done it from the beginning.
My routine now is
1) Dump 30-50 yards of sand
2) Spread it 3-4" thick
3) Soak it with ~25,000 gallons of water
4) Drive back and forth over everything with 10k lb pickup twice, criss crossing
5) Soak with 12,000 gallons of water
6) Drive back and forth with dump truck loaded to 50klbs over as much as possible
7) Smooth out ruts with loader bucket on tractor
8) Driver samurai over it to pack down fluff from smoothing
9) Hose it down again till puddles start forming
10) Spend 2-4 hrs on the plate compactor
11) Bring a little topsoil to the edges to hold sand back.
repeat
After this routine the 120psi dump truck drive tires only make 1/2" or so ruts when I back up to dump the next round of fill. I'm spending extra time with the pickup and the plate at the low edges where I can't get the dump truck to yet but after another lift or two the grade should be low enough I can get the truck on everything. The dump truck burns a ton of gas doing the packing, pretty much WOT in reverse and forward kneeding the sand at 1/2mph for a half hour.