Woo looking great!! We thought about renting a mini excavator for a variety of projects, but we would have to go through Home Despot, and they don't deliver and cost arms and legs, ugh.
One thing I want to mention, have you priced out home-owner's insurance yet? We moved from a regular house to a manufactured home and found out the hard way that most home owner's insurance companies will not insure this type of home & we had to get specialty insurance. We're now paying more for insurance on our $30k house than we did for our $200k house, and for a fraction of the coverage. It's ridiculous! Just wanted to mention because this is something I wasn't expecting and it had an impact on our budget!
We rented the backhoe from Home Depot for the soil test pits, and you're right! They're very expensive!!!
We're still researching insurance options. It's not been easy, but unfortunately, also not been top on our list. I'll get my wife to check into it. She's good at pinning things like that down. :)