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I've decided to dig a hole

CleverNickname

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davidg
davidg

As I posted above, I have a need to dig a few holes on our place, but before that happens I'll tell a story on one of my favorite holes on our place and one that I currently hate the most.  This took

CleverNickname
CleverNickname

I got to thinking. Lots of people think about digging a hole (maybe?). I have property where a guy could build a hole. And sure about 16 inches down it becomes partially cemented caliche. But only par

davidg
davidg

I'm surprised that the line is as straight as it is.  When my grandfather decided he wanted to build the lake, he contacted the Corp of Engineers about building it for soil erosion as a lot of that wa

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CleverNickname

CleverNickname 1320

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I'm up embiggening the size if the hole. Originally it's like 39x57 (so 30" + 2x 3.5" + 2x 1"; and 48" + 2x 3.5" + 2x 1"). Butninfigure I needed about another inch or so around. My idea is to pour some concrete down the edges once I get a set or two in. I figure it would help keep rain water from rushing in. Moved the pavers back a little.

20220703_202736.thumb.jpg.5239ddd1432a3d14c65fc4eec26c4970.jpg20220703_202732.thumb.jpg.37a81fe3456675e9a5d1c040033232d2.jpg

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hookemATL

hookemATL 11779

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28 minutes ago, CleverNickname said:

There is something about postholes that are utter agony for my back. For whatever reason this hole has been downright invigorating, far more fun than some of the postholes I've dug. 

I’m digging in sandy loam so it’s soft but so dry that getting the sand/soil out with the digger was a true PITA. Had to use my hands to finish it off (just like in bed HEYOOOOOOOO)

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DougO

DougO 5250

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3 hours ago, hookemATL said:

I’m digging in sandy loam so it’s soft but so dry that getting the sand/soil out with the digger was a true PITA. Had to use my hands to finish it off (just like in bed HEYOOOOOOOO)

That's why it's really a shame that these have been made virtually extinct due to unpopularity. For narrow, deep post holes it's a must-have. Mine has been repaired about as much as it can be and I rue the day I can't use it. The regular style diggers are pretty much worthless for my use.

 

51c4eFuOXPL._SY500_.jpg

https://www.amazon.com/Seymour-Industrial-Digger-Various-Pattern/dp/B00VWKT5W6

 

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The Royal We

The Royal We 3072

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26 minutes ago, DougO said:

That's why it's really a shame that these have been made virtually extinct due to unpopularity. For narrow, deep post holes it's a must-have. Mine has been repaired about as much as it can be and I rue the day I can't use it. The regular style diggers are pretty much worthless for my use.

 

51c4eFuOXPL._SY500_.jpg

https://www.amazon.com/Seymour-Industrial-Digger-Various-Pattern/dp/B00VWKT5W6

 

Almost $400 for that thing!?  What in the actual fuck?

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DougO

DougO 5250

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35 minutes ago, The Royal We said:

Almost $400 for that thing!?  What in the actual fuck?

I think they were about $200 back when we got ours at American Fence Supply. I'm tempted to buy another one, but WTF is right. I may have to rebuild my old one and hope the metal parts hold out. 

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RPM

RPM 26323

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17 hours ago, CleverNickname said:

Knocked down the sides. I think I got the one side a little deeper but didn't measure.

New wheelbarrow. Fancy two wheel model. 

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Technically, that would make it a wheelsbarrow.

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Judge Roybeanbag

Judge Roybeanbag 11819

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15 hours ago, CleverNickname said:

Damn! Although I gotta say that despite the hardship of having considerably more rock than that dude has (and those Indonesian primitive technology guys), my hope is that my hole is somehow more long-lasting than a hole that is made in deep dirt/clay.

I’m still curious about the purpose of this hole.  I may call Geraldo Rivera to go check it out.  

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TexasEd

TexasEd 8067

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Remember this guy in Austin?  

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2016/10/14/man-who-dug-space-under-home-sues-city/9776940007/

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Joe Del Rio, the retiree who excavated a huge pit underneath his East Austin home that prompted a raid by SWAT and bomb squad officers last month, is suing the city for taking his private property by filling in the hole, his lawyer said Thursday.

Earlier this week, Austin city officials had ordered the collection of tunnels and rooms, which they have characterized as a 35-foot-deep multilevel underground structure, filled with concrete to prevent Del Rio's house from collapsing. Work crews for a private contractor were scheduled to begin filling in the underground space this morning, which officials said would take about 33 truckloads of concrete.

A spokeswoman for the Public Works Department said the estimated cost of filling Del Rio's pit is about $61,500. The city will pay for the work and then bill Del Rio, Sara Hartley said.

Quote

"He used car struts and welded them into the basement walls as supports, and empty car batteries as cinder blocks," Kaplan said. "Everything had a plan — he was never just digging to dig."

Code compliance inspectors visited Del Rio's house in 2008 and 2009 in response to neighbors' complaints about various holes, according to city records. After an inspection in early May, officers from Austin's Police, Fire and Public Works departments on May 8 swarmed onto the property, fencing it off. Del Rio has lived with relatives since then.

In a mid-May report, city engineers, citing deep excavation under load-bearing walls and scant reinforcement of walls in the pit, declared that Del Rio's home was "in imminent danger of collapse."

ghows-TX-5b0ed075-9931-4724-bd09-d615983b6c0e-299aa017.jpeg?width=660&height=372&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp

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Superhero

Superhero 8830

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On 7/13/2022 at 9:59 AM, SquishMitten said:

Maybe I missed it, but here's the GOAT of randomly digging a hole. Looks like he's up to 15 videos on this project. Highly recommend to all hole-digging enthusiasts.

 

Well... there does an hour I didn't spend with my wife and kids.

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Mdhorn

Mdhorn 5974

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https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/a-year-ago-deadly-fire-exposed-secret-tunnels-under-bethesda-home/172166/

It didn't end well--some excerpts from this weird ass story:

A year ago, a deadly fire exposed Daniel Beckwitt's curious campaign to build an underground bunker for protection from a nuclear attack. Neighbors in Bethesda knew nothing about the tunnels before they heard Beckwitt's screams and saw smoke pouring from the house where 21-year-old Askia Khafra died that afternoon.

Maryland prosecutors portray Beckwitt, a 27-year-old millionaire, as a paranoid computer hacker who recklessly endangered Khafra's life. In May, they secured Beckwitt's indictment on charges of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.

During a recent interview at their Silver Spring, Maryland, home, Dia Khafra, 69, said he and his wife, Claudia, tried to persuade Askia to stay away from Beckwitt's tunnels. Their son met Beckwitt online and agreed to help him dig the tunnels in exchange for Beckwitt's investments in an internet company Askia was launching.

"I always feared something dangerous would happen to him," the elder Khafra said.

Investigators found the younger Khafra's charred body in the basement of Beckwitt's Bethesda home. A hole in the concrete basement floor led to a shaft that dropped down 20 feet into tunnels that branched out roughly 200 feet in length.

Spoiler

A police report says Beckwitt told investigators how he tried to preserve his project's secrecy when he brought Khafra there. Beckwitt said he would rent a car, pick Khafra up and drive him to Manassas, Virginia, where he had the younger man don "blackout glasses" before driving him around for about an hour. Khafra spent days at a time working, eating and sleeping in the tunnels. He had his cellphone with him, but Beckwitt used internet "spoofing" to make it appear he was in Virginia, according to Montgomery County prosecutor Douglas Wink.

Wink said Beckwitt had a "paranoid fixation" on a possible nuclear attack by North Korea. Beckwitt's lawyer compared his client's concern to "the days of the Cuban missile crisis."

Beckwitt lived with his parents at the Bethesda house until college. He enrolled at the University of Illinois, where campus police arrested him in 2013 on charges including computer fraud. He was suspected of installing keystroke logging devices on the Urbana school's computers. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years of probation, according to online court records.

The conviction didn't steer Beckwitt away from computers after he moved back to Maryland. In 2016, he spoke at a hacker convention using the alias "3AlarmLampscooter" and wearing a fire-resistant suit and visor that obscured his face.

Wink said Beckwitt was teaching his audience how to make thermite bombs to destroy computer data "in order to get away with hacking."

 

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Mdhorn

Mdhorn 5974

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Excerpts from a good DC mole man story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/inside-the-tunnels-of-washingtons-mole-man-harrison-g-dyar/2012/11/03/169851cc-1d41-11e2-9cd5-b55c38388962_story.html

On the first day there was the Mystery: On or around Sept. 25, 1924, a truck fell through the earth near 21st and P streets NW, revealing an elaborate, multilevel tunnel underneath. What in blazes was it?

“Old Tunnel Here Believed to Have Been Used by Teuton War Spies and Bootleggers,” read a headline in The Washington Post. Speculation was rampant.

But speculation can last only so long. On the second day, people didn’t want the Mystery; they wanted the Explanation. And that’s what the Reporter was in search of. He left behind the scrum-milling at the cave-in near Dupont Circle and headed across town to find the previous owner of 1512 21st St. NW.

In the red-brick house at 804 B St. SW, across from the National Museum, he found the answer. The tunnel-maker confessed. He was a Smithsonian scientist named Harrison G. Dyar. A scientist who studied bugs. An entomologist.

An entomologist was not as exciting as a Teuton war spy. An entomologist was not as interesting as a bootlegger. An entomologist was boring.

Even Dyar’s reason for building the tunnels was boring: He said he did it for exercise. Some men play golf, he told the reporter. I dig tunnels.

Spoiler

He had used one boring pastime as a metaphor for another.

Dyar was 58 in 1924. “He wears a beard which is rapidly graying to match his hair,” the Reporter wrote. “His frame is slight, and he is a bit stooped.”

Dyar explained that there was really nothing secret about the 21st Street tunnels. His son Otis used to play in them; neighborhood boys, too. He had worked on them for 10 years excavating, shoring up, dumping the dirt in a vacant lot nearby, facing the walls in brick. Dyar had left the tunnels behind when he moved from the house around 1914 to live out west for a few years before returning to Washington.

Then the Reporter asked an obvious question: Did you ever dig any more tunnels?

The answer was a resounding yes. Underneath the side yard on B Street SW was just as elaborate a bunker, reaching some 24 feet deep. These tunnels, too, were tall enough for a man to stand in and wide enough to walk two abreast. An electric wire snaked through the tunnels, providing pools of light in the inky blackness. Some shafts went straight down and were lined in concrete, with horizontal iron pipes arranged as ladder rungs. The ceilings were arched, like some medieval catacomb. In places Dyar had sculpted the heads of animals and humans.

One arch was inscribed with a bit of Latin: Facilis Descensus Averno. From Virgil, it means: “The way down to the lower world is easy.”

Dyar had started these particular tunnels as a way of getting from the basement to the ash can on the street without having to walk outside. But as at the Dupont Circle house — where Dyar’s tunnels were the metastasized outgrowth of a simple gardening project — he’d just kept going.

In fact, Dyar had dug so deeply on B Street that he’d hit the water table and had to stop. You could sit on one of the tunnel’s lower steps and toss pebbles into the darkness, listening as the stones plopped into the water below.

 

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CleverNickname

CleverNickname 1320

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It's been a minute since I was up at the ranch. I started on concrete forms. I'll do a real basic ready mix pour. I figure it will help keep rain from washing inside, and will be a nice weight spreading surface for when I put in sets. I am the world's crappiest carpenter. Nothing is entirely level yet. Nothing is exactly square. Everything is a fucking rhombus! I fucking hate rhombuses! At this point I think I'll tinker a bit more, stake it, and when I pour I will attempt to keep level the places where the header will rest. The other portions I will try to shape to keep water out of the depths.20220814_122004.thumb.jpg.2981594771d4527ff9e5a36bb1993c8c.jpg

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