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Step 4I Just Had To
And so to get to the point of this instructable after some experimenting while the wife was not home I managed to move about 20 more yards of sand without having to use a wheel barrow but using a lot of water...
I had to fill it up with a hose basically which took maybe an hour since by now it was a pretty big pit and then I had to hoist the 50 foot flexible line up to the back deck and prime it backwards with a hose, but I could move about a yard of sand out at a time in five minutes before I ran out of water.
I didn't see this as a problem in the long run though since I live on a lake and I managed to demonstrate the ability to make a really deep concrete box redundantly reinforced and one day I stood at the bottom and Looked UP and realized it was a long way away to the bottom of the house and I had enough headroom to fit a room under the bottom garage floor with ten foot ceilings.
That seemed far enough and I was puzzled at not hitting water especially since I could actually at this point using a solid length of 3/4 flexible water line about 300 feet long pull a siphon from the drought low lake level to the bottom of the pit and have it flow uphill from the back yard...
I reasoned the seam of clay was acting like an underground dam and followed the contour of the ground above and to back up since I should have mentioned while doing all this digging I determined that there is about 5 feet of sand sitting on a seam of clay about 22 feet thick more dumb luck try and find a hill in Florida.
I decided to pour a solid floor at the bottom of the shaft to lock in all the walls and act as a Header even though it was down there where a Footer would normally be but since I wanted a drain and had some ten inch pipe I dug down another 5 feet and finally hit water, then just because as I said I wanted a good natural drain and had the pipe I managed to shoot down about 10 feet of the big pipe and left about four feet sticking above the ground, then poured the floor and I basically had a concrete wedge shaped box that was 7 foot square at the top on the inside and about 10 foot wide on the outside and tapered down to about 6 foot wide on the outside 4 foot on the inside so it would look like an arrow head pointing down.
It took 8 yards of concrete, in 80 pound sacks and then another 2 yards to pour a lid on it so I didn't fall down the thing but I reached the point I had my data and a big hole in the ground and got everything secured since I was about to have surgery on my shoulder for a torn rotocuff and would need a break or if I got bored with it and found something more exciting to do it could sit there for decades without me ever having to worry about the thing caving in plus you never know, I could get hit by a bus or something.
I had to fill it up with a hose basically which took maybe an hour since by now it was a pretty big pit and then I had to hoist the 50 foot flexible line up to the back deck and prime it backwards with a hose, but I could move about a yard of sand out at a time in five minutes before I ran out of water.
I didn't see this as a problem in the long run though since I live on a lake and I managed to demonstrate the ability to make a really deep concrete box redundantly reinforced and one day I stood at the bottom and Looked UP and realized it was a long way away to the bottom of the house and I had enough headroom to fit a room under the bottom garage floor with ten foot ceilings.
That seemed far enough and I was puzzled at not hitting water especially since I could actually at this point using a solid length of 3/4 flexible water line about 300 feet long pull a siphon from the drought low lake level to the bottom of the pit and have it flow uphill from the back yard...
I reasoned the seam of clay was acting like an underground dam and followed the contour of the ground above and to back up since I should have mentioned while doing all this digging I determined that there is about 5 feet of sand sitting on a seam of clay about 22 feet thick more dumb luck try and find a hill in Florida.
I decided to pour a solid floor at the bottom of the shaft to lock in all the walls and act as a Header even though it was down there where a Footer would normally be but since I wanted a drain and had some ten inch pipe I dug down another 5 feet and finally hit water, then just because as I said I wanted a good natural drain and had the pipe I managed to shoot down about 10 feet of the big pipe and left about four feet sticking above the ground, then poured the floor and I basically had a concrete wedge shaped box that was 7 foot square at the top on the inside and about 10 foot wide on the outside and tapered down to about 6 foot wide on the outside 4 foot on the inside so it would look like an arrow head pointing down.
It took 8 yards of concrete, in 80 pound sacks and then another 2 yards to pour a lid on it so I didn't fall down the thing but I reached the point I had my data and a big hole in the ground and got everything secured since I was about to have surgery on my shoulder for a torn rotocuff and would need a break or if I got bored with it and found something more exciting to do it could sit there for decades without me ever having to worry about the thing caving in plus you never know, I could get hit by a bus or something.
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