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Posted by BobK207 on March 20, 2007, 9:18 pm
>
>
>
>
> >> Isn't it possible to install a rented belt-conveyor?
>
> >>> Sorry, also cross posted to alt.home.repair
>
> >>> Need to dig out crawl space. Approximately 30' by 50' area. At present
> >>> it is about 4" deep. Want to dig down to 42" and lay down a moisture
> >>> barrier, put in vents, level house etc. Can't go any deeper due to high
> >>> water table. The digging is very easy (sandy loam), but I need clever
> >>> ideas on how to drag the dirt out. I have dug down 8 feet along side
> >>> the house and can access it with my small tractor/loader. I need ideas
> >>> of how to pull/push/drag/roll etc. all of this dirt over to the edge of
> >>> the house and drop it down to my waiting tractor. Wife can help a
> >>> little so maybe roller conveyers with ropes so I can send her a load and
> >>> pull my pan back to where I am digging? Maybe throw the slough on a
> >>> tarp and winch it out?
>
> > After the first week, you'll curse yourself- this is a massive amount of
> > hand labor. Do you have a good engineering design for the new foundation?
> > If the dirt is that soft, you'll have to hold back from the existing walls
> > a couple of feet to keep existing foundation from collapsing.
>
> > Proper approach to this project would have been to jack the house, even
> > just a little bit, and support it on needle beams and external cribbing.
> > Then you could put in a proper foundation footer system and 42" crawl, or
> > even a real raised basement with proper drains to handle high water table.
> > If your 8-foot-deep access pit isn't holding 4 feet of water in the spring
> > thaw, water table problem might not be bad as you think.
>
> > Bottom line- you need a qualified engineer to do a site survey. If you
> > just seat-of-pants it, you could easily end up with a worthless house.
>
> > aem sends....
>
> Thanks for the advice. I am a licensed Civil Engineer. I have already dug
> around the entire perimeter and installed 24" reinforced concrete footings.
> Wish I could jack the house up but there is another 1200 square feet
> attached that is on slab. Would be very labor intensive to alter the stair
> cases and separate the two halves of the house. Easier to dig in situ.
>
> Thanks
Good to see you're a CE but what do you plan to do with the ~200 yds
of dirt?
~ 3000 tons
That's ~8 "double dumps"
btw I've done the shop vac "moving sandy soil / damp sand" experiment
medium sized shop vac ~10 gallon........ soil removal rate ~ 1gpm
so you've got something on the order of 650 hours of vacuum
time.....not including time to empty & dispose of the dirt.
We're taking about ~100 days of vacuuming (if you can keep at it for 6
hours per day) Even if I'm high by 2x .....still 50 days of
vacuuming!
Consider contracting with a vacuum excavator.
Your new footings are 24" wide? How deep?
I hope they go below your intended excavation depth.
cheers
Bob
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