digger242j
Administrator
The curent thread about the fatal accident got me to wondering--what's the worst trench you've had to dig, or worse, work in?
About five years ago I did a sewer job in Pittsburgh. It was right at the edge of Mt. Washington, which is the hill that overlooks downtown Pittsburgh from across the Monongehela River. It has a great view of the downtown area. If you're visiting friends in Pittsburgh and you've never been here before, the chances are they'll drag you up to Grandview Avenue to gawk at downtown.
Anyway, this sewer averaged about 14' deep and ran about 800'. On one side there was an existing building, and a retaining wall, and on the other was the edge of the hill, so there was very little room to stack the dirt. When I first looked at the job I was worried that I'd run into rock that I wouldn't be able to dig. I was wrong. It seemed like the whole length of the job was nothing but fill that had just been pushed over and leveled out. It showed no sign that anything had ever been done to compact it. We used a trench box, but the dirt was so loose that most of the time I didn't have time to pull the box forward before one side or the other collapsed into the ditch. At other times I'd get the box pulled forward just in time to have one side collapse against it and knock it cockeyed. More than once I had to dig outside the box to free it up enough to be able to pull it at all. I did this job with my Case 680G. It probably would have been a whole lot better suited to about a 150 size excavator, but even then it would have been a real headache.
Some jobs have a really bad spot or two, but that one was bad from one end to the other...
About five years ago I did a sewer job in Pittsburgh. It was right at the edge of Mt. Washington, which is the hill that overlooks downtown Pittsburgh from across the Monongehela River. It has a great view of the downtown area. If you're visiting friends in Pittsburgh and you've never been here before, the chances are they'll drag you up to Grandview Avenue to gawk at downtown.
Anyway, this sewer averaged about 14' deep and ran about 800'. On one side there was an existing building, and a retaining wall, and on the other was the edge of the hill, so there was very little room to stack the dirt. When I first looked at the job I was worried that I'd run into rock that I wouldn't be able to dig. I was wrong. It seemed like the whole length of the job was nothing but fill that had just been pushed over and leveled out. It showed no sign that anything had ever been done to compact it. We used a trench box, but the dirt was so loose that most of the time I didn't have time to pull the box forward before one side or the other collapsed into the ditch. At other times I'd get the box pulled forward just in time to have one side collapse against it and knock it cockeyed. More than once I had to dig outside the box to free it up enough to be able to pull it at all. I did this job with my Case 680G. It probably would have been a whole lot better suited to about a 150 size excavator, but even then it would have been a real headache.
Some jobs have a really bad spot or two, but that one was bad from one end to the other...