The Baggage Room Basement - Phase III - Starting The Trenches

This morning we went down the basement stairs into the bowels of the basement in anticipation, wondering if our sump pump installation had been working all week.  If it was working, we should be working on firmer ground instead of mushy clay.  If it was working, the clay would be dropping off the shovel instead of sticking  like a 10-ton weight to the end of the shovel.  Would we see solid clay or would we see mushy?

It wasn't obvious as we stepped into the baggage room basement as our eyes hadn't yet adjusted to the light.  I took the "trouble light" that had been hanging over the top of the sump pit and flicked it on.  Eureka!  The water level was down to where it should be and..... wonder of wonders!!..... we were walking on solid clay!!

For the next two hours, Bill S, Brad, Corey and I pounded in a couple of 2"x 4" stakes, screwed in some 8-footers into the stakes and into the floor joists, providing support to the plastic ABS piping so that a) people wouldn't fall into the sump pits, b) the sump pumps and the discharge pipes would have some support, and c) the ABS piping along the floor joists would have a proper slope so that the water would drain.

After a short break at mid-morning, we got down to the business at hand.  There's a window well that used to provide fresh air into the basements from the breezeway.  This was covered in donkeys ages ago with a concrete slab and the window well had a whole pile of rubble piled on the ledge.  Ross had wanted this cleared out so that the concrete slab could be busted to allow air to be drawn into and through the basements and sucked out by the big fan that's in the furnace room basement.  First, we shovelled the rubble from the well and at the base of the window well into buckets which was hauled outside.   Brad and Corey did double duty in getting the 50 - 60 buckets of this junk out of the basements, up the stairs and dumped over the side of the swamp.  This brought us up to noon hour and time for lunch.

After lunch, Bill S had to leave us which only left Brad, Corey and me to do the grunt work.  Our objective was to start excavating for the trenches.  Given that there were only 3 of us, we weren't about to kill ourselves trucking full pails of clay through the basements, up the stairs, across the tracks and over into the swamp.  So we had to resort to "Plan B" instead of "Plan A".   

To get started Brad and I started digging a trench on each side of the sump pump, dumping the clay into the pails

When Brad had dug his trench down to the depth of two shovels, we would then switch sides and he would carry on at the end of my trench and continue digging the clay out to the depth of two shovels, dumping the clay into the buckets.  

Working on Brad's trench that he just left, I would then dig the trench down to its final depth of 24" with a slight slope on the bottom of the trench so that the water will drain towards the sump pit.  When we get to the far end of the baggage room basement, the trench will be about 16" deep instead of the current 24".  As you can see from the photo below, we've go the trench down fairly deep.  (You can also see some of the bracing we added to the ABS plastic pipe to stabilize the sump pump and to provide some protection for the sump pit so that you don't fall into the sump pit.)  On the left in front of Corey, you can just start to see the pile of dirt rising up the side of the old concrete column that used to support the floor. 

With all of these pails being filled with clay, what do we do with the clay we've dug out?  As I said above, we had to resort to Plan B.  Since there was only the 3 of us, instead of trucking the pails up the stairs, Corey dumped the clay in a big pile in the middle of the baggage room basement. Here's what the pile looked like halfway through the afternoon as Corey dumps a pail of clay onto the pile.  (I've highlighted the bottom edge of the pile to give you an idea of how much clay we dug out of the trenches.)

The clay came out relatively dry - if you can ever call clay dry - instead of the usual sticky, gooey mess that we were working with in the bathroom basement.  Aside from the fact that the water levels in the swamp are at their lowest, the sump pump had been doing its job all week lowering the water table as the water was pumped out of the baggage room basement. 

We're now short of manpower as two of the lads have gone back to school.  However, we may be getting a couple of extra lads in the next couple of weeks, at which time, we'll be able to start trucking the clay pile outside.  In the meantime, the pile is going to get bigger, and bigger, and bigger.

By the end of the day, we had made a good start with about 12' of trenching dug to the proper depth.  Next week, it'll be more of the same.