In last week's post, we had dug a trench and widened the trench out into the area where we were going to sink the 45-gallon steel barrel. When we left, there wasn't too much water in the trench. However, that wasn't the case when we arrived on the scene this morning. Right in the middle of the area where we were going to dig was a good 3"-4" of water. Right away, I knew that it was going to be muddy digging.
Our objective was to dig a round hole about 4' in diameter and about 4' deep so that we could sink the steel barrel which we would use as a liner for the sump pit. So we stepped right into the middle of the muddy mess and started to dig. Steve G worked one side while I worked the other. This got us down about 12" when I took a couple of pails and started to bail the water out of the hole. Or, should I say, started to bail the mud out of the hole. Right around then Cliff took over on the digging and jumped right into the middle of the hole. He soon had the hole down to 18"-24".
And then the fun began. As we got deeper and deeper, it became more difficult to dig into the sides of the hole to keep it vertical. Water kept pouring in and from time to time we had to stop and bail the hole out. It was a case of handing a pail of this soupy mix up to Brad who then handed it over to Bill who then dumped it into a pile against the wall.
If you take a close look at Brad's right boot, you'll see that his boot is a good 3"-4" in sticky, gooey, mud. And that's with a pail of crushed stone underneath to stop him from sinking down further!
Because it was raining outside, in addition to the clay being a soupy mess, we simply piled the mud up against the foundation wall, making sure that none of the soupy water would run back into our hole. What you see coming out of the end of the bucket that Bill is dumping is that soupy, gooey mess.
There was no time to take a break for if we were to stop, we'd soon have the hole filled up with water. As we went down deeper, we abandoned the long-handled shovel for a short handled one. When that didn't work, we simply sloshed around in the hole churning the clay into liquid mud which we then bailed out of the hole with the plastic buckets. We had one corner which started to look a little obstinate with a large-sized rock stopping our digging. However, the big steel bar quickly loosened things up and by 11 o'clock, we were down to the depth we wanted.
I had no sooner been pulled out of the hole by Cliff and Brad when the hole started to fill up with water. We quickly poured a 6" base of crushed stone into the hole as a base for the steel barrel. We then placed the barrel on top of the crushed stone and started to backfill the outside with crushed stone. One of the first things we did in the morning was to trundle down to the North end with the lorry, a dozen plastic pails, and 3 shovels to get a full load of crushed stone. Half of this went into the mud to stabilize our walking surfaces on the sides of the hole as we were digging. Otherwise, we would have been pulling each other out of the mud and probably leaving our boots behind.
As a result, it required another trip down to the North end for more crushed stone. At that point, Mother Nature decided to turn the tap on with some heavy-duty rain. However, Brad, Bill and Cliff decided to weather the storm and went down the line for some crushed stone. It wasn't too bad for Brad and Cliff as they had rain gear. However, Bill was soaked by the time he returned.
You wouldn't believe the amount of clay we dug out of that hole. Bill had been piling it up against the wall. Here's a photo of that mud pile with a lot of the water drained out of it.
We soon had the hole backfilled around the barrel just in time to go for lunch. However, we had to get a group photo for the record. That's Cliff in the Balaclava.
After lunch, Cliff and I returned to do the plumbing with ABS plastic pipe. To my surprise..... well...... actually I wasn't surprised............. the water was over the top of the barrel.
We managed to get most of the plumbing done but we were short a couple of fittings and I had to leave for a dinner engagement in Ottawa - after I had taken a nice hot shower.
We'll be back at it again next week, hopefully with the sump pump in operation so that we can dry out the gift shop basement. All in all, a messy job that was very well done. Thanx a lot guys for your efforts. We certainly know how to get the job done, eh!?
With the cleanup of the excavated clay from the baggage room basement last week, we started today on the gift shop basement. While this basement is located right next door to the stairs going outside, thereby being the shortest distance outside to the dumping area, it is probably going to be the trickiest, dirtiest, and messiest of the three basements we are going to tackle.
This basement was backfilled with clay when the station was built back in 1910 with the level of the clay being anywhere from 12"' to 24"' higher than it's next-door cousin, the furnace room basement. This latter basement is the only one of the 5 basements to have a concrete floor. Water from the gift shop basement is continually leaking underneath the concrete footings and into the furnace room basement. Which means that the clay in the gift shop basement is a soggy, laden mess. The only drainage from this basement is a 2" ABS plastic pipe that was somehow inserted through the concrete wall from the furnace room into the gift shop basement. This pipe finds its way over to the edge of the sump pump in the furnace room. Not exactly the best drainage system but nevertheless it was all that we had (or could afford) at the time.
Our objective is to turn this basement into something similar to what we did in the bathroom and baggage room basements - namely install a sump pit and sump pump, then excavate trenches around the inside perimeter of the basement, drop some 6" Big-O plastic drain tile into the trenches, and backfill the trenches with crushed stone. Sort of something like the diagram below.
What we didn't encounter in the other two basements was that extra clay. In order to get the holes for the drain tile in the steel barrel below the concrete floor in the furnace room basement, we have to excavate that extra 12"-24" of clay. In addition to working in a soggy mess over several weeks, it would take us a lot of time to dig out all of that extra material. So I decided to take a different approach. We would first dig a wide trench from the existing 2" ABS plastic pipe over to our sump pit location and then widen that trenchwork at the location of our sump pit. We then install the sump pit and sump pump which will then start to de-water the gift shop basement. In about 10 day, we should be working on some solid ground.
In the meantime, when we return next week, the whole area will be a real soupy mess but it will allow us to get the steel barrel down to its proper level. By the end of the day, this is what we had accomplished.
It always helps when you have a good crew to do the work and today was no exception. There was Bill S, Cliff, Brad and Corey. Just the right numbers when you consider that we are working on stairs that became greasy real fast - that's what you get when you mix clay and water - and we were working in a very closed-in space, to say nothing about the sticky, gooey, pasty, clay. Bill and I were on the shovels, while Cliff, Brad and Corey alternated on throwing the pails out through the opening and onto the stairs, up the stairs, and out onto the dirt pile. By the end of the morning, at least one third of the weight kept coming back in as it was impossible to completely empty the pails.
Bill took a few moments to survey the work that we had done. His hand is on the steel barrel that we'll be sinking into that soupy clay next week. (We'll tell you more about that barrel in our next post as it required some special attention to get it through the opening into this basement.)
This is what it looks like at the drain pipe end. You can see how fast the trench is filling up with water. Somewhere against the concrete wall is the drain pipe that we hope will temporarily drain the water out of the basement.
And then Bill decided to step into the excavation (or rather, I told him to pose for a photo in the excavation. Naturally, he got stuck in the mud (as anyone would) so Brad had to come to his rescue. It took two of us to pull him out - that's how sticky, gooey that stuff is.
Next week, we dig the sump ptt, sink the steel barrel, and backfill with crushed stone. That's gonna be a really messy job, fer shur, fer shur!!
While we started off with a small crew of only 3 people at the start of the morning (me, Steve G and Cliff), by the end of the morning we had one of the largest crews we had ever seen since we started draining the swamp (me, Steve G, Cliff, Brad, Bill S, John W, and George M). As a result, we got all of the dirt moved out of the baggage room basement! Hard to believe that we only started the job at the beginning of September and, only working on Thursday mornings (and a few of those were short Thursdays!), we managed to achieve what we did. Only way this was done was through some teamwork.
Last week, I posted this photo of where we started and what we had accomplished at the end of the day.
By mid-morning, we had that pile down quite a lot.
And by the end of the day, it looked like this. The dirt is all gone!
Quite a difference, eh!?
Here's the mug shot of today's crew. It was a real team effort with George M and I on the shovels filling the pails, Bill S throwing them out of the baggage room basement. Sometimes Cliff, sometimes Steve and sometimes Brad hauling the pails across the waiting room basement. And all of them sometimes trucking them up the stairs and dumping them outside, ably assisted by John W.
Of course with all the work that we had done over the weeks, George M insisted that I put the last shovelful into the proverbial pail - sort of akin to pounding in the last spike?
A job well done, gang!
