The Gift Shop Basement - Sinking The Barrel (Mud, Mud, Everywhere!!)

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!?