DezzBear wrote:Ok, instead of making a new thread I’m going to post on this one.
I’ve managed to dig myself a pretty good size pit. I saw somewhere that it’s best to dig a cone with a small area for the deepest section, so my pit is 6 feet wide and about 6 feet deep. I’m 6.2 and I don’t plan on actually filling it all the way. Unlike Theo, I didn’t have to worry about any rocks or hard debris in my pit, it was just rough filtering out all the topsoil with roots and whatnot. All of the soil I dug out of the pit was heavy, red clay, and I assumed that I could just fill it back and add water to have the perfect clay pit.
Perfect plan, or so I thought.
I filled back in a small section about 3 feet deep and mixed it until it was a good consistency. And I really made sure there was extra water. I took into accounts the pit drying out and so when I filled it, I basically sprayed water on the pile of dirt outside the pit so the only thing filling the pit was muddy water runoff. I thought it would be really runny mud at the bottom, but it still turned out really heavy, and it had a ton of water on top of it. So I waited about one day for it to dry out a little, and then it was way too thick.
Does anyone have any suggestions for what I can do to fill my pit with? It looks like the material I’m working with is red clay, but I guess it has a ton of sand in it so it’s way heavy. I dug this pit behind my fence in the forest. I still have neighbors and it is not 100% private, so I have to be kind of discreet about when I work on it. But I still have enough privacy that no one could really see it unless they were being nosy.
I appreciate any suggestions, thanks guys
I actually had maybe a similar issue with my pit. Though a lot of it is peat, I did use some of the sifted dirt from digging the hole, so it's maybe 30 to 40 percent dirt, which makes the last foot or so very thick, though with effort I can still push my feet into it, possibly because there's a lot of peat mixed into it. I also just pushed the garden hose down there to loosen it up, which worked pretty good too.
One idea I had: if I were to make a better quicksand pit (kinda like the better mouse trap
), I'd refer back to Nikki's plan in the first story I wrote. I'd lay out some half inch PVC pipes on the bottom in a sort of grid, drill some holes in the top for the water to come out, and put a vertical pipe running along the side to the surface with a garden hose adapter on the top. I don't how well that would work with the weight of the material pushing down on it, but I do believe water likes to make it's way to the surface—given enough time.