Hey everyone! Hope you're coping alright with everything. Simple question in preparation for my novel: what happens when you dig a hole? I've Googled and done a basic scan of pretty much every source I can find but if anyone either a) knows more about this than the internet or b) knows where I can find more, please advise. Grateful for any response!! I'm talking what happens at 10 feet, 20 feet, 30 feet - it's going to be a big hole, so essentially what happens at various depths right up to the furthest a human can physically dig. Let's assume, for ease, that the soil is easily dig-able, and that any obstacles (roots, stones etc) will be dealt with throughout the story. But I'm interested what might happen to the soil, to the oxygen or anything further down, to the light - mainly, actually, I'm thinking my biggest issue is that at a certain point the hole would just cave in, and how would we deal with that? Hopefully some hole-diggers out there can help me out! Much appreciated.
Well, it ain't the size of the hole that's the problem, it's getting rid of the dirt. You can only throw the dirt so far before it piles beyond your range and slides back into the hole. And you need to widen the hole the deeper you dig to keep it from caving in, which multiplies the job by several magnitudes once you really get in there. You talking one dude doing this by hand? That'll take at least trilogy for him to finish. Even a team of dudes would have their work cut out for them.
Do you know, that's something I hadn't even considered, somehow. To be fair, the hole doesn't need to be ridiculously deep, of course it would be super nice if possible but it's looking less likely the more I read into it, especially with your comment about widening the hole etc. As long as it's *deep*, I've got a story. So I think it'll boil down to a question of "what's the deepest he could go in a few days"? And if that's any less than ten feet I think it might be an idea to abandon the idea altogether, but any over that and we're fairly golden.
Yep... it ain't the depth, it's the width that gets ya! Been ages since I dug me a good hole, though.
Not a question that has a straightforward answer. If I started digging a hole in my back garden, I would get through about a foot of "topsoil" (decomposed roots and plants - quite possibly what you might think of as "soil"), then I would get into silt - from an engineering point of view, silt is probably the shittiest substrate you can imagine. IF i could get through the silt (maybe 20'), I would get into London blue clay which has different problems, but also has some excellent and interesting qualities. You'd struggle do dig it with a shovel, but that is largely irrelevant because at 5' I would hit the water table and, without shoring, the silt would collapse and it is heavy - a cubic yard or so doesn't seem like much but it would be the weight of a family car falling on you. If I were to start digging in my mum's garden in Yorkshire, I would get possibly 2-3' of springy, peaty topsoil but then I would be straight into limestone and would need explosives or mechanical tools to get very far. tough though - my blasted out hole could go on for miles. ETA - I see you're in Norfolk - mainly chalk which would be a good digging rock, you could dig it with a pick-axe. It would flood but would take weeks. Nearer the coast would be gravel. Dig with a shovel but flood in minutes and collapse to about 45 degrees.
From working in construction it can differ depending on location but assuming as you mentioned the variables are in our favor... When getting down deep and by "deep" I mean 5 feet or more, OSHA requires a "trench box" on the sides as a cave in is likely (OSHA.gov) so anything beyond that and you'll be REALLY worried about a collapse, especially if your soil is like it is where I am, not well compacted and loose, liable to cave ins. IF you have a cave in your results will depend. I'm assuming you have no trench box or any safe guards and it's one or a few guys digging with shovels but this really depends on the overall size. A collapsed 10' by 20' hole is going to be much more safe for a collapse than a 10' by 3' trench and so on. If it's a partial collapse you'll be lucky and can maybe dig yourself out, if it's a full collapse being 20' below the surface you're going to probably die of asphyxiation unless people can get to you quickly. Next is light obviously. Even in broad daylight you'd be surprised how dark it is down there. It's also going to be cool, probably wet or at least moist depending on location. If you're digging near water you'll probably have water seep into the hole which will have to be dealt with. For a deep, narrow trench you'll need or want lighting. Oxygen at a mere 30' shouldn't be an issue unless you dig a man-sized hole straight down like you're playing Minecraft or something. A giant hole would be okay though air wise. As mentioned prior, moving the soil from the rim of the hole is important. You'd be surprised how fast that stacks up and gets in the way which will inhibit digging and cause more of a danger.
Perfect, thanks to everyone so far. It seems like there should be a way of still making a story out of this while having the dimensions be a little more realistic, and these are all obstacles he's gonna have to face and I guess learn from, even if he's never going to reach the depths I initially planned. If it was easy straight down there'd be no story, right? Given me a lot to work with here and I'm glad I asked. Just got to be careful I keep it realistic! Thanks again everyone
Digging with a shovel wears you out really quick, and unless you wear good gloves you'll get some killer blisters. Then if you go out and try to dig more the next day you're unbelievably sore, in all the places you need to use to dig (all the same muscles, blisters etc). In fact if I remember right it was hard to get to sleep because you're feeling a lot of pain if you dug for too long. Also you'd need to take breaks and get a lot of good nutrition. I've dug a bunch of different kinds of holes, and usually I found the way to do it is to first sort of chop straight downward again and again, to break up dirt, and then change your grip on the shovel and start scooping it all out. Uses different muscles for each. After a while you'll want to hold the shovel straight up and down (the blade of it, which means the handle is a little tilted backwards) and cut the sides to make that nice fresh-cut look, which makes them seem more solid. I found there;s a level with a lot of roots, which is about the top 2 feet or so, maybe 3 feet, and suddenly no more roots. But that could be different depending on what kind of trees are in the area I suppose. And the worst thing is if you dug for a day or two and wake up one morning to pouring rain. Another problem, an animal could fall in.
Again, very helpful stuff, thank you! And actually as it's a horror story I mean stuff like blisters/pain - but an obsession and therefore a need to keep digging despite that - is something I've got in the works already, as well as the whole lack of sleep thing. I hadn't considered stuff like animals falling in but again, horror story, so while I'm averse to *ever* killing the dog, I could involve a nice gory scene in some way there.
A bit late, but try a series called Time Team. It focuses on archaeology, but you see lots of issues and techniques. Stepping (hey Minecraft) comes to mind: digging 'platforms' to allow traverse and safety. Blisters and shoveling aside, you will be exhausted just from getting in and out of the hole all day. Come to mind are a Bucket system, Archimedes screw, hydro-slurry, head-bone lights, particulate asphyxiation, food/drink, etc. Check out two-man gem mining in Africa. Heat becomes an issue around 130feet, I think. There was a series called Diggers back TOC (21st). The Count Of Monte Cristo (modern) had some handwaving, but a collapse did kill a character. The Great Escape was a fairly realistic, or plausible suspension of disbelief if you like. POI, I seem to recall the mogul of Cray Computer had a tunnel project in his back yard.
Have you considered that if the hole your character digs is 10, 20 or 30ft - how are they going to get out of the hole - are ladders of that length available (I don't know). It would also take a long time to move the soil from the bottom of the hole to the top, up and down the ladder each time.
You could embed branches (thick ones), maybe in a trench running up the side of the pit—build your own ladder rung by rung. But yeah, carrying dirt up would become a labor of Hercules. Whats pops into my head would be a sort of Robinson Crusoe device, a pulley and rope assembly with a stop at the top to automatically dump the bucket each time when it gets there, but you'd still have to climb up every now and then and move the whole pile away or it would quickly swamp the device itself and start dumping back down on top of you.
Soil, especially wet soil, is really heavy so any soil collapse could cause life threatening crush injuries and/or asphyxiation. You can still asphyxiate even if you aren’t completely buried if your chest is crushed as it’ll impede the thoracic cage and respiratory muscles. Some gases are heavier than oxygen (carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide for example) so there may be a build up of these the further down you go. A build up of carbon dioxide could displace any oxygen leading to an irrespirable atmosphere, causing rapid loss of consciousness and death. Hydrogen sulphide can kill in only a few breaths. Also consider contaminated ground, particularly on sites that may have used or stored chemicals. Microbial decay can also lead to a build up of gases like methane and hydrogen sulphide. I think a certain depth is defined as a confined space too, which means certain legislation would apply in the UK.
Yes, my previous post was deleted by administration. I'm only saying to dig a hole takes great expertise, and not the domain of softies at keyboards, essentially. 'Blisters' had me spitting [rage]/
What you really want for a hole that big is to rent a backhoe. Compared to the labor you'd put into a hole that size shoveling by hand, a backhoe would save a lot of money. I would read that horror story, where the protagonist is feverishly operating a large excavator. I will go so far as to say that digging a 20-30 foot hole would take so long as to be nearly impossible
