11 Tons and Fire

 

I continued digging the pond today.  It is a bigger hole that it looks in this image.  The dimensions are 8 feet x 16 feet x 3 feet (2.4 m x 4.87 m x .91 m).  The garage behind me is 20 feet wide by 40 feet long for comparison (6.1 m x 12.2 m).

This project is complicated by the very dry, sandy soil that I'm excavating.

We could not use machinery to excavate the pond because there are multiple drinking water and sprinkler system pipes buried in the area.  We do not possess a schematic of where the pipes are buried.  When we first started digging a couple weeks ago we immediately struck a drinking water pipe (photos of the beginning of the project)

I have to repeatedly dampen the sand to make it firm enough to move.  Wet sand is considerably heavier than dry sand.  As I was digging this heavy, wet sand today I was doing the math. . . figuring the weight of all the sand that was to be moved.

HOW MUCH DOES IT WEIGH?

Length x Width x Depth = Cubic Feet (16 x 8 x 3 = 384 Cubic Feet)

Cubic Feet converted to Gallons = Cubic Feet x 7.47 (2858.48 gallons)

Gallons converted to pounds = G x 8.345 (2858.48 x 8.345 = 23,854.02 pounds)

23,854.02 wet pounds = 11.93 US Tons (10.65 Long Tons)

Dry Cubic Foot = 62.42796 pounds x 384 = 23,972.34 pounds

That's a lot of sand!

The sand resembles snow on my gloved hand (above).  It has the consistency of sugar in part due to the long period of drought we've experienced over the past 3 years.

I wear the gloves to protect my hands from spiders and ticks which are numerous in the grassy area around the pond site.

Only the top few inches of sand has any significant color.  This color comes from dead or decaying organic matter (plants and animals) in the top 4-6 inches (10 - 15 cm).

THE ORIGIN OF FLORIDA'S SANDS

These soils are sandy and siliceous (they are formed from quartz rocks into silicon dioxide SiO₂).  Remnants of marine, eolian, or fluvial sediments of Pleistocene (2.5 million to 11,700 years before present) to Recent age.   The broad, nearly level marine terraces between here and the coast are mostly relict shorelines and karst ridges.

THE HISTORY OF FLORIDA'S 

INLAND SAND HILLS

Here, close to the St. Johns River (we are 1 mile from the river) the sands are of more recent geologic origin.  Most of the landscape formed during the Pleistocene Epoch as ice sheets formed and melted causing the oceans to rise and fall.  During periods of maximum glaciation, shorelines were below the present sea level.  During interglacial periods, the sea level was much higher than it is today.  When the sea level remained stationary for a long period, waves and wind built dunes forming the shoreline ridge that we live atop today.  This ridge is approximately 100 feet (30.4 m) above sea level at its highest point.  We are near that high point on the ridge.

I will mist the entire area with sprinklers for a few days to compact it, then I'll remove the final foot or so of sand from the bottom of the pond.

After all the sand is removed, I'll compact the area again before placing the liner inside the frame.  The weight of the water will exert enormous force on the surrounding sand so it will need to be as firm as possible prior to loading the area with water.

To break up the work today I took some breaks and carried wood to the fire pit for burning.

This is the fire that resulted from all the debris collected over past days.

It is a virtually calm night so the smoke is mostly rising straight up.  There is occasionally a light ENE breeze which pushes the smoke away from us.

This image (above) is how the fire appears to the naked eye.  The other images were distorted with long exposures and digital alterations.

WEIGHT FORMULAS 

Below are a few other weight formulas

	Pounds	Grams	Kilograms
Cubic centimeter	0.002205	1	0.001
Cubic inch	0.036127	16.387064	0.0163871
Liter	2.204684	1000.028	1.000028
Gallon	8.345404	3785.4118	3.7854118
Cubic foot	62.42796	28316.847	28.316847