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That old oak in the park had a root flare buried under 8 inches of fill dirt.
We figured it would be a quick half-day job to excavate it, but the soil was pure clay and packed like concrete. It took me and two guys from my crew a full three days with an air spade and hand tools to get it cleared properly without damaging the major roots. Anyone else run into a 'simple' excavation that turned into a major project?
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david_henderson62mo ago
Oh, absolutely. It's never just dirt, is it? You start digging and find out it's basically rock, or a tangle of old pipes, or a whole forgotten foundation. That "quick job" feeling is the biggest trap in this kind of work. You think you know what you're getting into until the shovel hits something solid. Respect for sticking with it for three days to do it right, though. Most people would have given up and just made it worse.
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charlesowens2mo ago
The real kicker is how that packed clay probably messed with the tree's water for years before you even showed up. It creates a fake high ground, so all the rain just runs off instead of soaking down to the roots. You might have saved it from a slow death by drought even with it sitting in a park getting watered. Those three days were brutal, but the tree was basically suffocating.
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robinson.holly8d ago
Whoa wait, that "fake high ground" thing is wild. So the clay basically acted like a bowl underneath the tree and all the water just slid off the top? I never thought about it that way but it makes total sense. No wonder that tree was probably looking rough even before I showed up, the water was never actually getting where it needed to go.
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