Home Repair forum - Sinkholes in stone driveway

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Sinkholes in stone driveway - how to fix

Tekkie®

2006-08-28, 8:25 pm

Anyone is SE Pennsylvania have experience with sinkholes in their stone
driveways and how to fix them?
--
Tekkie

dadiOH

2006-08-29, 9:25 am

Tekkie® wrote:
> Anyone is SE Pennsylvania have experience with sinkholes in their
> stone driveways and how to fix them?

Sinkholes? Honest-to-gawd sinkholes? Pump in 100s - 1000s of yards
of concrete.

--

dadiOH
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yeeha

2006-08-29, 9:25 am

Tekkie=AE wrote:
> Anyone is SE Pennsylvania have experience with sinkholes in their stone
> driveways and how to fix them?

This is a true story

A man had paid me to move a small storage building.

I called a rollback wrecker and had them pull it up on the wrecker bed
on skids

we shuttle over to the drop site

The rollback driver tilts his bed back and starts to shake the storage
building off...
everythings cool... a perfect drop is underway.

all of a sudden the rollback's right rear sinks into the ground up to
the tandum
the building is leaning waaaaay over to the right... looks like we
might lose it.

so! using the mechanics of the rollback bed, the operator lifts his
rear wheels off the ground.. I backfill the sink hole with concrete
blocks...

(he can only move forward after his wheels are on the ground)

he sets his wheels back down but it pushes the block deeper into the
ground
(about 4-5 blocks)... so we repeat the backfill process.. more
blocks...

the same thing happens again, the right rear tandum sinks down to the
ground
over 1/2 the wheels are beneath ground level.

we do this about 2 more times... and finally a huge cavity opens up
under wheels..about 5 -6 foot in diameter...

the rollback operator had to call his shop and have another tow truck
come pull him out of the spot... the storage building comes off without
incident.

Come to find out, we had broken through into an old railroad or civil
war tunnel in churchill Richmond Va..

it was an old civil war tunnel

the thing is, I knew in my hear that the tunnel probably led to all
sorts of civil war relics, but I had no rights as to a find or to
explore (not that I would climb down in there)

I never knew what became of that site... but the home owner may have
gotten rich from relics.

eh majer sinkhole

Goedjn

2006-08-29, 1:25 pm

On Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:05:19 -0400, Tekkie® <Tekkie@comcast.net>
wrote:

>Anyone is SE Pennsylvania have experience with sinkholes in their stone
>driveways and how to fix them?

Doesn't matter where you are, the answer is the same...
Dig up the sinkhole, see where the water is going,
fill it with rock, and cover it back up.

Tekkie®

2006-08-29, 8:25 pm

Goedjn posted for all of us...

> On Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:05:19 -0400, Tekkie=AE <Tekkie@comcast.net>
> wrote:
>=20
=20[color=darkred]
>=20
>=20
> Doesn't matter where you are, the answer is the same...
> Dig up the sinkhole, see where the water is going,=20
> fill it with rock, and cover it back up.
>=20
>=20
>=20
Thanks, thats what I thought... open wallet project.
--=20
Tekkie "There's no such thing as a tool I don't need."

2006-08-30, 3:25 am

On 29 Aug 2006 06:27:45 -0700, "yeeha" <bigbadbarry@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>Tekkie® wrote:
>
>This is a true story
>
>A man had paid me to move a small storage building.
>
>I called a rollback wrecker and had them pull it up on the wrecker bed
>on skids
>
>we shuttle over to the drop site
>
>The rollback driver tilts his bed back and starts to shake the storage
>building off...
>everythings cool... a perfect drop is underway.
>
>all of a sudden the rollback's right rear sinks into the ground up to
>the tandum
>the building is leaning waaaaay over to the right... looks like we
>might lose it.
>
>so! using the mechanics of the rollback bed, the operator lifts his
>rear wheels off the ground.. I backfill the sink hole with concrete
>blocks...
>
>(he can only move forward after his wheels are on the ground)
>
>he sets his wheels back down but it pushes the block deeper into the
>ground
>(about 4-5 blocks)... so we repeat the backfill process.. more
>blocks...
>
>the same thing happens again, the right rear tandum sinks down to the
>ground
>over 1/2 the wheels are beneath ground level.
>
>we do this about 2 more times... and finally a huge cavity opens up
>under wheels..about 5 -6 foot in diameter...
>
>the rollback operator had to call his shop and have another tow truck
>come pull him out of the spot... the storage building comes off without
>incident.
>
>Come to find out, we had broken through into an old railroad or civil
>war tunnel in churchill Richmond Va..

After a web search, it appears to be Church Hill.

Very interesting. I have heard of Betty Van Lew before, but only a
little bit. This makes it even more interesting.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cach...cd=2&lr=lang_en|lang_iw|lang_es

It's written in a way that doesn't mention you, but it's very
interesting.

[Although Betty did not see herself as a spy, it explains**] "spying"
used to be so despised. Which 20th century US President said
"Gentlemen do not read each other's mail."? But one good spy can be
more valuable than thousands of soldiers. and can probably save
thousands of lives too, at least on the spy's side.

**She saw herself, she explains, as a loyal American, who had not
seceded from the Union.

I'm sure there is a lot more.

Your part in discovering part of this is very interesting.

>it was an old civil war tunnel

Was it the one through which 100 prisoners at the Libby jail escaped?
I was confused when I read that part.

And mostly about the prison break:

http://richmondthenandnow.com/Tunne...bby-Prison.html
and
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cach...cd=2&lr=lang_en|lang_iw|lang_es

>the thing is, I knew in my hear that the tunnel probably led to all
>sorts of civil war relics, but I had no rights as to a find or to
>explore (not that I would climb down in there)
>
>I never knew what became of that site... but the home owner may have
>gotten rich from relics.
>
>eh majer sinkhole

yeeha

2006-08-30, 9:25 am

mm wrote:

> Was it the one through which 100 prisoners at the Libby jail escaped?
> I was confused when I read that part.

good question

I tell ya, the owner here was a backwards sort of fella
just a simple man...

If I had a map of known tunnels, I would know what we found

now you got me looking for a tunnel map

yeeha

2006-08-30, 9:25 am

here is the Libby prison break tunnel

http://tinyurl.com/hgtzr

the libby tunnel was only 50' long.

So Im sure what we found was not the libby tunnel

I did say churchill, but that was reference to general area
it was not actually ON churchill..

what we found was a tunnel, you could see very far to the left and to
the right

I say very far, but the thing is..

you would have to go down into the ground about 8 feet to be standing
on the tunnel floor...

it looked like we had broken through a decaying tunnel ...

it was suggested by the people involved that it was in fact an old
civil war tunnel
or an old railway tunnel used during the civil war

here is map to neighborhood where I delivered the building.

I can't remember the street, I think if I was driving there I could
find it again

I grew up not too far from the site

http://tinyurl.com/ktfrg

any address that google may show on a sidebar is incidental
it was just someones house.. no commercial buildings.

the area is montrose heights, richmond va
the actual adress of the site is 5 mins from churchill

you did use the term interesting in your post

maybe you know of a possible tunnel in that area

I always intended to drive there ( I dont live in that city no more)
and see what became of what we found.

LinkBot