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Rant: A job in Boulder showed me why you need to check soil before setting posts
We put up a cedar fence for a client last spring, and by fall three posts were leaning bad. Went back and dug around one, found the hole was just backfilled with loose dirt and gravel from the yard, no concrete at all. The ground there is that heavy clay that shifts a ton when it gets wet. Had to pull all the bad ones and reset them with proper concrete footings, which took two extra days. Anyone else run into this kind of soil problem and have a good way to test it fast on site?
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jade32mo agoMost Upvoted
Used to think a soil probe was overkill for small jobs. That Boulder clay changed my mind fast. Now I carry a cheap auger bit and a spray bottle. Dig a test hole, spray water in it, check how it drains. If it just sits there like soup, you're in for concrete footings and maybe even gravel backfill. Saved my butt on a job in Lafayette last month with the same muck.
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terryr462mo ago
Yeah, that spray bottle trick is smart, @jade3. Makes me wonder how deep you're going for that test hole. Like, are you just checking the top foot, or do you go down to where the actual footing base will be? I hit a layer of decent looking dirt once, only to find pure soup six inches lower. Had to re-dig the whole trench. What's your rule of thumb for depth on those quick checks?
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