That cold morning in Michigan where everything went sideways

I was putting up a 200 foot stretch of privacy fence near Lansing last winter and the ground was frozen solid right down to 4 inches deep. My post hole digger bounced off the first hole like it was concrete, so I had to switch to a heavy duty spud bar to chip through the frost layer piece by piece. Has anyone else dealt with frozen ground like that and found a quicker way to break through?

3 comments

3 Comments

pipera5027d ago

Did you try heating the ground at all before you started digging? I'm wondering if a propane torch or even just dumping hot water on the spots would've softened that frost layer enough to get the digger biting in.

the_zara25d ago

Oh man, I actually saw this wild video once where some guy in Alaska used a portable steam cleaner on the ground before digging. He said it melted the frost way faster than hot water because the steam penetrates deeper. But honestly, I tried the hot water trick on my own property last winter and it worked okay, just took a few rounds of dumping and waiting. The problem is if it's really cold that water freezes into a icy mess before you can even get the shovel in. I'd still take steam over a torch any day, less risk of setting stuff on fire.

richardfox27d ago

Forget heat, try dumping a bag of calcium chloride down first.