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TIL I was setting my post hole digger up wrong for years
I was working on a cedar fence job in Tacoma last week and my helper asked why I always used the short auger. I said it was just how I learned. He showed me how he swaps to the long one for the first hole to check for rocks or old concrete before we commit. We found a chunk of an old foundation 18 inches down on the third post spot, which would have wrecked our day. How do you guys check your dig sites before you start?
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lisa_murray1mo ago
My uncle always pokes a steel rod into the ground first to feel for pipes.
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paige87020d ago
Honestly, I used to think that old-school poking was a waste of time. Felt like a superstition. But after reading what mason.paige went through, it makes total sense. Your uncle's method is cheap and it gives you that physical feel you just don't get from a machine. I'm combining both now, the metal detector for junk and the rod for pipes. It's a solid one-two punch before any big dig.
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mason.paige1mo ago
We hit a buried concrete patio slab last summer in Portland that cost us two days of work. Now I run a small metal detector over the area first, the cheap kind from the hardware store. It won't find everything, but it picks up on rebar and big metal junk. That plus poking around with a digging bar has saved me more times than I can count.
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