iDEA'S

[JUNKYARD DOG]

looking for some idea's. My house was built in the late 1860's and I dont know when they put the plumbing in. How do I go about finding where the privey was or privey's. Do you use a probe? where is the most likely place they dug them? how deep did they go? would there have been several over the years? Any help or direction to help would be very appreciated, thought it may be a project my wife and I could work on. Thanks for any help... JYD...

[Da Sand Crab]

Hopefully, they leave a depression on the surface of the ground. Otherwise depending on how it was filled in, its can be hard to locate. We do use long probes made of spring steel and try to find soft or irregular spots. Then dig test holes which will hopefully uncover the diameter of the hole and some other signs. Some of them are 10 to 12 feet deep and finds can be at any depth. Hard work and a lot of sweat involved. Good Luck.

[jrsherman]

Dang! I wish I was home now, I'm from SW Mo! I'd be more than glad to make that trip if I were there.

It depends on lots of things. If you live in town, the privies were generally in the back corner of the yard. No real generic right or left, just one or the other. If you live in the country, it gets complicated and more on luck/a LOT of time probing for one.

Like Ringman said, look for small circular areas in your yard that are depressed. Looks kind of like a tree died and the stump rotted. Of course if that ACTUALLY happened, then you'd feel the same thing if you probed it , a soft spot. I don't know how y'alls ground is up there, but if its anything like ours down south of Springfield, its so full of rocks that you could find it easy with a probe anyway.

If you want to learn a LOT about privies and digging them, go to www.privydigger.com .Eddie has a LOT of good info on starting out there, and his eBook is really amazing as well. I recommend it! If I manage to get towards home and it aint froze solid yet, I'll give you a holler about shooting up your way if you're interested. I don't care much about getting anything as much as seeing it come out! Its a BLAST digging bottles!

Good luck and happy digging!

[diggummup]

Here's another link you can check out about locating privies-http://www.19thcenturybottlediggers....ingdigging.htm