Best way to MD a big pile of dirt/clay in construction area

[thearchivedept]

I got some city park work going on and they are making mounds of dirt and all the top scrapping of grass into piles. these are about 10 ft high Do i just climb and sweep ? Don't think I want to disrupt the pile too much I may get flak for "making an apparent mess. Any suggestions? PS yes it still about 40 degrees here an piles are kinda muddy.
Billy

 

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[diggummup]

Instead of detecting the piles, detect the area the piles came from. How deep did they dig the "top scrapping of grass "?

 

[okdiggermark]

I got some city park work going on and they are making mounds of dirt and all the top scrapping of grass into piles. these are about 10 ft high Do i just climb and sweep ? Don't think I want to disrupt the pile too much I may get flak for "making an apparent mess. Any suggestions? PS yes it still about 40 degrees here an piles are kinda muddy.
Billy

Is there a Construction Fence around the area? If so, it's more than likely off limits to you while in construction. Also, many times the Contractor may have an agreement with the City that all inside the area will wear hard hats and safety vests. Hard to say...

 

[thearchivedept]

No fence It just says "road closed ahead" halfway into the existing parking area. They needed the park area to go through for new sewers/water to a new school they are building adjacent to it. They scrapped off the top layer of grass then dug their trenches and made a huge mess of all the grass in the park. Tot lot still intact and accessible. This was farmland til about 1970.
I thinking maybe some silver ?maybe some ?? I get all excited just thinking about it. but I have a day job during daylight hours
Billy

 

[TORRERO]

Always go for the easy stuff first, this is where the grass has been scraped from
then if you are getting some really good stuff, (silver coins, older items etc...)
then you can try the piles, simply by standing next to them and swinging the machine
across the sides to see if you get a signal.
But always go for the easy stuff first because if your told to leave, you sure don't want to have
wasted your time trying to figure how to hunt a big pile of grass and dirt...
when you could have had stuff litterally on top of the ground where the grass used to be...
Richard

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Couple of things here:

If you say this park was "farmland up until 1970", then this park is too new for silver. I doubt the piles or scraped surface is worth hunting, unless you're into clad.

Unless you had the date wrong and meant 1870? if so diggummup is right: You want to hunt the scraped areas, not the piles of turf. Afterall, the top 5 or 6" is the newer stuff (in undisturbed park turf), and it's the deeper stratas you want to hunt anyhow.

Next problem though: you're saying the digging is for sewers/water. Therefore this isn't really a "scrape" (as some of us initially interpretted the word "scrape" to mean). Rather, this is trenching. So really, that type of digging isn't nearly as good for park turf hunting, as scraping would be. Because think about it: in trenching, they might go 5 or 6 ft. deep, yet only a foot or two across. So you can see that because everything below the top 1 ft. (Assuming an old park that is. And only a few inches for a 1970 park) is going to be sterile, as it's below the human influence/sinkage level. This means that with trenching spoils, the vast majority of the soil is sterile.

The word "scrape" on the other hand, is normally used for the type of tractor work you might expect in cases of scraping 6" off an entire turfed park, to prepare for artificial turf, or to prepare to put in an ice-skating rink, or tennis courts, or parking lot, etc.... Those are the perfect scrapes if done in 100+ yr. old parks

 

[diggummup]

Good detailed explanation Tom.

 

[thearchivedept]

I see your point about trench vs scrape. About into clad............... No prefer non clad of course but will "work for clad" I think I will focus on the torn up parts of the turf then, and were the tractor went in maybe adjacent to the trenches that have already been filled. If then still time. I will do the piles if all goes well Will see if I can go tomorrow what else is there to do Shop!!!Yuk
Billy

 

[diggummup]

I see your point about trench vs scrape. About into clad............... No prefer non clad of course but will "work for clad" I think I will focus on the torn up parts of the turf then, and were the tractor went in maybe adjacent to the trenches that have already been filled. If then still time. I will do the piles if all goes well Will see if I can go tomorrow what else is there to do Shop!!!Yuk
Billy

Looking forward to see if you find anything good. Good luck!

PS- I did all my shopping in 5 minutes at CVS... it's called gift cards! LOL