How Old-Timers Read Soil Without Any Modern Tools

How Old-Timers Read Soil Without Any Modern Tools Clyde could push a steel rod into a piece of ground he had never seen, kick it with his boot heel, and tell you what that dirt would do in February, wet, frozen and loaded with a house. His whole soil lab fit in a wooden box behind the truck seat and cost about eleven dollars. Dale Tackett has spent thirty-one years running excavators in Tennessee and Kentucky, and these are the seven soil reads he learned from Clyde, the old operator who started on a cable dragline in the 1960s. None of them repeat the color, squeeze and ribbon tests from the first video. This is the next level. In this video: Read 1: The probe rod, pushed in a grid to find soft pockets, gravel and rock before you dig or give a price Read 2: The thumb in the cut face, the heel on the subgrade, and the loaded-truck proof roll Read 3: The jar test: sand in a minute, silt in a few hours, clay in a day or more Read 4: The shaking test for silt and the dry ball for swelling clay Read 5: Let a hole sit overnight: water table, weeping seams, where the roots stop, and the old coffee-can perc test Read 6: Read the hillside: hockey-stick trees, tipped posts, little steps, splits at the top, a bulge at the toe and the spring line Read 7: Read the bucket from the seat: how the dirt comes off the teeth, how it sounds, how the machine feels, and how it smells A real hillside lot where every read said the same thing, and what an engineer's borings found Where the old reads run out SAFETY: This video is general information from field experience, not engineering or legal advice. Always call 811 before you dig or probe. Never push a probe rod on or near a marked line. Trenches 5 feet deep or more need a protective system (sloping, benching, shoring or a trench box) unless they are in stable rock, and the soil must be classified by a competent person. Never get into a test hole or trench to look at it. Septic perc tests and site approvals are done by your local health department. On buildings, tall walls and steep slopes, hire a geotechnical engineer. Which soil read did your mentor swear by? Tell me in the comments. If you missed them, watch: What Old Excavator Operators Knew That New Ones Forgot, and 7 Dirt-Moving Tricks Old Operators Used Before GPS. If this kind of practical knowledge is useful to you, consider subscribing. Dale Tackett #excavator #heavyequipment #dirtwork #operator #soil #construction #oldschool #soiltest