I fell into a hole. Part 2!

[JSUnlimited]

Finally the state approved the funding to repair this suspected mine subsidence related hole that I first talked about in this post;

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/rural-living/141129-i-fell-into-hole.html

What they did (private contractor working for the state) was to dump the limestone and they began to excavate the hole.

In the last pic, the state inspector noted that he felt that the black material was the beginning of a coal seam.

 

[dmccarty]

It the last photo is that a tunnel or something they dug out?

Maybe you should keep the hole and burn coal to stay warm?

Though there does seem to be some water down there...

Later,
Dan

 

[JSUnlimited]

After the hole was opened up, it was determined that there was no threat to my garage. They then lined the hole in a crossed method with fabric and filled with the limestone, effectively making a "plug".

After the fabric and stone was in place, they then backfilled and packed it down.

 

[JSUnlimited]

Done. They raked it out and put down seed and straw.

It seems nobody knows for sure what the cause was, however there is a great amount of ground water around here as well as a significant history of coal mining.

 

[schmism]

while i wouldnt want a large sink hole RIGHT off the edge of my garage. It would be fun to pull some coal out to burn in mystove. Talk about free heat!

 

[Mike_Kanzer]

How deep is the hole in the last picture with the coal in the bottom?

I saw an episode of Dirty Jobs where Mike Rowe went around with a contractor that plugged entrances to abandoned mine shafts that opened up. Surprisingly they used an expanding foam insulation-like product to make a plug and then layered successive layers of the stuff to fill in a lot of the hole. They finally backfilled it. They were able to jump up and down on the foam when they were done with it. Glad to see you were able to get it filled in at the state's expense.
On a similar note i once broke through a rusted lid of an old disconnected septic tank. I barely caught myself before fallling into about 6 feet of water! The lid wasn't visible becuase it was under about 8-10" dirt and grass.

 

[Kfbeal]

I'm glad they got it fixed for you and something worse didn't happen. There was a sink hole around Houston a while back that took in quite a bit of real estate, tractors, etc.

I was picking cotton once on an IH 416 two-row picker and the back wheel fell down into a septic tank. Luckily the wheel was a tad bit larger or I would have never gotten it pulled out of there.

 

[Mark_in_NH]

On a similar note i once broke through a rusted lid of an old disconnected septic tank. I barely caught myself before fallling into about 6 feet of water! .

Are you sure it was just water

 

[Willl]

I'm going to bet your ain't seen the last of this
'hole'.

 

[SPIKER]

you might want to check down at the county surveyors office to see if there has now been a note put into the deed that states that there is/was a sink hole in the property and it's location & date of repair. This maybe something that may make it much harder to sell the property later and if so you may be able to get some tax reductions if there is as this would affect the future and current value of property. I know that SE ohio is littered with these types of holes due to the extensive mining back in the day there are also a lot of homes built on slag/fill over old strip mines that were built prior to the laws that prevent this from now happening... Did you get the mineral rights to the property when you bought? just wondering...

mark

 

[dodge man]

They have a similar program in Illinois where they go around and fix abandoned mines. Most of the time the problem is quite a bit bigger. I here of one in Southern Illinois where they hauled hundreds of loads of rock to fill in the old mine shaft before it filled up. Just a guess on my part but most likely yours was just a small mine that some previous owner mined just to get enough coal to heat his house. Thats pretty common in Illinos also.

 

[OneMan]

I've just read this post but I have a similar question concerning holes.
My son just bought 10 acres of property in TN and whhie we were viewing the parcel, we took along his 7 month old Golden. One part of the acreage is not cleared completely so we were trying to find the property markers when we heard the dog yelp.
He yelled to me what happened and I said I thought he had the dog. We couldn't see her but we could hear her whinning.
Finally we located her in a hole that she had fallen into. It looked like an underground streambed because the hole ran horizontally at both ends of where she was lying. My son jumped into the hole (he is 6' 2" and it was atleast 2' over his head). He grabbed the dog and had to sling her up to me while I lay on the ground reaching over the hole.
Next we had to get my son out using the dog's leash as a rope. The dog was fine and didn't suffer any damage except for some cuts.
After all this was over we went back and started to look at the area. It seems that this "stream, hole or whatever" runs from the top of the property to the bottom. In some places it is entirely covered over by limbs and leaves and dirt, and in others it is barely visable. Some depths are over 8' deep while others are barely 3'.
There is no mention of this thing on the survey papers or any papers. It looks like you could go the entire lenght of the property under ground and not be seen. I am thankful that the dog didn't go exploring into the horizontal ditch as we would never have found her had she gotten under the ground.
My question is: Could this be an underground streambed or just a runoff ditch that was covered over thru the years of neglect? I'm old enough that my first flashback was a VC tunnel but then I had to realize I was in TN.
Has anyone ever come across an underground stream before? There was no water when we were there but the area has had a drought for some months. Neither the realtor nor the owner "knew" what we were talking about nor was the County Extension Agent of any help.