Cat_Driver,
Do you ever dig up a petrified tree trunk out in Ca? Around 1957 my much older cousin had a gray stone log that he pushed up with his crawler. He broke off a piece with a sledge hammer and gave it to me. I don't know what ever became of it.
Out my way here in the Coachella Valley of Ca. near the Mex. Border I have nothing but beach sand. We are a couple hundred feet BELOW sea level and use to be an ancient ocean hence the beach sand like the bottom an ocean. That big cement pipe you see is an underground pipe that feeds the entire valley with Colorado river water via aqua ducts and those large pipes. You can order water by the acre foot.
The tree was next to the pie so it got plenty of Colorado river water. I had the hardest time killing it because of that. One time I stripped off every branch and leaf and only left that stump. Sure enough it only took that one leaf to bring the tree back to full glory and even more branches.
I'm thinking it was a cottonwood tree.
Speaking of almost tipping over, there were a few times fighting with this thing I was worried.
Here's the catch. I could only "pick around" the tree with the excavator because directly under the tree was the main line from the phone company to all the homes on my block. I could never go DEEP and I always tugged and pulled only the stump. What finally did it was the blade on the excavator. I rammed it good and hard and it tipping over enough to loosen it. Then a little more fighting and it popped out.
Having said that, there is no guarantee the LOOOOOOOOONg roots didn't disturb the phone lines.
Petrified tree trunk out her but it's always weird to dig down and see million year old sea shells like you would find walking along the beach buries 12 feet under ground.
Here's the pros and cons of digging in beach sane. #1 it's easy to dig and it's easy on the equipment. #2 it's like digging a trench in a bowl of sugar. To get a 24" trench you need to dig a 6' wide trench because of all the cave ins. You also don稚 want to do any work in the ditch for fear of cave ins.
I just dug a 1,200 foot trench around the property sides for a 2" PVC line. I dug the trench and assembled the and built the PVC pipe up above the trench on solid ground the pushed it into the trench. That worked out sweet, I never had to go in the trench.
We grow Dates on the ranch.
