Lucky owner of few cubic yds of unidentified gunk

[RonR]

That and the value of iron in the cars is high, so getting rid of them puts $$$$ in the pocket.......

We had one large local lot that crushed everything recently, scraped the lot, and put a for sale sign on the land.

Ron

 

[bczoom]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( This stuff is contained in trash bags and the remains of cardboard boxes and is battleship grey in color and has the consistency of bread dough or maybe play dough.)</font>

When you say trash bags, do I assume correctly we're talking plastic bags? This may help date when the stuff was dumped. I don't recall there being much use of plastic bags prior to the early '70s. They also couldn't hold much (I recall the bottom of the bags falling out regularly). If the bags are relatively large (in volume), whatever was in there was probably light when thrown in the pit. Trash? IMO, I don't know if an old plastic bag hold plaster with any volume.

 

[jim_wilson]

The bags that this stuff is in are plastic trash bags. Some of them are like a light brown color that I don't remember seeing around in a while. After doing a little bit of research I have come to the conclusion that this stuff is burnt trash. One of the guys I work with lived in my town back in the mid 80's and said that at one point the town closed the dump and started charged something like $1.00 a bag for trash pickup. That knowledge combined with the fact that the pit(s) I have found are right around the house and also have some bottles and cans and other house trash type stuff in them, plus the fact that I know the original owner was cheap - lead me to the conclusion that he was too cheap to pay money to throw his trash out so he burned it and buried it in a pit. At this point I have no real options other than getting a dumpster simply because of the sheer volume of the stuff. I estimate at this point that I have something like 5 tons of it. I did find some buried bathroom tiles and floor tiles and those are getting funneled out in the weekly trash pickup where they don't ask questions - they just throw it in the truck. The floor tiles especially could have asbestos and I don't want to give anybody any ideas. Best if they just quietly disappear and nobody is the wiser.

 

[WVBill]

Jim - if the plastic bags are intact and contain burned trash that would mean that the guy burned his trash, then bagged it, then buried the bagged, burned trash.

Doesn't sound right. I know I wouldn't bag and bury my burned trash - I'd just bury it. Why the extra work?

Just puzzled... /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[bczoom]

VWBill,
If I were to do what Jim's previous owner did, I could think of a couple reasons for bagging.
Location - burned it farther away from the house. Bagged it for transport to the pit.
Keep it from blowing around and into the house when the windows are open (the pit is next to the house).
Smell. Based on the amount of trash, it probably took quite awhile to fill the pit. The older stuff may start to stink.

 

[jim_wilson]

I still do not know for 100% sure that this stuff is trash - it's just that the circumstantial evidence points to that. If the guy burned trash he most likely did it in the house in the fireplace. I figured he then put it in bags and dumped it in the pit. Not all of it is in bags - maybe 30-40%. The pits are big too - I have to think that it took him a good while to fill the thing up - maybe a year or more