Lucky owner of few cubic yds of unidentified gunk

[Soundguy]

The fact that there is one pile of it right next to a window does make me think it was placed their by a previous owner, but after the house was built. Most likely the area was excavated at construction.. so this is probably 'post' build.

Could be anything from old plasterboard to insulation.. hopefully not asbestos laden insulation. Might even be acoustic tiles.. badly decomposed... hard to say.

I think ash probably wouldn't setup to that consistancy.. unless there was a heck of alot of it.

Joint compound comes to mind.. but i can't see someone throwing that much away.

good luck

Soundguy

 

[Gary_in_Indiana]

I'm going to guess from your description that it's old boxes of drywall joint compound. After a while that stuff can really smell and the color and consistency sounds about right, too. Are the boxes cubes of about 15"-16" per side? They might have frozen and, since freezing pretty much ruins it, the drywall contractor or prior owner might have just dumped them there.

 

[bky]

Well i would agree with anyone and everyone that said its just burnt trash. I have seen the same and it looks like what you explained. what is yuour plans for the back yard?
It might be cheaper to rent or hire a equipment person and dig a deeper hole and just rebury it. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

 

[mahlers]

I've found quite a bit of the same stuff that you described - and it was stuff that the previous owners burned because they were too cheap to pay for garbage pickup. They'd burn it in one place, then bag the ashes and pile them up somewhere else (so as to keep the burn-pile nice and tidy).

One thing you can do to conduct your own materials analysis is to look for telltale signs of garbage burning - tin foil and other unburnt debris. I'll bet a few shovel-fulls of the stuff will yield some rather unremarkable results...

 

[SPIKER]

I'm one of the ney sayers about going to epa or testing rout unless you want ot be the one responsible to proving YOU had nothing to do with it. harder to do than you might think! it DOES sound to me like ot could be one of a few things, the DRYWALL MUD does come to mind, other was the plaster lath tear out with the old blown in type of insulation, (is house been RE-DONE?) lots of times they tear out the old plaster & any old insulation and toss it outside, then cover it with dirt. seen it done more than a few times, (my brother is a drywall contractor and I worked with for him for a year or so) also old drywall would get slimy when buried and will ROTT up but will stay as a white/grayish looking mass until it is tilled into the ground, good thing is it's not dangerous at all. and actually GOOD for clay type soils.) oh and it DOES STINK bad when it is rotted up... the BOX MUD is not all that new, it's been around for 15 or so years prior to that it was pretty much all 5 gallon buckets. like mentioned above if it freezes it's trash, and gets dumped some where and it too is pretty inert, no reason to worry about it.

if it is dissolving in water that would be my biggest bet, other solids, wall board, ceiling tiles, and plaster usually will not desoulve...

Mark M

 

[mrcaptainbob]

Cheap and lazy. Those are pretty much the words the neighbors use to describe these previous owners. I'm thinking mostly cheap. One was telling me about how the guy would drain the neighbors fuel tanks to run his rototiller! I guess the $20 a month for trash collection would been considered as money thrown away. Almost everything worked on here in the last twenty was done at the minimum. Just enough to 'get by'. Oh yeah. And a definate electrical wizz! Need a plug in the wall....there? Okay, just scrape away enough insualtion of this wire, wrap the new around it, wrap it in enough black tape, and we're good to go! Found 5 of those so far. Okay. I'm off track now. Sorry..... /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

 

[SPIKER]

captbob:

yea, the place I bought is exactly the same, if not worse, old guy NEVER worked... I find stuff buried all the time, and its usually only buried by weeds & over burden from the past weeds/leaves. I've hit many many things with my mower...

he had 4 or 5 old stuck to the ground cars, (I've COUNTED 8 places where stuff was burnt and or piles of stuff tossed) he tore apart an old trailer home, literally used PARTS of that to build the cabin that is there, with old used utility poles as foundation piers! wiring is like you described, run using USED wire he salvaged from who knows where. I still have 3 good sized JUNK piles I haven't even TRIED to do anything about! /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif when they left there was 5 old sheds/garages, FILLED with left over stuff, studs with nails all over the place, old hot water heaters/washers ect...) several times a year i HIT something (usually car part or big hunk of wire, chain/pipes etc) when I mow the grass. when I tilled up middle section of the yard I found buried trash too... stuff that was BURNT and then dirt tossed over, house hold waste type stuff...

I've had it 3+ years now and I still spend more time CLEANING up his beer-cans/bottles & overgrown property and such than I do anything else!

Oh his building tech, he bragged how he built this stuff himself, so far 2 of the sheds have BLOWN down by them selves! hahah, the HOUSE/CABIN he built, whew it has been built using salvaged wood from everything from the trailer tear apart to skid wood! why use a store bought stud when you can nail 3 chunks of free skid wood together!>? /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif There is NO drywall just plastic covering the inside insulation and 1/4" wood paneling over that sagging & drooping but he spoke like it was an accomplishment of his life! I hear good stories every time I speak to one of the neibors... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I'm still going to get the thing done ONE day! hahaha... /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

It had been on sale for a while, with 4 or 5 offers which failed because banks wouldn't loan anyone the $ for the place as it was a disaster... I had pretty much the $ in the bank, as I told them I wouldn't pay but 80K for it. they countered with 81, (dropping from almost 110K) Bank told me the same thing, too much waste and no (what they considered livable homes) so I said well I don't care about the house/barns, I want the land and that I can pay for it with my retirement $ that's in you're bank, so either you LOAN me my money or I simply remove my money and buy it, Left the loan officer with a blank stare to say the least and he signed the paperwork that day! hahaha


it has been 3 years of HARD work, but it is nearing an end, soon I'll have all the junk in one spot to haul out, and or bury for good. I'll probably STILL find stuff for years but the majority of it is now under control. I still have a lot of dead standing trees to take down, but I'm waiting for cooler temps, and a good trailer to load some up on so I can have it rough sawn for rustic furniture. (beetle killed elm in the 20" range should make some NICE wormy end tables and such ?)

Mark M

 

[timb]

Was the house extensively remodeled in the past? It doesn't sound old enough but old horse hair plaster is pretty obnoxious (but I think relatively harmless as fill). If some owner along the way stripped out old plaster - maybe replacing it with drywall - could be some of the old 'destruction' material.

 

[Ranashi]

Well from what you have said it could just be normal trash. The house I got last year was a mess. I have hauled 5 Tons of trash from the yard... yes 5 Ton of trash in bags and about 3 Tons of rusted metal and I have gone down as far as I am going to go in what I call garbage valley. I have ran into bags just like the ones you describe. It can easily be decomposing garbage. I say this because some of the bags I stopped at were the same and it had everyday household items from bottles to female products that hadn't decomposed in them. They are now getting covered with about 10 feet of dirt. I got to a point where the items are covered with chicken wire and I gave up as most is now decomposed to the point you described. As far as testing the items I would contact the DEQ in your area and ask them where you can get things tested. You can tell them you found a plastic bucket full of this material and need to know what to make of it so you can make the previous owner of the house responsible. I know he is dead but when I did that for the asbestos shingles in my yard I was able to come up with someone to test it for free. A friend of this persons worked in the lab and said he would test it for free... I explained I didn't want to spend a bunch of money to find out it was nothing but if it was something I would pay for a certified report from another lab. Once I found out it was asbestos based I purchased the required bags and paid someone to come in and clean it up. If it would have been normal waist I would have cleaned it up myself. If the garbage is up to 40 years old it could easily be like you described. The stuff I was working with wasn't more than 25 years old. The owners of the house before me were slobs and the old man that still lives next to me knew all the other owners of my house (and they still live around there). At my place the garbage dump was literally down the street from me (about 1 block on a dead end past my house). The 2 different original owners of the house were good friends with the owners of the garbage dump and still are good friends. The city required them to move all the dump items to a new location about 1.5 miles from me now and the owner of the dump just now uses that area to park his fleet trucks (30-50 dump trucks boy what a racket starting at 5:30am ). As far as loading that stuff up in a dumpster I wouldn't have a problem with that myself and have it hauled off. When you order the dumpster tell them you are getting rid of decomposed/ing trash that was buried in your yard. That way when they get it they don't question what it is.... decomposing trash smells like gray water (septic waist) due to meat scraps and food waist. I also know well now what that smells like. The house I bought had the sewer system broken when I bought it, what a pleasant fix hired out for that ewww what a job that was broken a year or more the repair guy would guess. Good luck on what ever you decide to do.

 

[jim_wilson]

Thanks for all the replies guys. Sounds like there is a few of you out there that have a worse problem than I do - I feel for you. I don't consider myself an eco-nut but I just dont like the idea of leaving junk like this buried in the ground. If it was away from the house way in the back yard I might just ignore it but it is located in a place that will either be dug up by me and developed or if I ever sell the house the next owner would in all likelihood run into it. Figure it is best to get rid of it somehow. Thanks for your comments Ranashi - from your description it does sound like I probably have rotting garbage. I was initially worried about this stuff mostly because it had a smell to it - a number of the posts however made it sound like a lot of stuff will start to smell if you leave it underground and let it start decomposing. I've still got a sizable amount to dig out - currently I am up to 100+ bags of the stuff at 50-60 pounds per bag. I'll let everyone know what I end up doing with it all.

 

[Taylortractornut]

Jim I work with the EPA and DEQ and some of my friends there tell me that to get a safe sample without too many questions is to not tell them its at your home. Just incase its not hazardous but has to be removed because it doesnt meet codes. He said several olks have taken stuff to a lab to get it diagnosed and ended up spending thousands of dollars in waste removal for things like burried nonhazardous trash. They say you found some in a local road ditch or or canal bank I hate to lie about something but im also very leary of some folks. It was common practice for folks to dump in pits around their homes. When mom and dad first moved here dad was a foreman for a construction company and was awayfrom home. Our house had been moved to this location by the previous owners after TVA bought the land for the Tenn Tom waterway.
Hard times had mom and dad not able to have about 5 of the previous owners cars and 5 or 6 sheds sheds hauled off so dad brought home the 580 Case backhoe he stored for his bosses. Ithe sheds were burned and burried and the cars were also burried. Its killing me to know a GTX is still under our leach field. A few years later when the house burned dad couldnt afford to have the old wet drywall and demo scraps removed so the backhoe came home again.

 

[jim_wilson]

I am also extremely leery of telling anybody in authority about this. That is why the first batch that I dug up a while back just got quietly disposed of bag by bag in the roadside trash pickup every week. I used to work in a car dealer and heard a number of stories from customers who got caught in the web of different govt. agencies when they had leaking oil tanks, unknown junk buried in their yards, etc. The town I live in get's its water from wells so I figure I am already doing a good thing just by digging it up and not reburying it on my property. I don't need , don't see the moral justification for, and can't afford to, pay fines if some govt. agency gets involved. Frankly I wouldn't even try to get this stuff analyzed if I had to identify myself to a govt. agency. All somebody would have to do is show up at my house one day while I was at work and see the big pile of bags stacked up behind the house and know something was going on. For now it is going out in the weekly trash pickup until I can come up with a better solution to dispose of it quietly.

 

[Ranashi]

Jim that sounds like how mine came out of the ground. I started off finding my garbage by clearing black berry bushes and a pile a tree limbs. Found a corner on a garbage bag... and it just went down hill from there. I would have to agree with Taylor if you do tell them it might be better to tell them you found it along the road that someone tossed. I was going after previous owner through lawyers on mine at the time so I didn't care if it went to DEQ or not. The person from DEQ was honestly really cool about it he said this is how we say to dump it this is what we do with it and this is what you have. Then said good thing all that was found was this little piece so he didn't have to report it to anyone (he knew I had all the siding from the house laying in a rather large pile in my yard under indoor outdoor carpet covered by nicely cut black berry bushes thanks to the previous owner)... I don't know how much it weighed, as I didn't move it myself but it would have easily added to the 5 tons. Sorry to hear you are stuck with someone else’s garbage bill it really does suck I can attest to that myself. I can honestly say in my case it was well worth it in the long run.. if they would have spent the time and/or money to clean up the yard my land wouldn't have raised over 50k in value this last year. Still lots of work to do.....drive way is next!

 

[mrcaptainbob]

Wow, Spiker!, Next to you and Ranashi, I'm small potatos!

 

[CTyler]

Just read this and it sounds like drywall and/or mud. When we built our house we had a trash pile with among other things partial boxes or drywall mud and drywall. When buring the wood etc.. it was getting late and I sprayed it all down and then covered it with dirt. Well it sat there for a number of months with rain, snow etc.. until it dried out enough to get a dump truck in to haul out stuff. When uncovering the one pile it had a couple smelly grey goo spots just as you described. It was the drywall mud.

Have a nice day. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[jim_wilson]

I know the stuff -whatever it is - is not any sort of construction residue. There is too much other trash mixed up in it for it to be that. The house was built in 1956, some of the trash that I have dug up included pop top TAB soda cans, TAB did not hit the market until 1963 and it was in bottles initially so my guess is that none of this stuff entered the ground before sometime in 1965 - and probably later. The other thing I notice with this stuff is when it is left out in the sun it dries out and is crumbly. The sheer volume of it ( I have found even more since I hit the initial jackpot ) and the fact that it is all the same means to me that it is burnt garbage or trash. Since the volume keeps increasing my options for getting rid of this stuff are starting to get very limited. I am going to follow one of the previous posters recommendations and contact dumpster companies and tell them I have a quantity of trash that was dug up out my backyard and see what they say. Anyone that says they will have to test it or anything I will just stay away from.

 

[RonR]

Wife's granddad was a pack rat--he saved old jars and empty food cans for his whole life, plus his dad lived in the same property, so it had his garbage there also.

The farm sale to get rid of all the "good" stuff took two days. As was warned to us by the auctioneers, people bought boxes of stuff, took out what they wanted, then left the rest on the ground. Literally, the ground around the buildings was several inches deep with junk.

We had to wait 30 days for people to remove their stuff. Then we hired a dirt mover to come in and dig a 12ft wide, 10 ft deep and 50ft long trench. We FILLED it with stuff from the yard. Fortunatly, I had an 801 ford w/ FEL at the time, so we used it to scrape stuff up. Kids and others helped by tossing stuff into old stock tanks. When the tanks were full, I'd push them to the pit and dump them in.

When the pit was FULL the first time, we set it on fire to reduce the volume! When it cooled down, we loaded it up again.

The dirt man came back and buried what was left.

As bad as it seems to you, it might be your easiest option, if you have room on your property to do that. Of course, it might toss you in the loop of RESPONSIBLE if it turns out hazardous.

Cleaning out Mom's house, we checked on dumpster prices. It was about $400 drop charge, a couple hundred a week, PLUS so much a pound to dump it. We went with Plan B and rented a trailer to dump it ourselves...........

Hope this helps.
Ron

 

[DiskDoctr]

Mark,

The price of junk is up (steel prices). Could probably give the cars to a local salvage yard who will pick them up and take them away without charge- as long as you're giving them away. Serviceable cars sometimes get $100.

Good luck.

-JC

 

[SPIKER]

so far around here all the junk yards seem to be CLEANING up, one I was at today, got rid of about 500 cars in the last 2 months... really made it nice but then they are also loosing all the parts for older stuff if you want old cars parts are going gonig gone...

MarkM /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

[BobReeves]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( so far around here all the junk yards seem to be CLEANING up, one I was at today, got rid of about 500 cars in the last 2 months... )</font>

Tax man at work, some states make the salvage yards pay inventory tax or some such BS tax on the cars they have in the yard. Lots of old part cars have been turned into scrap because of this.