Not a lot.

There was a concrete block (an NZ ‘pile’) which magic-post hovered an inch or so over. So, I thought the job was going to be fairly easier – I would just reuse the pile and stick in a new post that fitted.

Job done.

Not so.

Turtles all the way down

A well-known scientist … described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Stephen Hawking (1988). A Brief History of Time.

I was a little curious to know what the concrete block was on (and so on), and I have a new spade.

So down I dug.

I found the block was lounging around in the mud. So it was a little Dr Suess: Fox on clocks on bricks and blocks. Bricks and blocks on Knox on box. None of it doing a lot.

Some notes on (Top) Soil

In the world of soil engineers, top soil is:

Surficial organic soil layer that may contain living matter.

Good for plants, bad for foundations.

Anyway, out came the block, and down my digging went. Eventually, I did hit the good stuff (or good ground) and so made an unnecessarily 3D scan of it using Autodesk Recap Photo to celebrate.

The 3D scan of hole

I find this amazing – that you can do it: just take a few photos and you get a 3D model. Searching for a purpose for it, I used it to work out how many bags of concrete I needed (115L, or 6x 20kg bags for a 350mm deep pad).

Tech Adjacent

I was so chuffed how spot-on the concrete estimation was that I also made a video too.