there's like a 30-feet-deep rectangular hole in my yard

[Syrinx]

how did it get there? this is weird.

[Must_B_Free]

1. how wide and long is it?

[Syrinx]

2. about, umm, 2 feet by 1 foot, I think

[Ediacara]

3. when did you notice it?

[Syrinx]

7. late this afternoon, shortly before dark

[chemenger]

41. Colorful sig line, DinoBoy.

What rock, or rocks, were the thin sections taken from?

[Paschall]

6. Hmm, too small for a swimming pool

You probably ought to contact your local authorities (water and/or land commissioner) and the fire department to investigate. You don't want to discover the next hole under the foundation of your home.

[Syrinx]

8. it doesn't look like a sinkhole

It looks like it was dug. I wonder who dug it, and why.

[Paschall]

11. Oil exploration? Foundation for a moon-elevator?

I do suggest you get someone competent in to investigate.

After this summer's heat wave in France, one entire village here was damaged--and made almost entirely uninhabitable--by the change in soil moisture.

[Syrinx]

14. I Will

Thanks for the advice.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

4. Dammit, I told Scotty "Phasers on STUN!!"

But NOOOO, he has one too many again, and sets the damned thing on EVAPORATE, and then does ten minutes of "target practice" across half a continent before he passes out cold on the floor in the middle of Engineering....

Good thing I stopped him from beaming anyone up a year ago....

:evilgrin:

[Syrinx]

9. No, I find you intimidating.

:)

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

12. I resemble that remark!

;-)

[Syrinx]

16. Who said that first?

Bugs Bunny? He was cool. Too bad he passed away.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

17. Didn't know he went to the Great Bunny Hop In The Sky!

Bugs Bunny is my hero!

I thot it was one of the Stooges, but I could (in theory) be wrong.

On edit: I remember. It was Groucho!

[Syrinx]

20. oh yeah, Groucho!

Yes, Bugs died in a VA hospital in California last year. He was yet another victim of Gray Davis' mismanagement of the state of California. :)

[ReadTomPaine]

37. Bugs is alive, he just lost his voice years ago.

:(

[delete_bush]

5. I lost one just like that yesterday

could you please return it to me?

[Syrinx]

13. the hole is in the mail

[Rocinante]

10. Got any caves in your area?

them sinkholes can happen if that's the case. Sorry didn't see the post about sinkholes. Someone digging in your yard, eh?

[Syrinx]

18. No caves in the immediate area

There are some up on the river slightly north of here.

It's strange. It will probably turn out to be something ordinary by some family member, but I'm not clear on that yet. It just seems weird.

[Lars39]

15. Did someone try to dig a well at the wrong address?

I've never heard of rectangular drilling, but there's a first for everything! :)

[Syrinx]

19. as good an explanation as I can think of

:)

[Must_B_Free]

21. If it was municipal, they put you in great danger

holes are dangerous. someone could have fallen and sued you.

Maybe something huge fell from an airplane

Is there anything you can see at the bottom?

Can you see the bottom?

[Syrinx]

22. I can see the bottom

I expected to see water, but no water. No bodies. No nothing.

[MidwestTransplant]

23. Maybe it goes all the way to China?

:freak:

[Syrinx]

26. I thought I saw a horn sticking up through the dirt.

:evilgrin:

[MercutioATC]

24. How old is your house? Old septic system possibly?

.

[Syrinx]

28. I don't think so

It's almost a perfect rectangle all the way down. At least 25 feet.

[MercutioATC]

31. 1'x2' wide and 25' deep overnight?

Definitely odd. I do have a manmade "sinkhole" im my back yard about 3' in diameter (it sits over a crack in a drain tile) that I have to fill with gravel occasionally, but it only sinks a couple of feet per year. I'd definitely recommend having the city come out to look at it.

[arwalden]

43. Sounds Like An Abandoned Water Well

that was covered up with years ago with wooden slats that have just now rotted away. Topsoil and grass fell into the well when the boards fell, leaving your "freshly" dug (freshly revealed) new (old) hole.

Put something over it before a child falls in... or a beloved pet falls in.

-- Allen

[canuck]

25. OK --i've GOT it...

KOI POND -all the way.

great fish, personalities like dogs, will live in any large unseemly hole.

You may as well use it for something good.

Reminds me of when they were building the cn tower... the construction guys dropped a 4x8 sheet of plywood from the radio deck, and it fell from a mile in the sky, SPLAT! in the middle of King st. at lunch hour.
So some guy stops his car, gets out, puts the plywood in the back of his car and drives off with it.

heh.

[BrotherBuzz]

27. Oh, that's just one of them blue ice icicles...

Some lazy airplane mechanic neglected to tighten the valve on the belly of an airplane. Apparently it leaked and formed one of those blue snot- like icicles (although a thirty footer is extremely rare!) that fell off and landed in your yard, and simply melted before you discovered it. I'd call the haz-mat boys, pronto!

[Syrinx]

29. are you buzzed, brother?

[BrotherBuzz]

34. Yes, buzzed often

I live directly under the flight approach to a major west coast air force base and experience the melted icicle bombs with regular frequency, although our icicles tend to be OD green. My wife tries to tell me it's just the dog eating grass again, but I don't believe her.

[punpirate]

30. If you wanted to have some fun with this...

... call the National Enquirer.... }(

"Yes, a big deep hole just appeared suddenly in my back yard. I went to the kitchen and looked out and there it was...."

[MercutioATC]

32. ...and I noticed that I couldn't account for an hour of time and my butt

felt funny......


...definitely an alien encounter...

[Syrinx]

33. I don't want to waste the Enquirer's time

They have hate radio hosts to expose.

:evilgrin:

[Ediacara]

35. ok serious response

It wasn't anything falling from the sky. It would have created a crater of some kind, and not a deep hole.

Are the walls straight? generally parallel etc? Do you have backhoe treadmarks in your lawn? Can you even get to that spot with a backhoe?

I suspect someone was digging for something, like say leaky pipes or something. Call the city and get to the bottom of it, I suspect they're the ones that dug the hole.

[TreasonousBastard]

36. Even more serious, or curious, is...

how could someone sneak in and dig a hole like that with no one noticing?

How can you have a 1x2 foot hole going down 20-30 feet without its sides caving in? Most likely some sort of reinforcement down there.

Almost nothing in nature is rectangular, so someone likely dug it. But, welldrilling equipment makes round holes.

It is possible that the hole has been there for years with some sort of cover that became overgrown. The cover may have fallen in, or maybe someone looked in there. Tales of buried treasure come to mind, but it's probably something much more mundane, like pipe inspection. Or an old well that went dry.

[JM]

38. In what area are you located?

Is it possible you are over a mine? Sounds like you may have found an old ventilation shaft if there are openings at the bottom.

Where I live, you learn to check with USGS about mine maps.

Later,
JM

[izzie]

39. Swimming pool?

Got the wrong yard?

[GOPisEvil]

40. Are they burying cable, power or phone lines?

:shrug:

[Hubert Flottz]

42. If you live in mining country it's probably a sink hole!

Underground water will eat away at the roof of old mine tunnels and sometimes they cave in! The hole will probably get bigger if this is the cause! Was there any dirt from the hole on top of the ground? If someone dug the hole there would be at least some dirt on the surface!

Several years ago a HUGE sinkhole appeared in my father's front yard! I came to his house after dark one night and when I was walking up the concrete walkway I noticed a hole about the size of a car hood on one side of the walkway! The light from the windows was enough so that I was able to see the black looking hole beneath the walkway! I noticed there was no dirt around the hole! I went in and asked my Mom why Pop had dug the hole and she said, "What hole!"

I grabbed a flashlight and went back outside to find a 30 foot deep hole that got much wider just below the surface! It was shaped like a hornet's nest and was big enough to put a school bus into! The 3 inch thick concrete walkway was about dead center of the hole and it fell into the hole later that night as the overhanging top of the hole caved in!

It turned out to be a mine tunnel cave in and the company that had operated the mine had been out of business for 75 years! By the time hole stopped caving in, it was about 4 feet from the side of the house! It ended up being 30 foot deep by 20 feet wide! We dumped over 40 dump truck loads of old tires sand and gravel into it! It setteled for years and every year had to be filled in with about a truck load of dirt!

The hole caved in the day before Christmas and we spent the entire holiday week filling the crater in!

Have the thing checked out ASAP!