How strong am I?

[The Idle Biker]

Or equally, how knackered and broken am I?

Today I excavated 25 square metres of wet mud down to a distance of 5 inches.

I then stuck it in buckets and a wheel barrow and carried it 10 metres and up 6ft of steps to dump it.

So who can reliably estimate how much 25 sq metres of wet mud/ 5 inches deep weighs and how do you work it out? (for the young'uns 5 inches is about 12cm).

[DJ123]

If it was a pond, you'd be looking at 2,500 litres of water
3 cubic metres

[Fallout]

And I believe 1 cubic metre of water is approximately 1 metric ton, so assuming mud is maybe 25% heavier than water by volume (total guess), 3.75 tons was shifted by your knackered, broken self.

[Specialone]

As i order ton bags of stuff fairly regular...

I metric ton of building sand or sharp sand equates to approx 0.6 cubic metres in real terms.

Knowing wet mud is quite dense, im estimating around 4 tons in weight, no biggy :)

[davepreston]

not very strong and not very smart either

http://www.centralplanthire.co.uk/three-quarter-ton-Kubota-k008-3-mini-digger_1.jpg

;)

[Winder]

I have put all the elements of this equation into a super computer that was built by Stephen Hawking and Carol Vorderman so it's the tits.
The results are as follows

Total weight moved = 9.3 Dawn Frenchs
Total amount of beers earned = 5 pints or 7 cans
Brownie points earned from wife = 0.125
Total amount of impressed Orgers = you

[The Idle Biker]

ha ha I'll have to remeasure then, cos there is no way I could have done 5 metric tons (3/0.6) in one day.

Mind you it felt like 5 tons, 10 hours of dig, hump and lump. I could barely open a bottle or two of beer at the end of it :-)

Edit: Shaddup Winder ya funny fecker numpty.

DP. No can do, garden has no access, for diggers. I could have hired some ukrainian diggers but I is too tight to pay £2/hr.

[Bibio]

by my reckoning you have dug the equivalent of a grave. that's bloody good going.

[MisterTommyH]

25m^2 x 0.127m = 3.175m^3 as previously mentioned. (5inches x25.4mm = 127mm)

Standard bulk density for partially saturated soil = 18kN/m^3

18kN/m^3 x 3,175m^3 = 57.15kN

57.15kN x 1000 / 9.81 = 5825Kg or about 5.8T

Edit: does seem alot by hand in a day.... you sure it was about 5m x 5m on plan? And thats probably a bit of a conservative estimate. 18kN/m^3 could easily become 19 or 20 depending on they type of soil.

[speedplay]

As i order ton bags of stuff

actually...

Tonne bags as they used to be known only hold 800 kilos these days.
Hence the change of name to "bulk bags" ;)

[Specialone]

actually...

Tonne bags as they used to be known only hold 800 kilos these days.
Hence the change of name to "bulk bags" ;)

Yep very true, but builders warehouses still say ton bags.

As long as i know what volume they give you when doing a project they can call them what they like.

[BoltonSte]

Ho much does topsoil pack down?...rough estimate.

My front garden was weed heaven when we moved in, it's been sorted now and I want to sort the level out, whack it a bit, then throw a membrane and chippings on.

Ste