"Don Foreman" wrote in message
...

-snip-


I myself will proly just use an 8# sledge, some wood on the top, and an
extree pair of hands to hold/level/guide the post as I bang away.

This is all you need. Works great and isn't that
expensive...

http://www.maximmfg.com/NewFiles/fence-post-driver.html

Yes! This purely beats a sledge and it's easy to make if you can
weld.

The professional approach would be to rent an auger post hole digger,
drill holes, insert sonotube, plant posts, backfill with concrete. The
holes need to go below frost line. That'd be 4 feet here, don't know
about Yonkers.


jeez, yonkers, i wonder if you'd have to call that "buried utilities"
number.

i always remember this story from fine homebuilding magazine, their funny
back-pages "great moments in building history" column.

http://www.finehomebuilding.com/depa...?nterms=106878

i was going to scan the article but thank goodness they've now got a free
online archive of "great moments in building history" articles very funny
stuff (and thank goodness they had the "fire in the hole" article).

http://www.finehomebuilding.com/How-...channel=3&cp=0

i scanned the illustration that went with the article though (it's not
present in their online archive, the illustration adds a nice touch to the
article.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~wwixon/fhfebmar1993.jpg

(exactly how i picture "existential angst" in my mind's eye.)

b.w.



Fire In the Hole
Great moments in building history: Digging usually never leads to fire
by Michael Brubaker
Among the many skills that must be mastered by a jack-of-all-trades, digging
a hole would seem to pose the fewest problems. But life's challenges are not
always found in difficult jobs. As I have learned, they will sometimes
spring up in the most innocent of tasks.

A few years ago I fashioned my career as a musician around various odd jobs,
many of which were offered to me by my friend Jeff, a real-estate broker.
Jeff always seemed to have a small job that fit both my schedule and his
desire for cheap and quick labor.

Some of these jobs required inventiveness, like the time I painted the
inside of one of his houses where the tenants had moved, but their dog's
fleas remained. Plastic garbage bags slipped over my feet and taped above my
knees worked reasonably well as a defense against the fleas, given the
limited leaping ability of the tiny critters. But I ran out of ideas when
confronted with painting the baseboards, and I had to resort to chemical
weapons. Always ask about animals when taking a job.

When I delivered a new refrigerator to one of Jeff's rental houses, I
introduced a new rule for my truck: always tie things down. I instituted
this rule halfway in the delivery trip when in my rear-view mirror I watched
a full-size fridge execute a perfect back-flip dive.

But perhaps the biggest challenge I've encountered was digging some holes
for a fence I was building at Jeff's house. He had tired of tracking down
his dog, a Samoyed of great wanderlust, and asked if I would build a fence
around his waterfront home. The project seemed well suited to my tools and
abilities at the time, so I agreed to start the next day. My survey, layout
and construction progressed smoothly, though the sandy soil slipping through
the post-hole digger presented a small challenge. Soon I had all the posts
and the rails planted. Next came the gatepost, which I planned to install
next to the house.

I began to dig, but after I got down maybe 2 ft., I was startled by a
sudden, loud pop as a small flame sparked from the bottom of the hole.
Having already dug two dozen holes that day, I recognized this as being
abnormal hole activity. I saw nothing in the hole, so I continued and
plunged the digger into it one more time. Again a loud pop with smoke and
flame. This my poor brain was unable to digest, so I decided to get a second
opinion.

My friend Kim, another musician-cum-handyman, was doing some interior
painting that day. So I went inside to fetch him to witness this strange
affair. I directed him to stand over the hole as I thrust the digger down.
Again the hole spit fire and smoke. "I don't know what it is, Mike," he said
as he jumped back. "But I sure wouldn't dig a hole there if I were you." As
I stood there scratching my head wondering how to move a hole, Kim went
inside. He returned a moment later and said his power tools and the
household appliances no longer worked, which meant I had probably found...

Electricity, at least in my experience to that date, had always entered a
house from overhead; buried lines seemed somehow unsafe. Suppose it rained,
and the roads flooded? Kim and I went inside to scan the phone directory
under Electricians, Goofball Repairs A Specialty, where we also discovered a
free service for locating buried lines called, oddly enough, Mis Quik. So,
good construction engineer that I was, I made a belated call to them and
then knocked off for the day, leaving Jeff to cope with the electricity
problem.

Jeff called the electric company that afternoon, but the repair crew did not
arrive until 1 a.m. As Jeff showed the workers the hole and explained my
problem with the gatepost, they obliged by putting a neat loop in the
service wire around where the post should go and then filled in the hole.
But they asked what had happened to the fellow that dug this; he severed a
220v service entrance line, and the humidity should have been just enough to
make a good connection. Did he survive?

I still have the post-hole digger, with three quarter-sized bites taken off
one blade. But the real shock that day wasn't where I was digging, but how.
You see, to bind the loose, sandy soil as I dug, I had used the garden hose
to water down the dirt in the holes. But at least I knew that when standing
in soggy mud, if something strange spits fire at you from a hole in the
ground, you don't reach in with a hand but poke it with a sharp stick
instead.

-Michael Brubaker, Savannah, Ga.

From Fine Homebuilding 79, pp. 130