The theory of pitting with a metal detector
A pit is a deep excavation of soil in depth. Drilling foundations and house pits is an indispensable guarantee of success for a treasure hunter in searching for finds, coins and all kinds of ancient artifacts.
Winter is in full swing. Treasure hunters are already missing the cop, everyone is waiting for the start of the season in search of finds and treasures. All aspirations and aspirations are aimed at the speedy arrival of spring and the melting of snow, the heart yearns for hikes and trips to the fields and forests for treasures and treasures. Only there we get a dose of adrenaline, rather do our favorite thing, whoever has been searching at least once cannot be torn away from this passion and hobby.
But treasure hunters do not sit idly by even in winter; they are preparing for the start of the new season. They are engaged in the inspection and maintenance (repair) of equipment, inventory and equipment, study old maps for new hiking and searching places, sort out and systematize the finds of the past season, clean coins, replenishing various collections. Yes, a treasure hunter and a tourist, a geographer, a historian and of course a numismatist. And most importantly, he is a passionate and hardworking person. And especially hardworking treasure hunters like to dig into the foundations of destroyed buildings at this time of year. I don’t want to say that a pit is exclusively for the winter season, this type of search is perfect during active sowing of fields, when there is nowhere to go except meadows and forests, since the fields are sown, but you want to dig, then there is also time for excavations of the foundations of once residential buildings, in the place of which only mounds remained, which remind us that people once lived here…
Advantages of searching in pits
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There are a lot of untouched foundations left in abandoned villages and hamlets. Since most search engines tend to plowed fields where there is no grass and bushes, upside-down soil is where it is simpler and easier to search. It is not difficult to determine the location of the former home based on the following characteristics: elevation above the ground, these places are usually overgrown with nettles, raspberry bushes, and the presence of fruit bushes behind the former house.
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There is no need for long journeys and wasting energy on walking, everything is in one place, you come, settle down, prepare your equipment, designate the parameters of the foundation and start excavating. Sometimes the excavation takes several weeks, but this depends on the size of the foundation and the age of the former building and the time of your dig.
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The grass and roots of bushes and trees do not interfere, and most importantly, the soil is loose, so you can always understand that this is the place where the foundation of the house is located.
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In the near future, treasure hunters and searchers will have to look for finds only this way. If you are lucky enough to find places with the foundations of inns, taverns, post stations, then you will definitely find many interesting finds there.
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When old glass bottles of alcohol, pharmaceutical bottles, and various other utensils are found under the foundations, they do not break during digging and are well preserved.
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The safety of coins and other metal finds on foundations is much higher than on fields, since there is no aggressive environment in the form of fertilizers.
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The number of very different finds in one place is almost always large, including coins, buckles, glass and metal dishes, crosses, buttons, various household utensils and equipment. Sometimes amateurs ask how they got here? Many fell from attics when dismantling houses; they were also found in closets, storerooms, entryways; coins could have been under the crowns of logs. In old houses, the floorboards had large gaps, and coins and other things would roll into them. Also, under Russian stoves there were so-called “hearths”, where grips, pokers, brooms were located, and garbage was swept there.
Disadvantages of the method
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You have to put in more physical effort when digging and throwing out soil, and spend more time resting.
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Carry a lot of weight (equipment, inventory) to the excavation site.
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The soil on the foundations of houses is filled with bricks, with all kinds of iron; sometimes there are logs and boards, which makes excavation more difficult than in plowed fields.
Technology
First you need to decide on the location of the foundation of the former house. Determine its approximate perimeter. Most of the finds are found along the walls of the house, under the windows, under the entrance to the house and around or under the former stove or stove. Next, we clear the entire selected area of debris, grass and bushes, if any. To make digging easier, you can remove the top part of the soil with grass. We are preparing a place around the foundation where we will throw soil from the pit. The soil is probed, and we also examine the exposed foundation walls with a metal detector. The soil is removed with a bayonet-half shovel until we reach the mainland – the surface is solid without traces of human activity. You can use a device, or even a pinpointer, to scan the blade.
Almost any foundation is like a layer cake. And on each layer the finds correspond to a different time period. At the top, as usual, comes the Soviet period, then the late imperial, then the early empire, the era of Peter. But this is if everything is ideal and your foundation is from the Peter the Great era. The chance of finding finds, treasures and “stowaways” in such places is greater than in vegetable gardens, fields or other places.
Exclusive method of digging using a motorized drill
Most treasure hunters are familiar with the theory and practice of the traditional method of digging, and the tools that need to be used to carry out the digging. But it is extremely rare to find a rather interesting method of performing excavation work in a pit, and it is interesting because instead of traditional excavation in search of the foundation of a house with a shovel, treasure hunters used a moto drill!
This method significantly saves effort in searching for a house foundation, that is, it will be easier to determine at the site of the pit that there was once a residential building or some kind of barn there, without shoveling a pile of earth.
How to produce this method of pitting? As a rule, along the outlines of the mound, which was once the foundation, a square is laid out, inside which holes are drilled in sectors. Having drilled the first one, the next one is drilled already in the region of 40 cm from the previous one, and so on. The result is holes punched evenly across the square, the ground from which is tapped with a metal detector. They usually drill with a benzo drill with drill blades of at least 250mm and a rod length of 1000mm. This method of foundation pitting is much more portable than the traditional foundation pitting with a shovel. Because with the soil that the drill throws out, it will be easier to determine what stood at the site of the pit, a house or a barn, by the presence of black iron, the amount of ceramics, by searching for a house stove… As a result, when the place of the pit was finally localized, and it is already clear where there were useful colored ones signals, a “map” of the foundation appears, and then it is decided whether it is worth digging in there with a shovel or not.
The advantages of this method include mobility, quick geo-reconnaissance of the foundation, and determination of the location of the upcoming pit. As a rule, small finds, such as coins, scales, small church utensils, metal – plastic and the like are not afraid of drill blades, and the risk of damaging them is minimal. But various bottles, glass, ceramic products, relics, large coins no longer tolerate this method of digging, since there is a high probability of damaging them. Therefore, this method is used rather for reconnaissance of the foundations of a settlement, in order to save a lot of time finding out whether there was something interesting there or not. Also, the disadvantages of this method of drilling include working on very rocky terrain, where there are a lot of roots of large trees, because this will complicate the drilling process itself and the drill blade itself can be damaged.
Results of the pit by drilling method
In conclusion, this material about the pit using a gasoline drill includes the mobility of reconnaissance of the search site, the quick receipt of a “map” of geo-reconnaissance of the selected area, saving time and physical strength, but this method is not always relevant to apply in practice when developing the location of the foundation of a house.
