Wednesday, February 4, 2009

When a friend asks a favor, you do it.

Five gallons of dirt, shoveled into a bucket from a particular pile and then tamped down hard with a length of 4X4, weighs just about exactly 75 pounds. Just so you know.

I could tell you why I needed to know, but then I'd have to kill you. All I can say is that sometimes chores get weird.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How'd you weigh it? Bathroom scale?

Joel said...

Funny you should ask!

I don't have a bathroom scale, and neither do the two other neighbors I asked.

We ended up building a scale and weighing a calibrated gallon of tamped dirt against two gallons of water, known weight 16.66 pounds plus tare. Then I just calculated the total weight by putting the dirt back in the original bucket, tamping the whole thing down, and measuring the volume with a tape measure. It's not completely exact, but surprisingly close.