12/6/19

Estelle Sandford, James Begley, Mike Moxon, Jonathan Riley, Dave Walker, Stu Lindsay

2hrs

After quite a bit of heavy rain, there was an expectation we may have to pump – Estelle popped down to the end while the others were getting ready and found that the dig itself was under about 18” of water, which appears to be coming in from the aven above it, but the ‘puddle’ had only risen very slightly. The dig looked like it was going to be easy to bale, so went out to send first diggers down! Jon and Stu on surface and bagging happened too. James dug first and between him and Mike they took out 7 buckets of water from the dig to the hole in the floor up passage. James then dug from the end and it was hard going as a lot of that white nougat type stuff, but he managed to remove a large boulder which was passed up passage a bit for breaking up, which was done during the session by Dave and Estelle. Mike dug next and he decided not to dig in the dig, but to help get rid of the sediment and floor in the puddle which really needs us to do whilst it’s drier, particularly now we know the dig will fill up with water rather than the puddle… (although this raises another issue, while we’ve plenty of electric cable to get to the dig with the pump, we will need to get an extension on the blue water pipe as bringing it in a further approx. 7-8m will bring the end too close to the top of the shaft.) 

Mike removed 17 buckets and then swapped with Dave who continued filling from the puddle area – he got extras as digging was quick and it wasn’t quite pub time! 56 buckets total of spoil plus a few skips of rocks.