Only the 7' whole left half, the top 10" of concrete across the whole pit and the bottom 5' on the right cuz you can't use an excavater near the trench cuz of gas and water main. So really the excavator only saved 2-3' of digging and an occasional scoop here and there but hey ill take it. I had a guy "helping" me but he just kinda stares at the sky and wanders
Well gro bro, you earned yer wheaties on this project. I can relate. Years ago, I took a summer job at a resort up north on the Alaska Highway. I ended up doing all sorts of gopher stuff, minding the gas pumps, carrying stuff around, splitting firewood and the like. But the one project I remember well was digging a septic tank hole by hand. It was about six feet square, and at least that deep. In compacted gravel till. I did it with pick and shovel. Thinking back, it is a miracle that I didn't die in that hole when the sides collapsed, which for some bloody reason they didn't. If they had collapsed when I was well down with the digging, I would have been toast.
Not long after that project was done, I was accused of stealing from the gas money (total bullshit), fired, and send down the Alaska Highway without a cent in wages. I felt really bad at the time, wondering WTF I had done to deserve treatment like that. I have never stolen a cent from anyone in my life, and certainly didn't then. Turned out that I was the first of three or four Uni students who were circulated through the operation that summer. All worked to the bone until about a day short of the first pay check, then fired, and sent home. The sheduling was so precise that it was obvious that the operation had staggered arrival dates of the new gopher right after the previous one was sent packing. I confirmed all this when I chatted with the young woman who was hired to work in the kitchen all summer, she was also a student at UBC. For some reason, she was never fired, I expect because the son of the owners had hopes of getting her into bed.
That was a head shaker of a summer. Turned out well though, I managed to hitchhike home without starving thanks to a kind sales type that picked me up in Watson Lake, fed me and gave me a place to sleep overnight in our one overnight stop, and dropped me off not far from where I lived near Vancouver. To sweeten the trip home even more, the plumber who gave me my final ride also hired me for more money than I didn't get paid up north. So other than the time wasted going north and working without pay for a couple weeks, I had a great summer.
Anyway mate, congrats on sticking with it and getting the damn hole done. Digging like that is not fun.