GreggS
Contributor
While I've enjoyed reading some of the replys in this thread, most of you fail to recognize the OP for what it is...possibly the most awesome question ever asked on Scubaboard.
How do quarries maintain water levels?
- Thread starter Jake
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broncobowsher
Contributor
A quarry is a place where rock is harvested. I say rock and not dirt. If you harvest rock the finished hole is rock. This makes for a much nicer dive site as you are not messing around with dirt that turns into mud and silts out the place. There is still silt, rock dust, but that sinks a lot better than dirt does. So a quarry is more than a hole dug in the dirt.
As for the water level, you are just looking at a hole into the water table. Mother nature (and geology) is going to set the water level.
Often the closure of the quarry is based on the pumping of water. Water has to be pumped 24/7. Stop the pumps and it will flood. Pumps are expensive to run, the more flow the more expense. And at times there are also issues of where to dispose of the water as well. Add in digging a new spot that opens up a good sized spring that flows fast and a quarry can go from productive to abandoned in days.
Moving dirt is fairly expensive as well. Not only digging a hole, but where do you put the dirt you remove from the hole? That much dirt will change the landscape. The quarry was in business to sell the rock they were removing.
Interesting thought, but it would be best to just find a quarry that someone else has already dug out.
As for the water level, you are just looking at a hole into the water table. Mother nature (and geology) is going to set the water level.
Often the closure of the quarry is based on the pumping of water. Water has to be pumped 24/7. Stop the pumps and it will flood. Pumps are expensive to run, the more flow the more expense. And at times there are also issues of where to dispose of the water as well. Add in digging a new spot that opens up a good sized spring that flows fast and a quarry can go from productive to abandoned in days.
Moving dirt is fairly expensive as well. Not only digging a hole, but where do you put the dirt you remove from the hole? That much dirt will change the landscape. The quarry was in business to sell the rock they were removing.
Interesting thought, but it would be best to just find a quarry that someone else has already dug out.
rmssetc
Contributor
Perhaps most importantly, if I rent a backhoe and spend a long weekend digging out a 200x200x30-meter hole, how long do I have to let my hose run to fill it up?
Randall Munroe is the right person to ask.
broncobowsher
Contributor
How long are your weekends? Or how big of a backhoe can you rent? You couldn't do a 200x200x30 FOOT hole in a weekend. My local HOA is putting in an irrigation lake about that size and it took scrapers and other heavy equipment over a week to make that hole. And that is a skilled operator. I did a pool at my last house that was only 23,000 gallons and a large track excavator (not a little backhoe) took a weekend.
I am not really sure how big of a hole you could make in a weekend with a rented backhoe. But I know it isn't going to be 200x200x30 meters. Not feet. Maybe inches?
laikabear
Contributor
I was joking with a friend that we should open a diving quarry where we live in SoCal. While our diving can be great, there can also be long periods where you can’t dive because of swell conditions.
That made me realize that I don’t actually know how quarries maintain their water levels. Are they generally below the line of the local water table?
Perhaps most importantly, if I rent a backhoe and spend a long weekend digging out a 200x200x30-meter hole, how long do I have to let my hose run to fill it up?
I have wondered the same thing and wished for a quarry locally when shore dive conditions have been poor for a few weeks in a row.
If you get us a So Cal quarry I will come dive it!
OP
I was just trying to be silly my friend. For large parts of the year shore diving is unavailable to us, so I get hard up after a bit.
OP
Southern California gets a lot of swell energy from nearly all directions in the Pacific, which makes it great for surfing and less so for diving. In addition, most of the locales aren’t great for absorbing turbidity and may experience plankton blooms. So, the surf is often high and when it isn’t, visibility is frequently poor. That’s not to say isn’t ever good, as we have lots of nice diving days. It just so happens that many of them aren’t on weekends though.
Because we live basically in a desert we don’t have much in the way of low-lying lakes either.
Thus my desire to have at least a marginal, but reliable largish body of water to use year-round.
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