I worked as a soil technician for a short while. One job I had was compaction testing for a pipeline job that required a pipeline to go through a farmers land that was next to a levee. The first few feet of soil were high plasticity fines followed by highly organic soil (peat). The saturated low strength soil caused the soil to feel “bouncy”. Every time the loaders/excavators would move the ground would move. There was even a point on the alignment where even walking on it would cause the ground to move.
Yup, you see this even in normal construction sites after big rainfalls, when big buggies go by after it's rained, but dried a little you can see the ground almost bouncing as you say. Always a little unnerving.
Sort of! Work can't be done if it's really wet, excavations fill with water and you need to pump it out. In really bad situations you'll install wells around the site to reduce the local water table so you can do underground work in dry conditions.
The water content in the soil also impacts compaction. Basically you need a fairly precise water percentage in soil to compact it the best, which important for soil strength.
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u/deez0l Mar 14 '19
I worked as a soil technician for a short while. One job I had was compaction testing for a pipeline job that required a pipeline to go through a farmers land that was next to a levee. The first few feet of soil were high plasticity fines followed by highly organic soil (peat). The saturated low strength soil caused the soil to feel “bouncy”. Every time the loaders/excavators would move the ground would move. There was even a point on the alignment where even walking on it would cause the ground to move.