In the ultra-rare 2014, 75th year anniversary alternate edition, Mulligan helpfully left Mary Anne behind to heat a pool and sauna. Happy endings all around!
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Future techno-archaeologists thank you!
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It is just bollocks on so many levels.
Firstly, diggers cost a lot more than 5K, you can easily hit 100K, this was written by someone who hates what rich people are doing and didnât even bother to speak to anyone that actually builds things.
I can understand why Americans might fall for this bullshit because land prices are mostrly so very much lowerâŚ
The space occupied by a buried digger is in the most expensive bits of London, which is one of the most expensive cities on Earth, which is why it is economically rational to build large underground extensions to homes. But this space is by no means free, your are digging in a highly built up area often below the local water table, so to create a hole big enough for a digger then sealing it, you are spending serious money that the client wonât reimburse you for and may even sue you if discovered.
Iâm not saying it never ever happens, London is a big city, one of almost everything is here somewhere, but this is a ârich people doing bad things that we heard about in a barâ, not journalism.
I like Boingboing, but would like it more if the bar for âhate the richâ stories was high enough not to invite ridicule.
Would this story have been on BB if it had said âUnion labour buries equipmentâ ?
No it would not.
Sorry to repeat myself but while there are many reasons to doubt the story, the cost of a digger is not one. You can easily find dozens for around âŹ7k and I donât doubt that if you offered less you would be able to pick one up for significantly less.
The point that the client wonât reimburse is a good one - except where the client has been watching too much TV and is doing a âGrand Designâ and is their own contractor. I would imagine that where this has happened the client would be acting as primary contractor. Otherwise it doesnât add up.
Your use of the term ridicule makes me have to point out to you: if you want to be taken seriously in your ridicule you must set the bar higher with your initial point. No, diggers do not necessarily cost significantly more than ÂŁ5k.
The headline was âthousandsâ of diggers, I explicitly sad that it may have happened on rare occasions, but âthousandsâ of diggers ?
I agree than an old digger may be worth less than 5K, indeed I can imagine one dying and being âforgottenâ, but most diggers cost a lot more than 5K.
I can easily imagine a scenario where poor planning leaves a digger trapped, but again this is hardly likely to be policy.
Itâs a bad article and my comment about it being quoted on BB solely as a whine against the rich stands.
âThe headline was âthousandsâ of diggers, I explicitly sad that it may have happened on rare occasions, but âthousandsâ of diggers ?â
That would have been a reasonable point, had you made it rather than the point you actually did make: "It is just bollocks on so many levels.
Firstly, diggers cost a lot more than 5K, you can easily hit 100K," which is just bollocks on the level of being factually incorrect.
I also found hilarious âWould this story have been on BB if it had said âUnion labour buries equipmentâ ?
No it would not.â you donât really have a clue about the construction business do you? So essentially your post stands as a whine about how the poor rich people have it really hard.
Awwwwwwww.
You know by playing the man and not the ball you just make his argument for him⌠In an any event, as the digger decays, wouldnât it create an unstable void in the foundations of the property? Surely thatâs a bad idea in anyoneâs books - but particularly if, as the contractor or their insurer, youâre potentially liable for paying for the damage? I donât think Iâd be too keen to take a multi-million pound risk for the price of a bit of crane hireâŚ
#Corrections :
About the boring machines that excavated the Channel Tunnel, only the british machines were buried below the tunnel, not the french ones.
Why ? because unlike the french machines that were repurposed for tunnels in the alps, the british tunnelers had the brilliant idea to save costs by using machines that could not resist water, yes, you read that right, for excavating a tunnel under the sea ! Needless to say, they were no more than rusty scrap metal in the end.
The idea to bury the tunnelers under the Dovers terminal was in fact a clever ploy to avoid any further investigation on a blunder that caused the tunnelâs budget to explode through the roof and ruined all the investers.
Not happy with ruining thousands of little shareholders, the british then charged the french builders with the blame by pointing out that they completed their part of the tunnel a couples of weeks late, ignoring deliberately the fact that faultlines in the sea bed on the french side forced the french team to work with extra precautions to avoid flooding the tunnel.
For the record, all the french boring machines had girl names, because they were christened after the baby girls of the ingineers born during the construction. Who the hell would want to bury a machine named after his own daughter ? The brits, I guessâŚ
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His argument was already an ad hominem, by responding to his pathetic little whine about the poor little rich people and how they get such a terrible bad press I was merely expressing the ideology he probably hadnât examined in his whine.
The notion that UK subcontractors are union members is hilarious.
As I pointed out (way) above, there are many, many reasons not to think the story is realistic, mostly to do with who would be paying and why they would allow this to happen. It would rarely be in the interest of the house owner to do it, but I can definitely see it happening with a person who was their own contractor. In which case the builder would recommend filling it with concrete: itâs what they do.
Sez you. Iâm doubtful of the veracity of the story myself, for the same compelling reasons of practicality that others have mentioned, but thatâs just a thing youâve made up.
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The part that really set of my BS alarm is the one where it said you would need a crane to get the digger out. Theyâre talking about the small man-sized units here. You can disassemble the major components and lug it out by hand in the worst case scenario. It would only take a few hours and even if itâs âonlyâ a 5k digger, well, the guy you hire isnât going to cost that much.
The only time this makes sense is if itâs the last job the digger is going to do anyway because it is at the end of its life and the builder is lazy and just decides to entomb it under the lowest subbasement instead of hauling it out for proper recycle. Maybe one or two have had this happen, but hundreds or thousands doesnât make sense at all.
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European regulation says automobile equipment out of use is toxic waste. Toxic waste has to be disposed properly. You canât dispose it by simply burying â you have to follow best practices such as moving it to a safe, authorized place with specially coated concrete ground in order to avoid leaks (obviously, the ground has to be UNDER the machine and not over it).
European authorities donât put regulations into force by themselves, but would fine Britain in case British authorities didnât enforce people to follow such regulations (I know it because my own country gets many of such fines).
So I believe this is a very old story or simply a hoax.
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Smells like urban legend. I figure that you had maybe one builder that was using a machine that broke and, instead of hauling it out for disposal or repair, brought another digger in and buried the old one.
I think that the real problem is that, as with most housing bubbles and the drive to build new homes and renovate or extend old ones, you have builders doing sloppy work in order to get as much work done before the bubble bursts. Many years ago, when I was house-shopping, I saw one house that had just been built a year or so previous; there was a large diagonal crack in a wall on the second floor. The realtor explained that the house had been built on the site of a previous house, and rather than digging out and rebuilding the foundation, the builder had simply filled in the old foundation and built on that; when the fill settled, the house shifted enough to crack the sheetrock on the second floor. Despite this obvious flaw, the realtor thought that the house would sell quickly.
I just canât get past the idea that you need a crane to remove a digger. Whoever said that needs a better digger operator.
http://www.snotr.com/video/4296/Unbelievable_excavator_stunt
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I came here to say this! Nice to know someone else had the same idea.
If youâre digging straight down in an urban area, without room to build an exit ramp (which you probably donât have, since youâre trying to maximize building size on a relatively small patch of land), then yeah, youâll need a crane to remove a digger, particularly if the basement is multi-level.
You simply donât need a crane for those cheap mini diggers (the diggers that cost ÂŁ5-6k used).
Assuming you dug a shaft with no actual way out and assuming your bucket hydraulic system is too week and canât pull you out (a common method), you only need 5 I beams, a welder, a cutting torch, and a good block and tackle.
Make 2 A frames out of 2 I beams. Connect the two Aâs with the third I beam. Attach your block and tackle to the center of the connecting beam. Pull the chain until the digger is above the top of the hole. Finally, place the 2 remaining I beams under the wheels or tracks and roll it out.
EDIT: Here is a link about this story where Kevin OâConnor, managing director of Cranbrook Basement says they use a block and tackle to extract diggers. http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/claims-developers-are-dumping-diggers-in-london-basement-conservations-nonsense-9501998.html
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Any of us can fall for an urban legend. But why would someone as media savvy as Cory Doctorow fall for one? Hard to know for certain, however, people are more likely to fall for urban legends if they re-enforce the personâs existing ideology.
And HuffPo definitely screams credibility! 
Hey! Donât be snarky!
I take serious umbrage as the one of the first people to come on here and debunk it (and the person who provided the math to do so) who also happens to be both an American AND a female. (I live in Los Angeles, so I well understand high rates for real estate.) In fact, you repeated my own explanation that the hole for even a small digger would actually be dug larger than the digger (to complete the hide), thus increasing the cost of the job for the dig, the digger and the fill. (Thatâs before you even account for unusable underground footage.)
Cory was probably just amused by the idea, and if youâll do some decent checking, youâll see that a lot of media outlets picked up the story - originally in the British press - before it was well thrashed by the British press. Heâs not alone.
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