Soil drill "homemade" for making holes (pits) in soft soil for poles or concrete piles

Piles in a peat bog, how to make a hole (pit) for a concrete pile with your own hands up to 2.5 meters deep. The hand drill I made did an excellent job with this task.

Construction on sedimentary peat soils makes its own adjustments, what can I say, here it is impossible to compare and apply the methods common in construction on rocky and solid soils, where sometimes a small strip foundation or even individual concrete blocks is enough.

When erecting buildings on soils with deep peat, many resort to the use of pile foundations that pass through soft and shrinkable soil to a solid foundation and are subsequently connected to each other with a grillage or slab, such foundations are able to withstand significant loads from heavy buildings without fear of the consequences of their roll, deformation and destruction as a result of subsidence of peat.

In this short article, I will talk about the version of the drill designed for drilling pits with a diameter of 200 mm in soft soils for installing pillars or subsequently casting concrete piles in them. Of course, this drill is not intended for professional use, I had to use this drill on a site with deep peat, I successfully made the required number of pits with a depth of about 2.5 meters, having gone through the entire thickness of the peat, reaching a solid base into which the cast at the place of the pile.

To make a drill, I used a ready-made garden drill sold in stores for summer residents.
I had to slightly improve the purchased garden drill, for which I welded a tip in the form of a piece of reinforcement to its working part, which acts as a centering rod, and also increased the length of the rod itself, which I made from a square metal profile pipe.

For the convenience of turning the drill, I made a movable handle that can be moved along the rod to the bottom or top as the drill goes deeper into the ground. To save energy when drilling, I sharpened the blades of the auger (knives), with sharpened blades it is easier to cut through peat and even small branches that are in the way of the drill.

For thicker branches, I made a separate rod attachment that can cut through branches that get in the way. I made the nozzle from a simple steel angle and a piece of pipe left over from a garden drill, the chopping part of the angle is well sharpened.
This option proved to be excellent, in the manufacture of the pit, I tried to do not so many turns of the drill and take it out more often for cleaning.

It took about 1 hour to make one pit 2.5 meters deep, provided that there was no large branch on the way that needed to be cut through.

I want to give advice, before starting to make a pit in peat, I strongly recommend that you first conduct a reconnaissance of the depth for thick branches and tree trunks found at a depth.

To do this, I used a piece of ordinary reinforcement, 6 mm in diameter, made a puncture with reinforcement in the place of the proposed pit and noted the difference in depths between adjacent pits. Having met a solid object in the depths of peat, it is sometimes easier to move the pit to the side than to pass through it.

Watch the story about making a drill on my YouTube channel.

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