Home Excavation

This article is taken from Five Gallon Ideas, which features over 100 uses for 5 gallon buckets with more being added all the time.

One of our readers, John Carroll, sent in this amazing project that he’s been spending his evenings and weekends on for the past few years.

He is transforming his 5′ crawlspace into a full 8′ basement – removing the subsoil beneath his house one bucket at a time.

Ordinarily an excavation process like this is an enormously expensive undertaking. You’ve probably heard of “popping the top” off a house. That’s when a homeowner, often at great expense, lifts the roof from his house and builds a second story into the space between the roof and the first story.

Well, when adding a basement, sometimes the entire house needs to be popped. This requires very strong – and expensive – lifting cranes. And you better hope your crane operator had a good night’s sleep beforehand.

But John is increasing the head room in his lowest level is the same way the dwarves built the Mines of Moria – digging the walls and floor out, reinforcing underneath, and carrying the excavated earth out by hand.

So far John has removed a mind boggling 8,100 buckets of North Carolina soil out from underneath his home. Based on a 40 lb bucket, that’s a staggering 162 tons, carried one bucket at a time.

John produced a descriptive video of how his one-man mining mission works and the tools he’s using.

For many more ways to use 5 gallon buckets for self sufficiency, visit Five Gallon Ideas. When citing this article, please link to