[Tagging] quarries in engineering

[M∡rtin Koppenhoefer]

2010/11/22 Richard Moss <richard at richardmoss.co.uk>:
> on 05/11/2010  Martin Koppenhoefer wrote
>>> On 11/5/10 11:05 AM, Richard Mann wrote:
>>>> Gravel/sand/clay come from river beds, generally. Quarries are when
>>>> you blast half a hill away.
>>>> But I'm not an engineer...
>>>
>>> gravel around here comes from excavating in the sides of hills
>>> that are actually piles of debris left by glaciers in a previous ice
>>> age.

>>could a clay pit that is used only to excavate clay be put under
>>quarry, or would that be missleading? I know that these are all
>>open-cast mines, but the wikipedia entry for quarry seems somehow not
>>precise enough when it comes to delimiting the usage.

> I am an engineer :-)    (though not in the mining industry)
> My Penguin Dictionary of Civil Engineering has
> "quarry: An open pit from which building stone, sand, gravel, mineral, or fill is taken"
> This looks a wide enough definition to include clay.


Thank you very much, if they publish a dictionary about civil
engineering we might suppose that this information is quite reliable I
guess ;-).

Sand is used for grain sizes from 1/16 mm to 2 mm, silt would be
1/256mm to 1/16 mm and clay is below silt (smaller then 1/256 mm or 4
µm (2 µm)). As they speak of "fill" and fill is just defined by it's
usage AFAIK (comprises all smaller grain sizes), we might not have a
problem by using quarry for clay pits as well (subtagging quarries as
clay_pits).

cheers,
Martin