if i dug a hole in my back garden. how far down can i go. how much land underneath me do i own .?

Question

ive got a feeling im going to have a court case with a noisy china/aussie who lives below me and im claiming my ground

Answer 1

your gonna have the mother of all fish ponds

Answer 2

If you own the freehold on the land you could dig until the side walls started caving in, at which point you would need to construct a support framework and maybe start pumping ground water out. At some point you will stop digging up sand/clay/loose rock (+the crap the property builders left behind) and hit some form of bedrock and you would need to construct a drilling rig . With a great deal of luck you might strike oil, in which case you should get a solicitor. I suspect you would then need to pay the government for a license to continue exploration & oil extraction.

Answer 3

I believe you are allowed to dig as deeply as you want, however digging anything over a few feet requires that it be shored up as the sides can sluff off, and literally crush the digger. I am not exaggerating, a friend of mine was crushed in a 6 foot trench, he lost his life. You, however may not hold the mineral rights to what is under your property, therefore, if you should strike oil or find gold, ( not very likely) it would belong to who ever owns the mineral rights to that property. You can dig a well, or have one dug for you if it is legal in the area in which you live, but you can not dig deep enough to reach either China or Australia as the crust of the earth is just that, a crust, then you run into molten rock.

Answer 4

Ill answer how far do you own part,

Everywhere is different as how far down you own.
on a small scale using hand tools you will only get a few feet down in most areas.
A medium scale using Mobile equipment you will be able to dig about twice as far as you could by hand.
and on a larger scale using equipment that has to be built on sight depths can run several hundred feet.
Note: as holes get deeper, withs must also get wider. using larger equipment needs a lot more room.

Answer 5

you can dig as far as you want, technically, nobody owns the inside of the earth. However, after a while you might run into city pipes and cables. So when your neighbours cable goes out, run!! You can have somebody come by and locate the city works under your property with spraypaint. That way you can dig without having an angry neighbour to worry about.

Answer 6

as far as I remember, the deeds on my house include the "solum" which is the land it sits on. So barring geopolitical oddness like special treatment of aquifers and so on, I reckon you can go till you hit the centre of the earth, thereafter it would be someone else's. In your house, not mine, of course.

But mind you the deeper down you go the more your landholding would taper. Once you got to the solid inner core your garden might have dwindled so much you couldn't plant anything but rhubarb.

Answer 7

good question.

I own my land down to 550 feet, seriously. Past that its actually city property. My city uses wells for drinking water, so the 550 feet is where the water table is at.

To get a definite answer on this, you'll have to contact your city, or county regarding this. If they get your drinking water from wells, you may be in my situation.

Answer 8

Not very sure on this one. However, if you feel the need to dig, then dig. And when you are fed up with digging in your garden ......... well I've been thinking of having a vegetable patch behind the garage. Feel free!

Answer 9

In the UK its only the first 10 feet under your house you own the rest is the Govs to sell off

Answer 10

Thats a good question. You probably need planning permission to dig a hole of a certain depth though

Answer 11

It must be a certain length down, after all holes can cave in.