How safe is Colin Furze's tunnel? | Hacker News Reader

How safe is Colin Furze's tunnel?

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82 pointsrwmj75 comments

I think the one commenter hit the nail on the head with, "the stuff Colin does looks off-the-cuff and spontaneous, cause that's his bit, but there is almost certainly planning and engineer review going on before hand."

England tends to be even more tightwad about this kinda stuff than America, and with multimillion followers, it's not like he can do these big projects surreptitiously. There's the 360° swing, giant iron man mecha, underground bunker, and a few others which would absolutely draw ire from inspectors had they not been done aboveboard.

Pretty sure "we have to dig the tunnel stealthily so the neighborhood doesn't know!" is a bit. I bet all the neighbors are subscribers.

Also, in his “final” videos he never wears a helmet on his motorized bikes or carts - but he does wear a helmet in behind the scenes footage, which says the helmet is omitted for image reasons.

On the flip side, I don’t think he’s all that completely cautious either. For example during testing in the absurd salad knife belt video (which features a whirling belt of knives) from one shot to another a very large bandage appears on his arm (and is never acknowledged) which suggests to me that that thing was exactly as dangerous as it looked.

He's definitely trying to preserve his original image, of twenty-something spontaneous punk-rock welder making crazy inventions with little regard for safety. I've been following his channel for years (fiveish) and watched a lot of his earlier stuff and those vids are definitely safety-third.

He's definitely still no Captain Tightpants by any means, but as a fellow former crazy maker / fire performer, you never fully grow out of it, but you mellow out over time and take less crazy risks (in favor of calculated risks).

He definitely did a few things in this most recent video that made me cringe, like using an angle grinder to make a notch in a steel pipe that he's holding up with his other hand. Some pipe clamps would've been advisable there vs holding by hand the object you're cutting into. Felt like something you'd see on /r/OSHA.

The tunnel generally feels safe, but I can't say the same for the methods employed in digging it.

Yeah, I see that attitude a lot in burner/circus arts/stunt circles. Limited concern for their own safety ("I know what I'm doing") but very safety conscious the moment other people involved.

Grinding some pipe with it in my hand? Yeah I got this.

Digging a tunnel that will have the cameraman and others in it, and might collapse the house of done wrong? That's worth some thought.

Some. Lol.

That reminds me of this greybeard that was helping us move some heavy machinery. "It won't hurt you!" as we have a 1400 lb top-heavy drill press dangling from an engine hoist. Um, yeah, heck yes that'll hurt you.

Wouldn't have gotten it into the uhaul in time were it not for him.

Yeah, I learned the hard way why that’s a bad idea. Really easy to catch because your workpiece is unsecured, and when it then jumps out of your cut, it makes a beeline for your hand. Fortunately I only took a little bit of thumb off, but you’ll never catch me using a grinder or chainsaw on something I’m holding with my other hand again.

There was also a video in 2013 or so where he gets quite nasty burns when the jet engine he's working on without safety gear goes fireball.

> the stuff Colin does looks off-the-cuff and spontaneous, cause that's his bit, but there is almost certainly planning and engineer review going on before hand

I am just going to add that this dude has been in hospital multiple times including some actual accidents happening here and there, almost losing one of his arms once IIRC.

Sure, but as I mention in cousin-thread, there's a difference between being reckless with your own safety and well-being, and putting others at risk, physically, medically, fiscally, or legally.

He's certainly not the most safety-minded person, but if you watch enough of his videos, you see that there is very much a "controlled chaos" when it comes to external hazards. My point is, it's often less reckless than it looks at first glance, not un-reckless in an absolute sense albeit. Good showmanship and all that.

To my knowledge this is still in a residential area, so you do need to take care with construction noise, even though he certainly plays it up as a bit.

In the video after the linked one, he mentions that the project was on pause for a while due to covid not letting the neighbors go on vacation (when he seems to usually do these big projects).

Probably more about keeping good relations with his neighbors than actually keeping it secret (while posting on a Youtube channel with over 10 million subscribers). They probably wouldn't be too happy with the noise from explosives and jackhammers and the other usual tools for digging tunnels.

well, one assumes that by the time the first video make it to youtube, the tunnel's been completely done for a while.

In the original bunker video, he applied for planning permission /after/ it was built https://planning.southkesteven.gov.uk/SKDC/S16-0017/1288446....

It's also quite funny he names "Mr Malcolm" as the person who gave him advice before hand. He's also been arrested for other projects.

I feel like he's very much "do first, ask later" type of person. And at least with both of these projects they're sponsored. So it's not costing him anything.

In the original Bunker video He briefly mentions inspections and permits.

He mentioned retrospective permits which means he did it first and tried to make it legal afterward. However, he wouldn't have got the permits if he hadn't done things properly, so there's that. Finally, there were contractors involved which usually know their jobs.

What's the worst that is going to happen? He made a video and then lets the professionals clean up his mess if it's unsafe.

The worst that could have happened is that he could have been ordered to remove it again at great expense.

It might still be worth it for him ?

His videos make enough to justify the expense risk ?.

I mean others wouldn't likely make money in projects like this. They do it because they need/want the actual tunnel. He really only the videos of him making one.

He declared over £1million in just one company last year, and Sky were paying for the bunker anyway.

Same with this tunnel, this one is sponsored.

I do wonder if he's killed his budget though, because he's just randomly stopped, filled the walls with concrete and is now "taking a break". I suspect this one might not get finished.

He makes over a million a year. He probably can handle any of these expenses.

Yeah, I’m fairly certain I’d get called out on this if I tried this as a random yahoo in Idaho, let alone a famous YouTuber in the UK.

We've had other people in the UK that have been rather less 'cautious' probably, sadly, through mental health issues, the Mole Man of Hackney:

"Lyttle, originally from Ireland, inherited a 20-room property in the London borough of Hackney. In the mid sixties he dug out a wine cellar under his home. Having done so, he said that he had "found a taste for the thing" and kept on digging, for some forty years.[2] He created a network of tunnels, wide and narrow, on several levels. Tunnels led in all directions, some of them up to 18 metres (59 ft) in length, and reaching as far down as the water table.[3] One excavation connected with the Dalston Lane tunnel, and the railway line.[3]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lyttle

"After this, Lyttle was moved to a hotel for three years, before being rehoused in an apartment in a high-rise building. He was put on the top floor, to discourage tunnelling. While there he knocked a hole in a dividing wall between two rooms." :-)

Crap... I clicked the link to the Wikipedia page on "Hobby tunneling" and now I'm getting lost in a rat hole of my own:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling

Edit: And in doing so, it reminded me of this story I ran across a while back: https://armeniadiscovery.com/en/articles/levons-divine-under...

There is this guy [1] Dashrath Manjhi spent 20 years digging 110m long tunnel through hills to reduce the travel distance from his village after his wife died. Apparently he used only used hammer and chisel

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi

> When asked by journalists why he had excavated the tunnels, he said "I'm just a man who loves to dig" and that he just wanted "a big basement". He also said that "There is great beauty in inventing things that serve no purpose."

It is certainly odd, Dashrath Manjhi [1] was called insane when he started building a tunnel to make the travel distance from his village shorter.

Baldasare Forestiere[2] probably was also called insane in his day, he just wanted a cooler catacomb style home in Fresno.

It is hard to know when some one is following a mad vision or just mad.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestiere_Underground_Garde...

For context, British Youtuber/celebrity engineer Colin Furze[1] is digging a tunnel at a depth of 3.5 meters under his garden using hand and hydraulic tools. He previously built an underground bunker.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/colinfurze/videos

For even more reference going under is pretty popular in UK

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/nov/09/billion...

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/may/07/pool-basement-...

I'm surprised he didn't make a rig to dig dirt before hand.

His next project will be an exoskeleton to relieve his broken bach :)

ps: oh I was just before he starts to make hydraulic arms ..

I hope he makes enough money from the video to be able to write-off the value of his home. I suspect that it will be impossible to sell.

See also Fred Dibnah's attempt to build replica coal mine (with 30m shaft) in his back garden, using only techniques and machinery contemporary to the period[1][2]. Sadly he passed away before he could complete it and the property has had a strange history since then.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqAbMbRQ3jE

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dibnah#Dig_with_Dibnah

In the U.S. you can sell a home "as is" and disclose the tunnels as a safety risk. The buyer can fill in the tunnels if they don't have a need for them. Homes are sold all the time with defects, code violations, etc... Sometimes the land/location alone is the primary value of the property. That is the case in my neck of the woods. Several of my neighbors had dilapidated homes with rotted wood, 100+ year old redwood septic systems and still sold for seven figures. I have no idea if you can sell a property "as is" in the U.K. I also have no idea in what neighborhood Colin resides.

The man probably makes hundreds of thousands and up to low millions of dollars per year from YouTube money. Not to mention sponsorships and Patreon and any other sources of income. Pretty sure his house could go to zero and he'd be fine, financially.

He's stated previously regarding just the bunker, that it'd be sold as a bunker with a house, not a house with a bunker. That arrangement is apparently more valuable as that makes the house much more desirable for the type of person interested in bunker-digging.

I'm not sure if the tunnels change anything, but assuming they're up to some sort of code, probably nothing.

> I suspect that it will be impossible to sell.

Genuinely curious to why that would be? Subsidence?

Any unusual or one-off traits that seem "unique", "fun", "quirky" etc tend to do very badly in the actual real estate market. Often, they are poorly engineered and will be a maintenance nightmare in 20 years. Inspection expertise to be able to tell whether it will be a maintenance nightmare will be very tough to find. Most sane buyers will just pass on it rather then try to sort it out.

Even if the market is super hot right now and it seems like people will buy anything, anyone who looks at buying this will definitely be thinking about how hard it will be to sell in 10 years when the market isn't so hot. Most likely 90% of them will either back out or demand discounts that basically assume the whole thing is a mess and will need to be ripped out by professional contractors.

In addition to what ufmace said, the vast majority of buyers in the UK do what has just been changed to a RICS Home Survey. These are reports written by chartered surveyors, meaning that these are not just best effort opinions, they have legal implications. Some mortgage providers will not agree to lend without having a fresh one to consider.

They list all kinds of small details: a single double glazed window containing condensation, or a gutter leaking onto an exterior wall. Experienced buyers would know which of the details are actually important, but it's still a sobering document. They encourage buyers and mortgage providers to act cautiously and are typically used as a tool for negotiating the price down.

If you are a cash buyer and just don't care, then fair enough. But whether or not it's a sound piece of engineering, a DIY tunnel (without planning permission?) dug underneath the property would be a massive red flag for your solicitor and your surveyor who would likely provide professional advice against buying the property. And mainstream mortgage advisors and insurers and may even refuse to do business with you due to perceived risk.

If the bunker is permitted then he's going to have no trouble selling it - though the market does tend to get weird when stuff looks weird.

That said, I have trouble believing in the current insanity of urban property markets that anything could make a regular house hard to sell. It won't make it more valuable (nobody's shopping saying "I really need that underground bunker") but I seriously doubt he'd have any trouble beyond that.

He declared over £1million last year, and I'm 99.999% sure that house is just used as a studio/business address rather than actually living there now.

He's done way too many projects that involve just generally making your life a bit difficult.

I'd buy it if he has the right permits and building approvals. House with a tunnel and underground bunker - count me in.

Honestly, super practical for anyone who plays in a band and wants to host practice and have their neighbors like them anyway.

Or has a kid who's in the same situation...

All the other ideas get dark very quickly. In addition, CO2 accumulation makes the mind a bit stupid quite quickly, even in an office, so I wouldn’t stay there…

Or just more living / working space.

Say you're in one of many low to medium density areas (sf, suburbs of nyc, etc) and need more living space. Going up is very expensive and causes conflicts with the neighbors (earthquake zone, views); down is even more expensive; building in the yard loses, well, the yard. So going under the yard is not a crazy option.

Particularly in our brave new wfh world where employees now have to pay for their own working space.

The tunnel I would love to see is the espionage tunnel built in complete secrecy under the then Soviet embassy in Washington DC constructed by the FBI and operated by the NSA, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, and about which we learned only because it was exposed by an FBI double agent in 1989[1]. I'd pay to watch a movie about that tunnel's construction.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27793359 (Operation Monopoly)

As long as he wears his safety tie I am sure it will be fine.

My concern would actually be the ventilation. It looks like the access hatch goes straight down from the floor of the workshop. He often seems to have various machinery in there and I'd be concerned that a gas leak could flow into the tunnel and push out the oxygen, making it an asphyxiation risk.

I hope he's mitigated this because there are documented cases of unaware first responders trying to save those in enclosed spaces and themselves asphyxiating.

On this topic, I love the (too rare) CSB videos. I’m baffled that 1L of liquid nitrogen expands in 700L of gas, and despite being inert, can kill in a minute.

Let's just say that if the ground decides to give the puny adhoc steel structure is not going to pose much opposition.

Forgetting for a moment how thin everything is, the arch only works if it is supported on the sides. It isn't, there is a bunch of space on both sides for the arch to get flat and give completely.

But the structure may prevent full collapse. Also it is going to be relatively unlikely anybody gets hurt. It isn't like he is going to be sitting there 24/7.

That's not how that works... Any granular material, even sand, will spread the forces laterally. It's impossible for the full weight of the soil above to be applied to the steel structure.

The only reason you need the steel structure at all is to prevent it failing incrementally. Without it, the small amount of unsupported soil immediately above the tunnel can fall, which then leaves a gap for previously supported soil to move into, which can then itself fall, etc. until the whole tunnel comes down. The steel structure therefore only needs to preserve the shape of the soil.

Finally, this is steel we're talking about - 3.5mm of steel in compression is still very strong. It's already massively overkill for the tiny amount of weight it actually has to support in this case.

> That's not how that works... Any granular material, even sand, will spread the forces laterally. It's impossible for the full weight of the soil above to be applied to the steel structure.

Absolutely false.

The ground may be plastic on a long time scales (depends on the material) and over time full weight of it can be transferred to the structure.

Do following thought experiment: build a bridge out of clay over a scale. The bridge might not suddenly collapse, but it will slowly deform and over time all weight of it will rest on the scale.

If you have noticed, the top layers of the tunnel are made of clay. Clay is plastic and will creep over time.

It is the same basic principle as buildings falling due to ground giving under foundations.

Even with a totally plastic material (which is a stretch, since there are certainly granular elements even in clay soil) the material will deform until it fills the gaps around the arch shape.

At that point the material itself is forming an arch, and even clay has compressive strength since it has nowhere else to go. While it may increase the load on the steel, it's still a long way from having to support the full weight of the material above.

The steel is only temporary. Of course one could argue any temporary structure should be up to scratch, but anyway it's not the final solution. He's building a tunnel within the steel structure and then filling the void with concrete.

Well, that's what I understood from the last vid.

But until then he is standing under structure that is definitely not safe.

The trouble with these kinds of things is that everything looks fine until it doesn't.

The way engineering solves these problems is through body of knowledge and experience in understanding of material properties and interaction of forces of both ground and the structure.

The ground my start slipping slowly or it might decide to give in one go. It might happen after a particularly heavy rain or for no apparent reason at all. Unfortunately, I am not an expert in the type of ground he is facing.

So either he is working with professionals (and hiding it to make the video more entertaining and in spirit of his other projects) or he isn't.

In either case I think it is bad because it promotes the idea other people can do the same. Which is extremely dangerous in irresponsible to do on your own.

what if i said i think its dangerous that you operate a car, and worse, you encourage others to drive cars when they see you driving a car.

Engineers go through training to build safe tunnels and drivers go through training and exams to drive the car safely.

Maybe you have heard, there are even rules that aim to making driving safer.

Both tunnel collapses and car crashes happen, but but less because we have regulation to prevent most of the carnage.

The correct analogy would be showing on youtube how fun it is to be driving car without any training or driving license.

I find it quite refreshing that there aren't warnings not to try this at home. If people want to have a go, they will whether told to or not.

Colin's channel is entertaining but it's as synthetic as TV. He has a team of people, probably has planning permission for the whole thing, and so on.

While he does maintain a persona for the channel, it not all fake, He is fairly transparent about some of these things he did mention about permissions etc, his behind the scenes videos show a bit more usually.

I would say it is more artistic license in the story he is saying rather being artificially synthetic.

He's done work for "minstream" TV before, but in reality, as with a lot of Youtube, it's only him, his wife and a few friends.

The original bunker had to retroactively apply for planning permission: https://planning.southkesteven.gov.uk/SKDC/S16-0017/1288446....

Of course it's way more organised that it first seems, because it is sponsored after all, but he does seem rather fly-by-night o all his things.

He said he was going to do a load of other projects with that bunker (including ventilation systems) but they never happened.

He has himself, Rick and Tom. He’s said before he’s a one man band when it comes to filming, editing and the business.

That reminds me of this story https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/us/daniel-beckwitt-bethes... Being non-expert it's hard to judge the safety of the tunnel, but still it doesn't sound to me like a good idea.

This guy is a reckless idiot who is going to get someone killed. The video he posted about digging an underground cave at the beach, in sand, was the sketchiest thing I've ever seen. If one of the sand walls collapsed, he would have buried alive, and no one could have helped him.

One of his millions of followers is bound to try something similar with tragic results, guaranteed.

i assume this type of endeavour would require some kind of permit and in turn a degree of engineering approval

that said, i stopped watching collin's videos a long time ago because of an apparent (however edited) blatant disregard for basic safety principles

Then you missed the video where he farts at France.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ydv9Ef-99I

Why do you care that he’s not safe?

An ethical argument could be made that by watching we are encouraging the behavior and therefore share any blame if something goes wrong.

He’s a grown man. And clearly intelligent. It’s disrespectful to be that patronizing towards him

what about driving cars.

are you against that as well?

Cars are necessary in modern society. Furze's stunts are not. We might reach a point in the far future where we are no longer reliant on cars, but we're not there yet.

What I want to know is how he explains the skip that will inevitably be in his driveway. English people always look in skips.

Allegedly the neighbours are not to know. Maybe he times skip delivery and collection accordingly.

Didn’t you see in the previous video that he is surreptitiously leaving bags of dirt at pubs and in grocery stores? There was even a flyer behind him at one point. The neighbors will never know.

We assume from what we see that this tunnel and his shed are at his house but he is big enough of a youtuber that this whole thing could be on a sound stage somewhere.

Colin Furze. The "S" stands for Safety.

safety furze.

i like it.

Compared to most of the worlds current working tunnels dug by the other 6 billion, or all tunnels 70+ year ago it's a mansion in the tunnel world.

In the first world corporate mining industry I'm sure it'd give a safety person a heart attack.

Going 10 meters down an artisan mine [1] (most of the worlds miners work in these) is scary. Straight down a narrow hole, then sideways into soft dirt with a few tree trunks holding up dirt doesn't fill you with confidence. Then I got stuck trying to climb out because my longer western legs couldn't step up.

The fact this blogger uses welded supports on an outer layer shows he's on probably top of it for the hobby world.

[1] https://imgur.com/a/hUgEblt

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