I live next to a quarry in eastern Pennsylvania that recently acquired additional land much closer to the housing development. Previously they were blasting probably a half mile away and are now within a quarter mile of my home. The shock waves from the blasts are definitely sufficient to shake the house and rattle glasses in the cabinet, and rumor has it even shaken some off of tables in neighbors homes. Will the waves likely saturate a geophone given the proximity to the quarry or are these still rather small on the spectrum of what the geophone will measure? I’ve tried to contract an engineering firm to assist but all have indicated conflicts of interest for having worked with the quarry in the past, so looking for something DIY to be able to get an idea of the intensity of the blast and any potential impact to structure of my home. I saw some references in several posts to using an RS1D but seems the distances were much more significant than what I’m dealing with. If the 4D would be a better option in my situation then I’d prefer to do that so I don’t clip the waves.
Hello staufferd, welcome to our community!
There are a lot of possible different factors that could cause geophone saturation or not-saturation: installation position, location, type of material upon where the Shake is positioned, soil type and density, depth to bedrock, structural footing, attachment to bedrock, bedrock type, and more…
Given this, and due to the fact that the blasts appear to be really close to your location, and thus the Shake location, I would advise for an RS4D, so that you will have both geophone and accelerometer datasets available.
There are other users who have adopted the same approach in monitoring quarry blasts around the world and have demonstrated that this unit is the one that provides the most usable results, being able to detect both smaller (or more distant) and larger (or closer) blasts.