Earth
Marks earth (soil) in a section drawing.
This explains what a symbol represents on a drawing. Conventions vary between firms and standards, and a drawing's own legend takes precedence.
How to read it
Earth is one of the material conventions in the Army's print-reading manual, which picks each pattern to suggest the material where it can. The Navy's Builder Basic course shows earth among its conventional material symbols, next to rock, sand and water.
Also searched as: grade, ground symbol, soil hatch.
Look-alikes
The concrete pattern is dots and small triangles inside an outline.
More blueprint symbols
Sources
- Construction Print Reading in the Field, TM 5-704 / AFM 85-27, Departments of the Army and the Air Force, para. 2-2b; fig. 2-2
- Builder Basic, NAVEDTRA 14043A, Naval Education and Training Command, U.S. Navy, ch. 3, fig. 3-10
- Reading Architects' Blueprints, William S. Lowndes, 1922, International Textbook Company, Scranton (Internet Archive), §5, art. 48
Last reviewed September 24, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research