Box blade trencher

[Hosskix]

I needed to replace the elec wire out to my feed shed due to a short in the line.
The last time I did this, I rented a trencher and could only dig down 6-8" due to all the rock.
This time I decided to use my handy-dandy multipurpose tool, the tractor.

I adjusted the box blade so that the blade wasn't contacting the ground and put one ripper down.
Made 2 passes to make my ditch the same size as my trenching shovel and there you have it, clean out a little with the shovel and my ditch would be done.

It worked even better than I'd expected, I was able to get down a good 12" and the ripper just pushed the rocks aside and left a grove wide enough to lay conduit in.
(As opposed to dragging the rocks to the surface, to be picked up and hauled off like the trencher did.)

That is, it worked really well until making my last pass up to the shed.
Wouldn't you know it, I hung a PVC waterline!
By the time I'd ran to the well house and shut the valve I had a nice little lake in my horse pen.
Of course it was on a main line that I couldn't just shut in for a day or two.
If I wanted a shower, I had to fix it then; so, in I went!

I had to postpone my elec line to let my new pond dry up a little so I just went quail hunting yesterday instead.
Hope y'all had a better weekend; or at least a more productive one!

PS. Am I the only one that can just LOOK at a piece of PVC and break it?
By the time I fixed that one leak, I'd replaced 10' of pipe and used 5 collars and one elbow!

 

[czechsonofagun]

I needed to replace the elec wire out to my feed shed due to a short in the line.
The last time I did this, I rented a trencher and could only dig down 6-8" due to all the rock.
This time I decided to use my handy-dandy multipurpose tool, the tractor.

I adjusted the box blade so that the blade wasn't contacting the ground and put one ripper down.
Made 2 passes to make my ditch the same size as my trenching shovel and there you have it, clean out a little with the shovel and my ditch would be done.

It worked even better than I'd expected, I was able to get down a good 12" and the ripper just pushed the rocks aside and left a grove wide enough to lay conduit in.
(As opposed to dragging the rocks to the surface, to be picked up and hauled off like the trencher did.)

That is, it worked really well until making my last pass up to the shed.
Wouldn't you know it, I hung a PVC waterline!
By the time I'd ran to the well house and shut the valve I had a nice little lake in my horse pen.
Of course it was on a main line that I couldn't just shut in for a day or two.
If I wanted a shower, I had to fix it then; so, in I went!

I had to postpone my elec line to let my new pond dry up a little so I just went quail hunting yesterday instead.
Hope y'all had a better weekend; or at least a more productive one!

PS. Am I the only one that can just LOOK at a piece of PVC and break it?
By the time I fixed that one leak, I'd replaced 10' of pipe and used 5 collars and one elbow!

Good story, thanks

 

[Michael_E_Tx]

Hi Hosskix.

I've personally not destroyed any of our waterlines yet (we have about 3/4 mile of lines), but my son and the phone company managed to commit mayhem on them.

When we first moved onto our place, we didn't know where any of the valves were that go to two mobiles. Our son was moving into the one at the end of the waterline. He was doing exploratory digging to locate the line. We have very rocky soil. He was using a pickaxe and managed to poke the sharp end of the pickaxe right smack dab in the middle of the line.

Later, we were setting up an RV site for another son. There was already water to the site. The phone company came out to bury a phone line down to the site. It started out with two guys and a small ditchwitch. They managed to cut the line that goes to the mobiles right in half.

Then, due to running into some significant sandstone, which we have in abundance, they called in the gigunda ditchwitch. Now there were about five guys on site. The big ditchwitch cut through the sandstone just fine and was headed down the hill.

We always heard the guy who built our place always did things the easiest way. Turns out he detoured the waterline to the middle of the drive down to the site, right in the path of the big ditchwitch. They tore out twenty feet of 3/4" pvc.

In order to rectify this, they now called in a large backhoe. By now, there were at least a dozen guys at our place. Took 'em about an hour to trench, lay new line, hook everything up again and cover everything up.

All in all, for a 50-75 yard phone line, there were 8-9 workers, 2-3 supervisors, 3 pieces of equipment, about 6 trucks and three equipment trailers. And it only took them about 4 hours all together. Quite a day.

Mike

 

[jimg]

>>I had to postpone my elec line to let my new pond dry up a little so I just
>>went quail hunting yesterday instead. Hope y'all had a better weekend; or at
>>least a more productive one!

Well, sounds to me like you had a more than prodcutive day. Quail hunting sounds like a far better use of time.

 

[3RRL]

Sorry to hear about your snag up, but at least you got some good use from the boxblade. Using it for various tasks like that, (other than ripping out your pvc) makes it a versitile implement.

 

[GEB]

Last summer I was using a stump grinder here at home, saw some foil..?
Went down to have a look and it was the gas line wraped in foil.
I had ripped the foil right off the line but didnt cut it, I guess that was close enough!
The gas line was headed to a 1000gal propane tank.
Gene

 

[mfrost]

I tried the ripper and worked good but the shovel work got t much especially in 110 degree so I changed to this.
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachments/90204-my-little-ditch-digger.html

Check it out.

 

[N80]

I have a Bush Hog box blade and even with it angled downward and the ripper in the lowest setting I can only get down about 6 inches. What type of BB do you have?

 

[n8wrl]

I used a sub-soiler to feed cable into the ground about 18" down. The nice thing was it closed in on itself as I drove. Once I got to the end, Just had to keep looking back to see if I was dragging any rocks or buried logs along! I just drove back over the mole-hills with a rear tire to tamp.

 

[Hosskix]

I don't remember the name of the box blade, it's just a little cheapo, it's not real deep so you can get quite a bit more angle with it.
After I got the rest of the ditch cleaned out I found that I was probably only getting down 8-10" in most places, but that was plenty deep for a wire in a conduit. (As long as I don't decide to fix something else in the area!)

That middle buster looks like the way to go!
But my area isn't as sandy/loamy as what your's looks like, and no where near as clean; I'd have enough rocks above ground to build a fort!
Still might look into it after I get my rock bucket built.

I talked to the guy that layed my phone line, he used one of those sub-soilers that n8wrl is talking about.
He said that he'd built an attachment so that he could lay up to 1" PVC pipe with it and it did "poly-pipe" like a charm. (He did sprinkler systems in his spare time.)
It worked real well, just had to pick up some rocks.

Lots of good ideas guys!