When I ran my water from the well to the building site, 25+years ago, I rented a walk behind "ditch witch". Didn't cost much, I think about 50 bucks for an afternoon, and found that it would dig about 6 feet per minute in our soil at a depth of around 2.5 feet. I ran a trench 175 feet from the well to where the house is now in no time even up a steep bank. I also ran another couple of 600 foot trenches for other hydrants around the place all in less than 4 hours. Filled the trenches with 1 inch black poly pipe that they sell at HD. I think that you should just do it right the first time, and not have to worry about it, and redo it next year
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Didn't think of a ditch witch- have several projects for a mini excavator and thought of doing it all at once. I think one of the rental places has a larger unit that would go as deep as i need to. It seemed to have a big trenching arm on it- .
I've seen a product used in outdoor wood boiler setups which is a pex tube surrounded by insulation and a 4-inch corrugated pipe. Might be helpful for this application.
This is where I got the idea to make my own- with the addition of heat tape[/
what about keeping the air compressor at the house so you can fill and then blow out the hose/ water line so it doesnt burst?
Given some thought to this- we used to do that in the winter on the 1 inch booster line on the engine. It was a reel unit so it worked rather well. Not sure how i would set it up with the line left stretched out///at least without having to walk back and forth to open and shut valves[/I