Putting drain pipe underground with a middle buster

[teg]

Wanted to redirect the down spouts to the side of the hill. I had to make several dozen passes to dig down enough... had to add extra weight and my middle buster has two sets of hole so I could drop it down an extra 6" (which is a good thing )

My boss was dogging me all day and checking up on my work... Got it buried a good foot down. I filled the hole with a rake so that I could pack it down as I went. Finished up packing it with the front tire with a bucket full of gravel.

Project went pretty smooth and with out a hitch...

 

[radioman]

very nice! I am surprised how straight the row was.

 

[SandburRanch]

Good work teg. :thumbsup: Here's hoping it never gets plugged. That would take a real long snake.

 

[Kyle241]

Nicely done. I also say no fair as your soil looks so nice compared to mine which includes a lot of stones. I don't think the MB would work for me even though I think it's a nice simple way of laying some pipe. Backhoe is solution up this way but i am jealous as that looks like an easier solution.

A question though. I notice a 'road' that you went under/through, isn't load on that going to crush the pipe? I've been thinking how far down I should go with the drainage lines I have and am concerning my tractor will crush it as it weighs approx. 7000lbs. If I only go 12", I would imagine the pipe would crush so I was thinking more like 24-36" in my case.

 

[teg]

I'll let you know the next time I get gravel dropped off there!!! I'm sure I'm going to have to deal with it at some point... I am planning someday to reduce the grade of that "road" just beyond this point and this is the first time I thought about how close that pipe is!!! :mur:

To fill the road section I mainly used "crush and run" gravel to pack the pipe in. I've driven over it during "wet" times and there weren't *any* depressions (but we do have "light" vehicles )

I was very pleasantly surprised that I didn't hit a "project stopping" rock! One of our garden locations, we hit a mother about 6" down and had to move the location. We have dozen of piles of rock around the farm, this one by the cabin is a small one, there's at least 8-10 more piles within 25 yards.

 

[clemsonfor]

Nicely done. I also say no fair as your soil looks so nice compared to mine which includes a lot of stones. I don't think the MB would work for me even though I think it's a nice simple way of laying some pipe. Backhoe is solution up this way but i am jealous as that looks like an easier solution.

A question though. I notice a 'road' that you went under/through, isn't load on that going to crush the pipe? I've been thinking how far down I should go with the drainage lines I have and am concerning my tractor will crush it as it weighs approx. 7000lbs. If I only go 12", I would imagine the pipe would crush so I was thinking more like 24-36" in my case.

Unless your drive was so watter logged it was mush i dont think you will crush it short of driving a big truck in there. The soil on each side is not disturbed so your full weight is not really on the spot totally.

Also im a forester and oversee many miles of virgin road construction to haul wood out. This includes low water crossings (rock in a creek and you actually drive through it and also pipe installation up to 5ft diameter ones in my case. The rule of thumb is atleast 1/2 the diameter of fill dirt over the pipe packed down. So if that is a 6" diameter drain line you really only need 3", but that will likely deform as that is thin pipe. Imthe normal case we have a 2ft pipe and put 1 ft of fill on it at least, the packed dirt wedges the weight against the dirt around the pipe. Anyway i think that pipe is deep enough unless your drive is super soft.

Like i said if we put a 3ft pipe in a creek we just roll it in or dig it in a bit and then in that case put atleast 1.5 ft of dirt on it, but usually closer to 2ft. Never really had any pipe more than deform about 20% (due to not packing it in) and im driving 100,000lb trucks over them, to the tune of hundreds of loads before we move on.

 

[tpulley]

Was that a store bought middle buster or a home made one? I need something exactly like this.

 

[k0ua]

Nice write-up Teg, and good photo's. Not fair though, you have dirt!

James K0UA

 

[tpulley]

Oh yeah I forgot to mention I thought it did a great job too.

 

[teg]

Some more photos of the Middle Buster can be found here:
Using a subsoiler as a ditch digger - TractorByNet.com

Like the other thread says, it was a close-out at Agri-Supply. They were switching over to the Fixed / solid non-adjustable ones like King Kutter (actually, it might *have* been KK).

When I bought it, there were a half dozen of these and about the same number of Sub-Soilers that looked almost exactly like this (adjustable). They sold out and I've not seen them again...