Water Line for irrigation

[foggy1111]

I seen some good posts in the past on using a sub-soiler to pull poly water lines. I remember seeing a "Chinese Fingers" method to pull the water line....and thought that looked slick. I tried the search here....but cannot find a good thread on the method to do this. Can someone furnish a good thread on this....or some pictures of this method?

 

[Baby Grand]

Well, I don't remember seeing the Chinese Handcuff applied to a subsoiler, but I did work 8 hrs at Economy Cable Grip Co, which made them for the utility companies. That was my shortest employment, bar none, by the way (couldn't tolerate the music). Seems like it would be a good way to grip a not-too-slippery tube and pull it thru the furrow. Personally, I've had good luck with the Red Green method of duct taping the tube to a piece of wire and attaching the wire to the subsoiler:



It's cheap and easy, just like me.
-Jim

 

[foggy1111]

Well, I don't remember seeing the Chinese Handcuff applied to a subsoiler, but I did work 8 hrs at Economy Cable Grip Co, which made them for the utility companies. That was my shortest employment, bar none, by the way (couldn't tolerate the music). Seems like it would be a good way to grip a not-too-slippery tube and pull it thru the furrow. Personally, I've had good luck with the Red Green method of duct taping the tube to a piece of wire and attaching the wire to the subsoiler:

View attachment 277810

It's cheap and easy, just like me.
-Jim

LOL.....thanks for this info Jim. Cheap is good! Do you think I could pull 300 feet of 1" black poly with your duct tape and wire method? I'd likely run the sub-soiler thru their heavy clay soil a few times to get a good trench established...then pull the tube. I've also seen the curved tube attached behind the shank....and I'm not sure which way to set up....or what may work better.

I'd like to hit the ground running and I'm trying to have a good method going in. I'm planning to do a water line at my daughters home....and its hard to get it all re-organized in a rural setting on a Sunday.

 

[Baby Grand]

Glad I could help, Foggy!

When you pull the line the way I did, the friction resisting the line's motion increases as the burried length increases. At some point, the connection won't hold and something will let go. The line that I was running was just 100 feet to get water out to our vegetable garden for the drip irrigation lines.
If you need to run longer lengths, as you are, I'd consider the bent conduit attachment thingy. You just have to cobble a way to pay out the line from the tractor end, as you go, which should be simple and easy to do.
l
Running the subsoiler thru the soil once or twice before puling the line would be a good idea - that's what I did, too. Finding a burried rock, section of fence or barbed wire would really mess up the whole line pulling operation.

Do a search and you'll find lots of good examples of subsoiler pulled wire, cable and tubing.

 

[RxRatedZ71]

A sponsor for TBN, "everythingattachments.com" has an excellent video of a subsoiler pulling pipe. You may check how they attached their pipe.

 

[Ed of all trades]

My dad put in app 1000 ft of water line (black plastic pipe) with a homemade subsoiler and a ford jubilee. He welded a short piece of chain, 6in, and then a piece of rod that fit the inside of the pipe. Roughed it up with some homemade barbs and 5 or 6 hose clamps. worked like a charm.:thumbsup:

 

[Briar Hill Brittanys]

I seen some good posts in the past on using a sub-soiler to pull poly water lines. I remember seeing a "Chinese Fingers" method to pull the water line....and thought that looked slick. I tried the search here....but cannot find a good thread on the method to do this. Can someone furnish a good thread on this....or some pictures of this method?

Here's what you're looking for. Klein Tools -Wire-Mesh Grips . The grip attaches with a short length of chain to the subsoiler. Recommendations to run the route without the pipe a time or two are spot on. In the CATV construction industry, these are used to pull cables underground and also when setting up aerial to lash coax to strand. Also used them to pull electrical conductors in conduits, and underground innerduct conduit. They'll take a pretty good load. We always wrapped cheap black tape to the woven end, and never had one let go. HTH Mark

 

[jenkinsph]

I would think for the long runs you need to feed the pipe into a larger sweep turned away from the plow I would use a 3" sweep and a bottle of pulling lubricant to slick up the pipe in the sweep. Takes a person on the tractor and maybe two people on the ground feeding the tubing into the sweep as you slowly proceed up the path. This method would allow you to go as far as you wan't without friction problems as the tractor is only placing the tubing in the ground not pulling it. No need for the pulling grip either with this method. Unrolling the tubing in the direction of the tractor with a loop going into the top of the sweep may require two people to handle.

 

[foggy1111]

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I would think for the long runs you need to feed the pipe into a larger sweep turned away from the plow I would use a 3" sweep and a bottle of pulling lubricant to slick up the pipe in the sweep. Takes a person on the tractor and maybe two people on the ground feeding the tubing into the sweep as you slowly proceed up the path. This method would allow you to go as far as you wan't without friction problems as the tractor is only placing the tubing in the ground not pulling it. No need for the pulling grip either with this method. Unrolling the tubing in the direction of the tractor with a loop going into the top of the sweep may require two people to handle.

^^ Yep. This is what I'm going to do. Originally.....I think I got wire pulling mixed up with water piping as I began thinking about this project. (Funny how hard it is to search this site these days...compared to the past.)

I saw some pics of a guy that rolled out the tubing first in the sun to soften it....then fed it over his ROPS and into a curved section of pipe behind the subsoiler shank. This will be my method....after first making a slot via a few runs with my sub-soiler.

Thanks for all the suggestions!!

 

[foggy1111]

e

^^ Yep. This is what I'm going to do. Originally.....I think I got wire pulling mixed up with water piping as I began thinking about this project. (Funny how hard it is to search this site these days...compared to the past.)

I saw some pics of a guy that rolled out the tubing first in the sun to soften it....then fed it over his ROPS and into a curved section of pipe behind the subsoiler shank. This will be my method....after first making a slot via a few runs with my sub-soiler.

Thanks for all the suggestions!!

Today I installed 450 feet of water line using the sub-soiler with the curved pipe section hose clamped to the shank. It all worked quite smoothly.....and the materials and install was my daughters birthday present. She was quite happy with the end result. I attached to a freeze proof hydrant and put in one stand-pipe and faucet at 300 feet and the second faucet another 150 feet from there. I put in a drain at the low point in the line for easy winter draining / blowout.

Things I learned: My son-in-laws JD 2720 has just enough traction (turf tires and no ballast) to pull the sub-soiler shank at about 12" in real hard and dry clay soil. (phew) I made two passes before putting down the pipe. Joints are a PITA....avoid joints at all costs. (get the proper length black poly tubing to eliminate any extra joints). We had two extra joints (cause I'm a bit tight and the sources didnt have but one 300 foot roll) and we spent most of our time and energy on installing these joints.. By the time you add up the couplings and the clamps and such....it would be cheaper and easier to just pay for another 300 foot coil. (We were lucky to find ONE roll of 300 foot poly pipe.....everyone was out.)

I used methods found here on TBN (lookup: water line) to get the job done. Thank you to the contributors for the good advice!! Was a fun project.....but it turned into a full-day job....and it was HOT.