A New Danger on Backhoe

[CurlyDave]

While excavating for a foundation for my new garage, I discovered an abandoned 3/4" water pipe buried about 18" under the earth. It had clearly run under the old garage, and from the location of the existing water line had developed a leak and been abandoned.

Anyway the left hand 2-3' popped up while I was loading the FEL with dirt to remove. I opened up the 4-n-1 bucket and lowered it to get the pipe over the bottom of the bucket, and under the top. Then I backdragged to get the pipe up and out, keeping a careful eye on how much pipe had been exposed. Just as I got to the point where I said "time to stop, there is 7' of pipe sticking up and I am only about 9' from where this is now coming out of the ground, the pipe suddenly jerked and bent over, right at my face. It ended up about 2' away, which is just about what I had estimated, but I still consider myself very lucky.

I got down and cut the pipe with a sawzall, leaving a long enough stub so I could continue to backdrag.

The lesson is don't pull unknown objects out of the ground in long pieces. I would have been far safer to only pull 5' out at a time instead of anything any longer.

 

[20 20]

that's good advise, I have even had tree roots fly out like a spring loaded rock thrower.

 

[IslandTractor]

Same goes for pushing past branches with the FEL too.