Anyone have a trencher

   / Anyone have a trencher #11  
Generally I am pleased with it. Issues and concerns are:
I have one as well. Cuts fairly fast, but this is yet another tool (like the PHD and tiller) where having a reversible spool on the PTO would be useful.

Where I live, I catch a rock between the chain and sprocket guard about every 15 min. And it jams in hard, and bam! no more trenching. Only solution is to pull out a chisel and sledge and crack the rock so it can be pushed out of the sprocket.
 
   / Anyone have a trencher #12  
I just sold my Steiner trencher attachment. It's one of a few things quite useless around here with the stony ground. Shame! That thing pretty much jumped out of the trench every time it hit a stone.
 
   / Anyone have a trencher #13  
The two major attachments I could not find at anything that came close to being reasonably priced were a back hoe and trencher...I watched CL and local auctions etc for a couple of years...I was at the point of planning on building my...the trencher parts were about impossible to find...even the badly abused skid steer trenchers were priced high...I contemplated converting one to 3PH use...
I ended up buying a used Ditch Witch 3610 with a back hoe for less than a new trencher attachment cost...Having an independent back hoe has been a godsend...likewise with the trencher...
 
   / Anyone have a trencher #14  
Carl,

I have the PT trencher for the 14XX, and 18XX series. It works great. It will do 4’ no problem. I use both the 4” and 6” teeth. Rocks do occasionally jam it, and it takes 20 seconds to clear. I pop it out of the trench, put on the ground to the side, backup 6” or so, and the rock falls out.

I highly recommend that you put a visible chalk line for the entire route. One big disadvantage for PTs is the articulation makes it challenging, at least for me, to keep a straight line by eye. I need the chalk line to keep the trench on course.

It is great for lots of other chores, such as trail building, fracturing soil to speed up bucket excavation, and digging holes for trees and shrubs. It is so so at cutting large tree roots, and it would have a hard time in solid rock, when you would need a Ditchwitch with carbide teeth, rather than blades.

All the best,

Peter
 
   / Anyone have a trencher #15  
I have one as well. Cuts fairly fast, but this is yet another tool (like the PHD and tiller) where having a reversible spool on the PTO would be useful.

Where I live, I catch a rock between the chain and sprocket guard about every 15 min. And it jams in hard, and bam! no more trenching. Only solution is to pull out a chisel and sledge and crack the rock so it can be pushed out of the sprocket.

I forgot that. I keep a hammer and chisel in my tractor toolbox just for that reason. We don't have as many rocks here, but it does happen.
 
   / Anyone have a trencher #16  
You can use it to break up ground by sweeping it left and right. Then switch to the bucket for dirt removal.
It could be that mine would not did deeper is that I am too impatient. It just seems very slow below two feet deep.
 
   / Anyone have a trencher #17  
I'm bummed to hear the practical limit is only 24" or so. That would be fine for wiring, but water lines here need to be down around 54" as I recall.

Moss - You should be fine at 40" - most people around here go 3' unless it is under driveway or unheated concrete/paved area. But why would you trench when you can have it directional bored and not tear anything up. The guy charged me $600 to lay my water and gas lines to my shop and connected the water. He brought his mini-ex and the boring machine. The mini-ex to dig at the ends for connection points. In just over two hours he was done and a lot less mess than any trencher and no settling for the next year. I just talked to a guy about a month ago that had water ran to his new house site from the street with connections for $500 - no damage at all to his lawn.
 
   / Anyone have a trencher #18  
That's interesting as I have to put in new water line a couple hundred feet. I stopped and asked an operator how that directional drill worked. He explained but I still don't understand. How it's guided, how one knows where it is? How they then can pull in pipe?
 
   / Anyone have a trencher #19  
That's interesting as I have to put in new water line a couple hundred feet. I stopped and asked an operator how that directional drill worked. He explained but I still don't understand. How it's guided, how one knows where it is? How they then can pull in pipe?

I never understood it either until I saw it the other day. The tip has a small flat plate on the end mounted at an angle. The tip is connected to pipe through which water is pumped. The water really does the boring as it is very high pressure and jets out the end and machine just pushes the tip forward (it does not spin to "bore" the hole, most of the time it just pushed through the soil unless it is really hard). Since the connection back to the machine is rigid spring steel pipe they know the angle to the tip and it is shown on a screen in front of the operator. So to change directions they rotate the tip so that the angled plate changes the direction of the boring action. Of course they have to stop the length of a pipe section and add another pipe but that is quick. they went 100' on my property in about 6 minutes.

The tip also has a magnet in it and they have a box that a guy walks along and can tell the location and depth of the tip at any time. This is also transmitted back to the operator's screen so he has the information. they cannot change direction very quickly, i.e. about 10 degrees per ten foot so a 90 degree turn has about a 90' radius.

Once they have bored through they unscrew the boring tip and put on a unit that has mesh wire that are like chinese finger locks. these slide over the capped end of the tubing you are going to use. then they start retracting the boring machine and somebody has to feed the out of the coil into the hole so it does not kink and they pull it back through removing sections of pipe as they go. When they are done retracting they have the pipe through. In my case they pulled a 3/4" water line, a 3/4' gas line, and a tracer wire.

In my case we had to turn a fairly sharp corner for the last 15' into my house and they dug a quick trench for that end of it with the mini-ex and intersected where the lines were (the directional boring machine had to start back a little so that it had a certain length to get to depth). The lines had been pulled out where the boring machine went in so once they had broken through the intersection of the trench and where the lines were one guy was there and the other was at other end of the lines and he pulled them back into the hole until the ends got to the intersection and then they pulled them through the trench. The hole is larger than the tubes and is muddy from the water that is constantly being injected as the tip bores so you can pull 3-400' of line no problem.

The tricks in all of this are:

1) Knowing how to operate the machine and to pay attention as to where the tip is as it is going so that it:
a) goes to the right end point
b) you know where to dig to for the intersection point
2) Knowing how to dig the intersection point without nicking the lines
3) Having people who pay attention so that you do not pull the lines back to far when trying to get the ends to the intersection.

All i had left was a little mess on each end from digging out the dirt and a little hole with some mud around it in my lawn where they had set up the machine. There were also some track marks as the soil was a little moist and where those tracks turn it ripped up some grass.
 
   / Anyone have a trencher #20  
Thanks for that. What happens if they encounter a rock or boulder?
 

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