Calling 811 will get you someone to check for utility lines going to the house ( at least that's what I was told by the 811 guy ). They will not locate the power line to the water well. If you elect to do any digging without knowing where the power line is - Please be sure to turn the power off to your well. I'm sure you will do that but just a reminder.
Digging trench for PVC water line, advice on potential obstacles
- Thread starter rbstern
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Tony H
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No, REALLY? like a dining rod looking for water.
cwbyeng1300
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Called Hydro-excavation. Oilfield uses it exclusively in gas plants. Big truck with vacuum pump & tank, uses high pressure to cut the soil out & the vacuum to suck it up. Ditch with makes a smaller version that is trailer mounted.
meackerman
Bronze Member
having just hand dug 100'+ for some new irrigation lines, its not fun. But we didn't know where the previous owners ran lines and I didn't know there were private companies that came out and found them for you. soaker hose on the ground for a day, let the water soak in, dig down 4-5". fill the trench with water, come back the next day, dig as far as we could. rinse, repeat. Took us a few weekends to get it all dug, but we got it done.
while rototilling out dirt for our front walkway, I cut through an abandoned PVC line, still don't know where its going or where its coming from. Its direction makes no sense, maybe a sprinkler line, I dunno..
while hand digging a trench under where the new walkway will be, to run some 4" pvc for whatever we might want to run under the walkway in the future, I ran into the electrical line for my shop...only about 8" deep (installed by a previous owner). good thing I didn't hit that with the rototiller. Then there's the well electrical line, the house water line, the telephone line (I know where that is since I installed it) and who know what else under where we were digging.
I only have one utility line coming onto our property, the phone line. the power comes overhead and there's no city water or sewer. so when we're away from the house that makes things easy....there's no utilities to hit when digging.
while rototilling out dirt for our front walkway, I cut through an abandoned PVC line, still don't know where its going or where its coming from. Its direction makes no sense, maybe a sprinkler line, I dunno..
while hand digging a trench under where the new walkway will be, to run some 4" pvc for whatever we might want to run under the walkway in the future, I ran into the electrical line for my shop...only about 8" deep (installed by a previous owner). good thing I didn't hit that with the rototiller. Then there's the well electrical line, the house water line, the telephone line (I know where that is since I installed it) and who know what else under where we were digging.
I only have one utility line coming onto our property, the phone line. the power comes overhead and there's no city water or sewer. so when we're away from the house that makes things easy....there's no utilities to hit when digging.
cwbyeng1300
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Yes REALLY! Like I said - believe it or not. I can find a line most of the time within a foot. Lay an extension cord out on the ground & try it. you'll be surprised.
bigtiller
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For the past week or so, a large electrical contractor has been doing just that on our county [gravel] road. Every place there is a phone junction tower in the ditch, they make a hole about 8" round and 30" ~ deep. I don't know why or what the project is.
On a 16' trailer they have a power washer with about a 300 gallon tank of water AND a vacuum with a hose about 3" in diameter.
One guy blows high pressure water towards the ground making a hole and a second guy sucks the water and mud out of the hole.
EddieWalker
Epic Contributor
jaxs
Elite Member
Oh hell yaw,rbstern could pick one of these up and have that ditch knocked out in no time atall. Guy down the road here cut's railroad track and such every day with a mixture of water and sand. Bin thinking bout asking where he got his rig and get one for myself if it doesn't take too much room in my shop.
DieselBound
Elite Member
Tip: run some caution/burial tape in your trench above your lines, preferably about mid way between bottom and top of trench. That'll allow the next person who comes a digging to hit that tape before hitting the pipe.
At my place folks tossed various trash material. When you're digging and a bunch of odd crap starts popping up you know that there's a line/pipe under somewhere.
Usually, folks run stuff in a straight line. Go out from end points a ways and slowly dig perpendicular to that imaginary line. Good chance that you'll run into what's buried.
Just got done digging about 15' of trench to run a garden faucet. Every time I do something like this I swear that it's the last time...
At my place folks tossed various trash material. When you're digging and a bunch of odd crap starts popping up you know that there's a line/pipe under somewhere.
Usually, folks run stuff in a straight line. Go out from end points a ways and slowly dig perpendicular to that imaginary line. Good chance that you'll run into what's buried.
Just got done digging about 15' of trench to run a garden faucet. Every time I do something like this I swear that it's the last time...
OP
rbstern
Platinum Member
It's heavy red clay, with it's fair share of roots and rocks; ain't no fun digging at all, much less in 90+ degree sunshine. My backhoe was already on the LS. There was plenty of shovel work to do next to the foundation and under the fence, where I couldn't use the backhoe. Digging the whole thing by hand wouldn't have made any sense.
OP
rbstern
Platinum Member
Pressure tank is in the basement of the house. Anything upstream of that isn't under pressure unless the pump is running. No place to tap into outside the house.
This is for filling water bowls and cleaning a 35 gallon duck pond. Simply wanting to get our current solution of a 100' garden hose out of our way. No mission critical requirements, other than, turn it on an water comes out at a reasonable rate to fill some bowls and wash down the pond plastic liner.
loulblades
Gold Member
I use this for running pipe underground. Removed the foot, drilled a hole and added some metal straps to connect the pipe. Of course you have to dig out the ends of the run for the pipe (I have used PVC but flexible pipe would be even easier). When done run tractor over it and for the most part there is no back fill.
Lou
jaxs
Elite Member
You make it sound easy but I don't fully understand the process. Can you be more specific?
loulblades
Gold Member
So I use the backhoe to dig out 8 feet at each end of the trench (because I was using 8 foot pieces).
This works best with a helper.
Run the trencher through a couple times just to break things up a bit if needed (I hit some hard pan on my last one and ended up having my helper stand on the trencher).
Connect a piece of pipe to the trencher at one end of the run.
Helper can let the operator know when to stop and glue on the next piece of pipe.
As mentioned I think this would work great with a spool of flexible pipe but I haven't tried it.
Also when you get near the end you may need to turn the tractor around (if close to building or some object you don't want moved), flip over the pipe connector on the trencher and backup.
It is easy and fast. The longer the run, the more time saved versus using a backhoe.
On my last install I connected 2 pipes to the trencher. One for electrical and one for water (I believe code says to put electrical on top, at least that is the way I did it).
Lou
loulblades
Gold Member
There you go. Told you it works
After seeing what the first guy went through with the flex pipe I am thinking of staying with pvc for my next install.
I am not a big fan of running electrical that far without conduit though (Texas video), but that's me.
Lou
Handloader109
Gold Member
Just about the funniest post I've ever read. Only on sand dude. We just had dug 200 foot trench to put in new power to my daughter's new house, 50 feet of it met the water line so dual purpose. The pulled out rock as big as the 16 inch backhoe. 100 to 150 pounds. Ain't shoveling here more than a few inches.
grsthegreat
Super Star Member
Ya, id like to see someone dig 75 foot x 24” deep by hand in my rock heaven where I live. I pull out boulders.
4570Man
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Even in just hard dirt that would be a brutal job. Way more work than I’m going to do when I could do that in less than 30 minutes with my mini x or trencher. The OP is in Georgia though. He’s probably going to burry the line 6” deep and the soil is sandy so that’s probably doable.
