Middle Buster

[theboman]

It's a trade off. The MB will dig a ditch, but not perfectly since that is not what it was designed to do.
It's a bit of work but use a shovel, hoe etc. to clean out the areas that back fill. It's still a lot easier than getting the old matic & shovel out and digging a trench.
The ditch witch is the way to go for long ditches in my opinion.
My brother has had several out to the house and they chug right thru roots and other hidden goodies.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

WVBill... that is exactly what I want to do. Being in WV you probably have similar soil conditions as I have in PA.

Great job with the documentation.
Do you recall the price of the pipe? Where did you buy it?

Thanks

John

 

[WVBill]

JWE

We have generally red clay soil, some potato - to - softball sized rocks. We're lucky, though, our land was farmed for a couple hundred years and the limestone rock wall along one side of the property is evidence of the thanks I owe to those farmers! Also, in some areas of neighbor's property the karst comes to the surface and there would be no way to lay a water pipe through that.

I got the pipe at Home Depot. I don't remember the exact price but it wasn't expensive at all - maybe $50 bucks or so for a 400 foot coil.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

WVBill... It looks like your property is pretty level. How do you drain the pipe in the fall?

John

 

[WVBill]

I blow it out with my air compressor.
I made an adapter that attaches a piece of plastic tube to a female hose thread on one end and to a "blow gun" for the compressor. I screw the adapter onto the hose bib for the water pipe, open the valve on both ends and then repeatedly open the blow gun until the air blows strqaight through the pipe without picking up (much) water. There probably is some small amount of water remaining in low spots of the pipe but I leave the valves on both ends open so when it freezes there's expansion room.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Most of my run will be sloped so gravity will alow it to drain. I will have one section that will go down then back up so there will be a low spot. I will blow it out then dump a few oz. of non-toxic antifreeze in it.

John

 

[herbenus]

Bird,
Running faster makes sense. Like I said "mixed results" which I blame on my experience. The 40 foot run I just did was under my newly bult tractor shed so I was taking it slow because I had to. Plus I found shifting into granny low, though painfully slow, will pull it through most anything. Plus, for multiple passes, I have to go slow on second pass or I wind up missing where I was before. But I will try faster next time. Luckily, there have been no "plowing judges" out there watching me.

 

[Bird]

Yep, Bill, that's the only problems with running fast; whether you have enough space to do it without running over something and whether you have enough power to run in a faster gear. Some places I could and some places I couldn't.

 

[tdenny]

WVBill,

What size black poly pipe did you use for buried water lines?

 

[WVBill]

I used 3/4".