Hmm... well, horsepower is a little light. I actually use a chisel point, not a middlebuster... am just trying to get something as narrow as possible, yet strong, down while carrying a chain that I can attach the pipe to. Physical pull from pipe is negligable, I was very surprised. I guess 98% of the effort is in pulling the chisel point forward. If it is sand all the way, you can make several passes to loosen up the sand before attaching the pipe. Staying in the track is a little difficult if it is not a straight line pull. If you know somebody who has a chisel plow you can take all but one of the shanks/points off and be ready to go to work. The point is, you are only trying to get the pipe down to depth desired... not dig a trench (think inside the trench)... so you just need something that penetrates to depth and that you can tie the pipe on to.
My guess is that you will spend maybe $250 to purchase the tool... things always seem to take a little more than one expects. But then you would have the tool and I've found it to be real handy.
I tried a trick that worked AMAZINGLY well. The idea is to get a nylong (strong) string from one end to another of a plastic pipe. Then, to pull the wire thru using the fish string.
In my case it was either a 2 or 2.5 inch PVC schedule 40 pipe. A friend said to just get a shop vac and blow the string thru. Well, I now know that would likely have worked... but being hard headed I took a small plastic pill bottle that was a little smaller than the ID of the pipe, drilled a hole in the end, put the end of the string thru it and knotted the string on the bottom. Thus the open end of the bottle faced away from the direction of travel down the pipe and the string goes into the open end.
I inserted the bottle into the pipe, pushed it in with my finger, grabbed the ball of string, turned on the shop vac and pressed the blowing end on the pipe. WOW... It felt like I had a monster in my hand... the string tugged and tugged wanting to run down the pipe... almost burned my fingers... blew out the other end in just a couple of seconds... length was about 70 feet.
I recently have enhanced the technique by inserting grease into the pipe just before inserting the wire to be pulled.... makes the pull much easier... but messier /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
