Running water lines

(You ain't gunna like my answer) Hire day labor, hand dig. How expensive that is depends on how deep you have to go and what kind of soil you have. Use schedule 40 PVC and put plenty of extras in the ditch! PVC is cheap, ditches are expensive. Take time to think and dream. What else are you ever going to want out there? Phone? Electricity? TV? Air? Computer data? Might want a standby generator someday? Get all that conduit in the ground while the ditch is open.

Vaughn

I once had a similiar problem so I buried a garden hose at ZERO depth. It didn't stick up but you could see it if you parted the grass. Fortunately it was sloped so it would drain for the winter but an air blast would work. Didn't work in freezing weather but neither did the garden.

Just go around the septic field. It doesn't sound like the added distance will be that far.

Steve

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote:

Cheap and dirty - get a coil (or two) of flexible black plastic water line, and find someone with a trencher (vibrating type) to bury the line. Cable TV companies use trenchers to install underground drops and cables everywhere - and the trenchers can be used to put it a couple of feet down (if that's what you want) or just 6" or so. The PVC waterline will feed right down through the throat of the trencher blade and you would only have a little bit of hand work to do at each end. Hope this helps. Ken.

Where I live, septic tanks and drain fields are pretty deep (and not for freeze protection, either - I live in South Carolina). I trenched for an underground irrigation system across the drain field with no problem. Since I used pop-up rotor sprinklers, the depth was about 13 inches. This was over 10 years ago.

Joe

I had to replace my feed line last fall, and it was surprisingly easy to do using a mattock and a narrow shovel. Dug ~50' of 2' deep trench in about 3 hours. The crucial tool was a sharp mattock. Since you're going to drain it in the winter (use an air compressor to clear the line) all you need to do is get below the surface. I'd go down about 6" and lay plastic pipe. Fit the turf back on top in order and it will be invisible after the first rain. Don't know where you are, but here in earthquake country they recommend you lay a curving line so it will flex a bit and not sheer at one end in a quake.

Jim (Seattle)

Agree. But not on the amount of time it took!

My backyard was full of rocks, old brick walls, and trash pits from way-back-when. It took me about of month of working each night for an hour or so, to dig a 3-foot deep trench, about a foot wide, 50 feet out to the garage.

The real come-down was when I was flailing away with the pick, and my neighbor (70 y.o.) came over and said 'let me do that for a while.' And he made three times the progress in about half the time, with about 1/4 the effort!

Jim

Ditch diggin isn't the career path it used to be. My grampa was a soft coal miner and I'm sure that he could have outdug me any day in my youth.

Seems to me, the guy has a tractor complete with plow to plow his proposed garden, so why not open a furrow, lay poly-pipe and turn the sod back in and compact with a wheel. I think you might even get away without blowing out the line before freezing, just open the ends to let it drain somewhat. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Proving once again that's there's skill in almost everything.

Thanks for the reminder.

--RC "Sometimes history doesn't repeat itself. It just yells 'can't you remember anything I've told you?' and lets fly with a club. -- John W. Cambell Jr.

snip

Heh, heh! It's amazing what a bit of practice does for increasing your efficiency!!

Around this place we have black plastic running on top of the ground - through the trees. Two reasons :

1. billions and billions of roots (Redwood forest with Fir and Oaks)
2. Earth Quakes - just snakes the line back and forth. The underground pipe normally snaps or pulls out an end.

I would guess there would be a spec on the field giving you depth at least.

Martin