Installing Underground Utilities
by chris - October 18th, 2009.Filed under: Uncategorized.
One of the jobs I’ve had on my list was to run water and electricity out to the barn and the surrounding area. Since we have a high water table here, I had to wait until late summer to do the job so the water table would be low enough. A few weeks ago I finally went ahead with the project. I ended up running about 700 feet of 1″ water line, installing 3 hydrants - one in the large barn, one out at the field, and one where the future goat barn will go. Then while I had the trench open, I also ran a 2″ electrical conduit so I can run power in the future. Here are some pictures of the job. It took the better part of a weekend, which was actually faster than I thought it would go.
I rented a Ditch Witch RT40 riding trencher to do the digging. It's a very capable machine and made quick work of the 4 foot deep trench. It cut right through all the tree roots in our woods no problem. Keri had no idea how large a machine I had rented and was very surprised when the delivery truck pulled into the drive, though I think her suspicions were raised when I mentioned it had to be delivered.
The machine digs the trench using what looks like a huge chainsaw. It then spits the dirt out in a little pile on one side. It cut a very clean, straight trench that was easy to lay pipe in. The machine is all hydraulic driven, so controlling it is just a series of levers. This model has a 40hp diesel engine so it didn't really bog down for much of anything. At one point it even pulled up a 16" diameter rock.
These are the frost free hydrants we installed. They have a valve buried below the frost line and drain the water out of the riser after they are shut off. This lets them operate year round without freezing up. I decided to go with ones made by Merrill Manufacturing (not Merrill, Mi where we live... they're made in Iowa). They're one of two brands that I could find still made in the USA and the only one that was reasonably priced. They seem to be a quality product so hopefully they will give us years of trouble free service.
October 20th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Hi Chris,
What kind of wire did you use for the electric? Or it’s just the conduit for now?
Very nice blog, by the way. I wish more people did these how-to style presentations like you did for the chicken coop door opener.