Hi,
Have to run about 40 feet or so of coax wire to a receiving antenna in my backyard.
Wish to bury it, probably not more than a foot to two feet deep should do it.
Other than using a square tipped shovel (or forcing my kid to do it), was wondering if anyone has any "clever" ideas on other possible ways of digging this very narrow (slit type) of trench ?
Getting on inyears now, and it sounds like a lot of work. Is there some tool other than the shovel that I might rent, or... ?
Thanks, B.
Ditch Witch trencher. You can go down a few feet with them. There are codes for electrical wires, but coax may not have to be so deep as it is not current carrying.
maybe a pressure washer or shop vac, depending on your soil. rent a trencher and run some water pipe also deep enough below frost line and some electrical conduit too.
-snip-
I was using a modified hoe last summer [ground the blade to about 3" wide] -- then I found what looks like a long-handled adze at a flea market. It was old and I'll need to build a new handle for it soon, but it works for this old back. Mine has two 2 1/2"wide blades, one for digging, and the other for chopping. In my root filled soil that works well. The handle on mine is about 5 feet long, so I don't have to work all hunched over.
I have no idea what it was used for originally, but it makes a fine trencher. OTOH-- If a Ditch Witch is in your budget- it will make short work of a trench and not tear up the landscape too badly. Jim
Several people in our area have used gasoline powered Sidewalk Edgers to dig a thin trench as deep as it will go then pushed telephone lines down into the trench with thin board. Just loaned our Edger to a friend and he did this. I would not do that as I do not believe you can get deep enough.
Walt Conner
I used to be a dish dealer, and assume you need the coax run for a satellite install. in any case it really doesnt matter.
DONT DIRECT BURY THE CABLE! If it ever fails you have all that digging again:(
Dig a really shallow trench like 6 inches deep, that makes the jb instantly easier:)
Then run roll of plastic pipe in ditch, then pull coax thru pipe / conduit.
use a oversize conduit, things change and one day you might need another cable in there
backfill the hole. since its conduit the line can be shallow and wouldnt get damaged accidently:)
This is how we handled all installs requiring digging.
As several have said, a few inches down is probably enough. Comcast here in the Chicago area only goes down about
4" for the dr>>Have to run about 40 feet or so of coax wire to a receiving antenna in my >>backyardI buried a cable in a friends yard last year, and just used a trenching shovel (the narrowest one possible). One advantage to this over machinery, is that you can peel the sod off and put it aside, dig 5 or 6 feet of trench, saving the dirt in a wheelbarrow, lay in your cable for that segment of trench, rebury, put the sod back, etc, repeat until you're there. The trench was about 45' and the whole thing took 4 hours. The best part was with the sod going right back, and the dirt never piled in the grass, you could tell it ever happened. An electrical contractor bid this at $1100 with a ditchwitch, and the lawn would have been a disaster.
bill
and btw, i agree with snipped-for-privacy@aol.com about putting the cable inside plastic conduit, plastic water line, etc.
You have a mattok which is used to for exactlly the purpuse for which you are using it, digging and trenching. The verticle blade is for chopping through roots. There are versions that have a more traditional pick head instead of the chopping blade.
You should be able to find a replacment handle in the garden section of any home store, its the same as used for picks.
I'm doing some trenching right now, and I am using my Mantis tiller to do the work. It is excellent for the job. I am going much deeper than you are because I am putting in electrical cable and phone lines inside conduit. Your task should go quickly.
Basically, I run the Mantis tiller back and forth along the path of the trench, and then the dirt is loose enough to shovel out easily. The Mantis breaks up the roots and tosses out the rocks, etc. The shovelling is easy, then. To go deeper, I simply put the tiller back in the shovelled-out trench and break up the dirt down deeper, then shovel that out and repeat, until I get deep enough.
Make sure that you shovel the dirt onto a tarp or something. If you just shovel it onto the grass by the trench, it is much harder to get the dirt back into the trench after putting in the wire because so much of it is mixed in with the grass.
+++
"Below the frost line?" Who cares if coax freezes?
The one I have only weighs just 2.5 pounds- handle and all. The handle is the same diameter [and length] as a sturdy hoe. The business end of the handle is a round flare. My clay pick takes the standard pick handle- but that is too short and heavy to do much trenching.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Here's a collage of the tool I have;
Jim
That's exactly what i remebered--- but here's the actual tool;
The whole thing weighs less than 3 pounds, and the handle is as long as, and straight and round like a hoe-handle. But it has a round flare so a hoe handle won't work as a replacement.
In the past 30 years I've spent many days looking at old tools at antique auctions, flea markets and garage sales and don't recall ever seeing another quite like this.
Jim
I don't think you even need to go that far down (for a receiving antenna particularly).
The cable company has a tool that essentially slits the turf slides the cable under the turf. It's maybe 3" down. This is a heavy frost zone too (north-west Vermont). It seems to work fine and there's no damage to the lawn.
I think your slave labor idea was a good one. ;-)
Our satellite guy used a post hole digger.
amy
So what do you call it? IMO- Adze implies a woodworking tool. . . I've always thought of a maddock as a heavier tool. It isn't quite a hoe. . . .
Jim
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