My next door neighbor and I want to put in some 3 or 4 inch PVC pipe into the ground to carry away rainwater from the gutters away from the back of the property to the front lawn where it can find it's way to the driveway & street sewers.
It's about 100 foot length and for most of it the pipe woud be just under the surface. for the last 30 feet or so the ground rises so that would require deeper digging. I don't think the depth would get over a foot at the steepest part of the lawn. We'd then angle the pipe downhill until it emerged from the ground again (my street is sloped)
Would the trencher Home Depot rents be sufficient for this - anybody have experience with it or are there other types of trenchers to rent from other stores that would be better suited. I could always go the shovel & pick route or try to hire someone, but am interested in anybody's personal experience and/or knowledge. thanks
I did 20' at three different downspouts, 60' total in an afternoon with a shovel.
Use a flat landscaping shovel to cut away the grass in a straight line and set to the side. Throw the dirt neatly to the other side. Lay in your pipe. Set the sod on top. Rake the dirt over top piled high so when it rains and everything settles it will fill in the gaps. Two months later the only way you can tell I did anything is by the three green discs in the yard.
A trencher is going to shred the grass and leave you nothing to cover up the trench after you lay the pipe. You will need a good size trencher to make a ditch wide enough for 4" pipe. Even though I hate to dig this is one job probably best done by hand.
Just a suggestion - I had a couple of guys do the same thing in my yard - they tied the downspouts into the drain, and had a few additional surface drains to carry the rainwater away. In my city, there are some fairly stringent code considerations as to HOW the end of the discharge pipe has to exit onto the street, HOW to tunnel under the sidewalk, etc.. - they don't like ya just dumping drain water out onto the sidewalk, or undermining the sidewalk and then just breaking up the curb and doing a lousy patch job.
Obviously getting the right slope of the pipe over the entire length is important or it won't drain, but only one of the guys that came out to estimate the job actually did anything more than just eyeball it - in my yard there wasn't a lot of drop from the front to the back after sinking the beginning of the pipe in the back yard - the slope was critical - my guy got it right, but I can see how it'd be a nightmare if ya didn't know what you're doing. Sometimes, the slope of the ground plays visual tricks on ya.
If by hand, be sure to use a 'sharpshooter' shovel- long skinny blade, about 4 inches wide at the tip. If not rocky soil or wet gumbo, goes pretty fast.
My street is on a decent slope. My property is on the 'higher' side than my neighbors. I mainly want to tie my downspout that takes the water off the back part of house house into this pipe to keep it from flowing onto my neighbor's property.
My backyard is level but his is kind of U shaped so during heavy rains the water runs across my yard into his then gravity pulls some of it towards his house. So he wants to put in some type of surface drain all the way in the back to help out his problem.
The back 30 feet or so has a pronounced downward slope so any water coming from that surface drain will have a good head of steam by the time it his the point where the ground levels off (which is about where my downspout comes in)
keep a downward slope. But because if the layout of the street, once I angle the pipe to the right (i.e down the street) it will eventually resurface. I plan on having it resurface on the front lawn. My neighbor is managment in the electric company so he knows about some of the regulations, but I understand the importance of knowing the regulations beforehand.
BTW I get plenty of exercise already & the kids ain't old enough to help out w/o getting in the way... so I was hoping to avoid an 'extra workout' ...lol...
No, no, no. One should never do yardwork or any work as excercise. Home is for eating and watching tv. One should join a gym for exercise. That way other people make money from it.
The "use a shovel" guys are right. That is a job that will best be done that way. Any power trencher is just going to want to go too deep and be difficult to handle at shallow depths. Seriously, if the soil is not rocky, with two working it isn't more than an hour or two of easy work.
Do use tarps to pile your dirt on and pile the sods separately. Sods mixed into excavated dirt will make a saint cuss when it comes time to backfill.
The "use a shovel" guys make good points, but to answer your original question:
I'm not familiar with which type of trencher HD rents, but I've used a walk behind unit several times, and I suspect that's the type of unit they rent. The other common type is a rider or an attachment for a backhoe.
The walkbehind unit is easy to use, cuts about a 6 inch wide trench, and will go down to about 18-24 inches. The depth is easily adjustable. As someone mentioned, it does shred the turf and mixes it in with the dirt, which is piled mostly to one side of the trench.
The only trouble I ever had with it was hittling big rocks and buried pieces of concrete (don't ask, what some folks use for backfill is unbelievable!). Of course, those would be problems for hand digging too. If you hit a buried boulder, you just retrace and go around. You know if you hit something too big for it to handle because it bucks like a bronco. Smaller stones and rocks are no problem. If you have reasonable soil and/or clay, it's a breeze, especially if you do it a day or two after a good rain.
Backfilling after you've placed the pipe and got the slope right is just a matter of pushing the soil back in the trench. It will be mounded up of course, and you can either wait for rain and nature to takes its course, or use a plate compactor or jumping jack to tamp it down. Or you can drive a tractor or car over it. Then replant the grass.
So...if you have a nice pristine lawn and don't want to tear it up, and don't mind the physical labor, grab your favorite shovel and have at it. If your lawn's like mine and you just want the job done quick so you can do something more important/fun, and you enjoy big noisy machines...trench away.
Regardless of your choice, call the toll free "Before you dig" number to get any buried utility lines marked. There is no charge. Utilities get really bent out of shape when you cut one of their lines or pipes. They are supposed to be deeper, but %$&#* happens.
I talked to a guy who contracts for Miss Utility, as they call it in maryland. And his job is to mark utility lines. (Here, probably everywhere, they use different colors for differnt thigns.)
And he said that if you cut a line or pipe, they charge thousands to put it back together. He said even if it only takes a ;little time to splice in a short piece of wire at each end of it, they charge over a thousand.
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