Quite common in some areas. Usually in the morning. You can get guys for digging, concrete work, framing and the like.
When I lived in Philadelphia, there were places you could get farm workers, truck drivers, stevedores, lumpers, and most any other day labor.
I've seen them at HD in Kansas City, San Antonio, and now Mississippi, but you have to go early. They're usually gone by 7:00 or 7:30, either picked for day labor or otherwise dispersed. I don't know what time they show up, but my store opens at 6AM and they were in position and ready to go before that.
I'd be tempted to put the wire in something like this. Critters like to dig in already loosened dirt. We have plenty of electric fence wire out on our farm. I'd put a wire nut on it, then push it through the conduit to make a homemade wire puller.
Michigan. Big union state. Even for non-union labor, I can't imagine the trades and contractors would tolerate it.
They would probably chew that right up. There is some flex conduit that is metal that looks similar. I have used a string to pull a larger pull string . shove the carrier up the conduit and hit it with some compressed sir.
No wonder I o not see them. Never been tere that early.
Guess that I could try on Craig'sist if I really wanted them.
It was a joke. I know you're not young. No one reading Usenet is young.
Absolutely.
Can you rent a Ditch Witch?
Probably, but i am looking for something less expensive and can have it for later use if i want to.
Chainsaw trencher?
When I had dial-up internet, guys replaceing a fence next door cut my line. It was while I was on the computer and that was good because I could tell them that they did it. But when I saw them using wirenuts to fix it I did it myself with solder and silicon tape. They sord of laughed at me, i think, while I was fixing it but I didn't want their shoddy work.
Ditch Witch was the phrase I was trying to think of. If you can go deep enough with that, that's the way to go.
In Baltimore, the suburban HD near me doesn't have such people, but the one within the city limits but stlll a residential almost suburban style area has them. I made a point to talk to them once, but most are hired by early morning. People on this ng years ago, from California, said they did a great job, worked hard all day with almost no breaks.
There's a fella over on rec.food.cooking who's about 28 years old. He acts like he's 70, though. Doesn't like anything modern.
I doubt that, almost everywhere they at least follow NEC. In which case
6" depth would require metal conduit. You can do 12" if it's GFCI protected, otherwise it's 18". You're looking at using eqpt, unless there are special circumstances, it's typically little difference going 12 or 6.
Amazing.
This one had an adjustable arm. I asked for a depth of 24 inches and he gave it to me without complaining, so I don't know what the max capability was.
The Ditch Witch that my irrigation guy used to bury my irrigation lines and my electrical conduit was the vibrating kind. Immediately after he did the work you could see where he went if you knew where to look, but by the next day there was no sign of any work having been done.
One interesting thing is that the pipe/conduit connects to the tool with a Chinese finger trap sort of thing. The harder it pulls, the tighter it gets, yet when you're done with a section you can very easily disconnect it with minimal hand pressure.
I know what you mean about shoddy work, but I wouldn't have wanted any repairs on that line at all. Those are potential points of failure.
When I lived in San Antonio, an at&t crew cut the coax cable that brought me my Internet and TV. I have all of the tools and compression connectors that the cable guys have, so I did a temp fix and was back up and running within about 15 minutes, but I knew that the line had to be replaced in its entirety. With the pedestal being across the street, it was going to be a job.
When the guy showed up to replace the cable, he started unspooling RG-6QS and I was like, waitaminute, you have a spool of RG-11QS on your truck. Can you use that? He smiled and said he was impressed that I knew the difference, so I explained that I had 20+ years in telecom network planning and design, so of course I knew the difference. RG-6 is commonly used from the pedestal to the premises and then throughout the premises, while RG-11 is commonly used to link each pedestal to the next. It's too expensive to be used everywhere, but he happily used it in that case.
Jim has said "without disrupting the lawn", but what you just said is more closely tied to what I was thinkinf of, "use vibration'. The only time I've seen this was when the cable guy ran tv cable to my house. He only went 2, 3, 4 inches deep with a cable that only a half-inch in diameter. if it can be done deeper with thicker, that's good. That devuce might well have a different name from Ditch Witch.
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