I'd like to replace the water main to the house. The water company have asked for a trench 750mm deep lined with pea-gravel or similar do be dug from teh house to the road.
The biggest problem is that the trench will have to go through/under the garden wall which is a 120 year old dry stone construction which may well not cope well.
However , when a gas supply was installed, Transo used some sort of tunneling device to connect two small holes. I wasn't at home at the time so didn't see the operation, but a now wondering if a similar machine could be used to bore a tunnel for the water pipe.
Can these machines be hired or does one have to get a specialist in?
Well I do know that the contracting firm "Murphy" can do this sort of thing, as they are currently laying a massive gas main quite close to where I live, using tunnelling machines. I'm not sure you would want to go to the extremes of this, but it should be possible I would have thought. Guess someone else might have knowledge of this.
Dig a trench up to the wall, a bit bigger hole next to the wall, that you can get in, and then use a pickaxe, or trowel to cut a hole for the pipe. Vacuum cleaner may be hany on sandy soils.
I have just had this done. I was going to dig the trench myself, but my wife said it was too much work for an old man!! Cheek, but she must be obeyed. so I got a firm of plumbers, they dug a hole near my wall, which abuts the pavement, on my side. Another hole was dug abutting the house wall.
They then "moled" under the wall to the water boards stop c*ck, and again from the wall to house hole. Took them about 5 hours all told, cost me £450, that included coming back, connecting the new pipe house end after water board did their bit and reinstating the lawn and garden.
Not only did it save me a lot of work but also did not mess the garden. Well worth it I thought. the mole is driven by an air compressor, and the operation to get it to go the right way looked quite skilled.
To the first question, yes definitely; and to the second, yes IMHO!
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recently watched with fascination as United Utilities used one of these to install a water pipe under the pavement near me. They had this mole, a metal cylinder about 3" by 2', connected to a compressor via a hose; shoved it down a hole and let it rip. Off it went down the road, beneath the pavement, until it emerged in another pit about
10' away. Having done it's job, the bloke yanked it back by the hose and tossed it on the pavement, where it sat thrashing about like a demented eel till the air ran out.
God knows how they control its direction and gradient; and presumably they'd already checked for any stray service pipes in harm's way. I certainly wouldn't fancy trying to use it in anger myself.
During the same job (above) I had to get a water pipe from the inside of my property to the outside, 750mm below the surface, which is pretty much what you're doing... is your wall at the boundary, or will you be able to dig down at both sides of the wall and meet in the middle underneath? If so, that shouldn't be much bother. If you're at the boundary, the water co will insist you break right through the foundations of the wall from your side only (you're absolutely not allowed to dig up the pavement yourself!), then will probably send a jobsworth inspector round to ensure you've done precisely that before they will dig up the pavement themselves (although the job would be infinitely easier working from both sides). I expect this is where you're coming from, right?!!
I'm guessing the drystone wall won't have foundations as deep as
750mm; and if it does, it will only be rubble-type stuff (my 100-year old house wall was, anyway!). I got through eventually using a combination of a lump hammer, builder's chisel, pointing trowel(!) and a length of 1.25" plastic waste pipe, used as a coring tool. Sod of a job - good luck!
Might not some form of water storage tank, say 50 or 100 gallons, with a pump to give a good pressure prove cheaper, assuming you have somewhere to put it.
I use the excellent DabJet 82M with a 600 gallon tank for this purpose, though for us this size is essential as our inlet is a very low pressure and variable supply spring.
Well the water company man came round and said that they wouldn't bore a tunnel for me at all, I'd have to dig a trench and he wants to inspect it before they connect it up.
Also he want to inspect the pipework internally as it passes under a wooden floor. Am I right in thinking that it is only their responsibility up to a stopcock so if I fit one in the porch, then what happens after that is none of his business?
In my situation where the water company stopcock is in the road and the supply then passes under all the gardens in the terrace to individual internal stopcocks, is it true that what happens after the stopcock in the road is also not their concern?
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