Source
r/Irrigation•
mthode

trenching through corrugated drain pipe and repair, or hand dig?

I have a bunch of crossings of 4" drain pipe to deal with (12-13).

I'll be using a trencher and can either burst through the drain pipe or hand dig around it (I know each crossing within a foot or so).

My question to you is what you would do, would you dig through it and repair after or hand dig around it and not repair (external connector and pvc tape)?

The thick purple line is the drainage, https://i.imgur.com/Zvb2hKG.png

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Posted Jul 20, 2023, 2:37 AM UTC

18
seymour-asses•

Pull the arm up short of the drain pipe, cut the poly then start again on the other side and hand dig underneath to make the connection. At least that’s what I would do.

1
OutsideZoomerNorthwest•

Definitely dig around. It will take more time, but you wont have to dig up the two ends to try and splice it together with new pipe. That pipe is already flimsy and enough to deal with as is. Try and expose the corrugated with a turbo pressure washer nozzle and a wet shop vac. It’s easy to punch through corrugated with a shovel, especially in hard soils.

1
Frangeech•

Hand dig all the way.

I’ve trenched through corrugated drain pipe and it’s not the friendliest to deal with afterwards. The trencher tends to shred and rip sections of the pipe out. Which makes for more digging, plus then you need couplings and more corrugated pipe to patch the section.

Also as a side note. There’s a chance you may encounter different sizes of corrugated drain pipe. This happened to me recently with hitting two sections of undocumented runs.

The worst part. One section was 4” corrugated pipe and the other was 6” corrugated.

6” corrugated is expensive and hard to find in short sticks. It's mainly stocked in 100ft rolls at $300+.

1
mthodeOP•

sounds good, I at least know it's all 4" (maybe 3", but should be 4"). Having seen some buried corrugated pipe, I see your point on how much of a pain it can be to repair, with the added material and labor of doing so vs digging.

1
Teesandelbows•

You'll have to hand dig more to fix them after than to hand dig around them in the first place

1
WhiteStripesWS6Technician•

Unless it’s your own property and drains don’t assume you have the right to destroy the pipe just because you can fix it. Just do the right thing and keep it intact.

1
mthodeOP•

Oh, it is my own property, had the drainage put in last year.

1
WesternSuit248•

Buncha rookies, mulch straight through that shit and throw a coupling on after you lay the pipe, you can backfill your trench while you fix the drain pipe

1
WesternSuit248•

the real answer is the most common sense try to raise the boom not to hit it but if you hit it then whatever, hand digging and playing the guessing game trying to find it is dumb as hell. Other major factors are soil type.

If it’s super easy digging then ya maybe dig them up first

1