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| Jack, I liked the way the HDPE plowed in. I got 13000' done in two stages. The first was put in by an older gentleman from MT (If I remember correctly Ernie knows him) He used a couple big Cats and a homebuilt pulltype ripper. He didn't have his own backhoe so I made my own arrangements for that. The second contractor was from eastern SD. He used a huge Komatsu excavator with a big Cat towing it. Instead of a hoe on the excavator it just had the big ripper mounted. Standard procedure with the double Cats was to make a first pass at half depth and then the final rip laying the pipe in at 6ft. There was quite a bit of rock at my other place but not really hard stuff. The big shank could rip most of it out and it came to the surface in big sharp chunks. The rock would be enough to stop most chain type trenchers but not so hard that the ripper couldn't bust it out. I was afraid with a trencher the backhoe time would get out of hand. Probably a few places where the pipe is not quite the 6' it should be but I've never had any problems with it freezing or leaking in 5 yrs. The hot welding of HDPE joints isn't that hard to do once you get the knack of it. Takes a pretty good space dug out with the hoe to wrassle the stiff HDPE stuff. I did the tank hookups later after the first contractor put the pipe in the ground. We used the acetyleyne torch heating tool on those tank hookups. The second contractor had the hoe on hand for the second phase of the project and they did all the hot welding with an electric generator powered tool. Basically the same technique. Get the pipe and coupler to 550 degrees and get it put together. You have one shot at it. We only made a couple mistakes that didnt' turn out and fixed our questionable connections before we filled in the dirt. | |
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Pics of winter grazing in Utah
