Drain tile trench

[Anonymous Poster]

Anyone have suggestions on how to use my B1700 to make trenchs to lay drain tile (4" dia) away from the house and barn downspouts? I have several hundred feet to do through a hard clay soil.

 

[W5FL]

I have done trenches like that 3 ways. The fourth is to put a pto driven trencher on the rear, but that is too expensive for most of us.

First way, I welded a small cultivator plow on to one of the scarfiers on the box blade and opened the trench with that. Hard to keep the trench clean enough.

Second way, I cranked the tilt on the 3 point as far as it would go with a box blade and made multiple passes cutting an angled ditch.

Third way, I used a rear blade, turned it forward about 45 degrees, and tilted it down 30 degrees and dug about 800 ft of trench about 1 ft deep and very clean. Hard to set the amount of bite with the blade, and too much will bog down the tractor.

Bird, I believe has done this with a middle buster plow, but I don't have one to try.

 

[Bird]

A middle buster works pretty well for that kind of job. Of course, it depends on how deep you want to go. And in hard clay you might want to take smaller bites, i.e., two or three passes, each one a little deeper than the previous one.

Bird

 

[Cowboy]

CVLV
I would suggest giving the B1700 the day off.
Very little works as well as, a trencher (ditching machine). You might check into renting a walk behind or a small ride-on unit. They do only mimimal damage to the surface and, you can normally dig the ditch to a more exact depth (if needed).
Good Luck.

Cowboy
BigBoyz Toyz

 

[Bird]

Very sensible suggestion, Cowboy, but he might be like me. I'm not about to drive a 50 mile round trip to town (twice) to rent something, then return it, if I can figure any possible way to do it with what I own./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif Of course, when my brother was laying water and electric lines, he did rent a Ditch Witch to go deep enough, and we just filled it in later with the Kubota./w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

Bird

 

[Pks]

I was able to do about 1200 feet of 4 inch wide trench in 2.5 hours with a walk behind trencher. The drain tile and gravel fit perfectly. It cost me $63 to rent it for 4 hours. The trailer used a 2" ball and I pulled it with a Ford Aerostar 4wd van. It was the easiest big project...

If you go that route, be fore warned, let no one stand within 5 feet of that trenching chain. It *will* pull up and *throw* bowling ball sized rocks. I achieved about 8 feet on one rock in particular. That's when the gallery crowd moved back another 5 paces. The machine is like a chain saw made for dirt. Really does the job well.