Trenching question

[RobA]

How difficult is it to run a ditch witch type trencher? I want to dig a 250 foot trench 2 feet deep to run conduit to a light pole. Assuming no major obstacles is it a 1 day job?

 

[tallyho8]

Yes, I rented one from Home Depot and did a 300' job in a few hours.

 

[Sprinklerman]

It depends on the soil , trenching should take about 2 hours , Its the backfilling that takes time. Do you have to go 2 feet deep? Because you could find a irrigation contractor locally ,with a vibratory plow , he could pull the conduit 12 to 18 inches deep in less than an hour with no backfilling or settlement .

 

[JRobyn]

I used a small rental one one time for a copper yard service line. About 100ft of very sloped terrain. The only problems we had were keeping it "on track" and bouncing hard on bigger rocks and roots. But in general, very easy.

- Jay

 

[Gary Fowler]

I used a small rental one one time for a copper yard service line. About 100ft of very sloped terrain. The only problems we had were keeping it "on track" and bouncing hard on bigger rocks and roots. But in general, very easy.

- Jay

You nailed it. If the ground is sloped, it can be a real bear to keep the walk behind type on track. If you have hilly or sloping ground, it might be worth the extra cost to rent a 4 wheel ride on type rather than fighting the walk behind. Also rocks can be dealt with easier with the ride on type along with using it to backfill the trench. With a ride on trencher, and normally medium to hard soil, 300 feet should take not more than 2 hours to trench, then lay your cable and use the front blade to backfill it. The soil will settle after a rain so don't go moving any excess dirt off too far from the trench. There really is no good easy way to compact the backfill from a trencher due to the narrow width so just let mother nature do it for you and keep adding soil to fill in the depression after a good rain.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

Obviously depending on soil conditions, but I pull 19"deep trenches quite easily. I always just pull at an idle and normally when the ground is damp. A 300' trench is done in less than 10 minutes.

We have an back hoe, trencher ,ditcher and a rear blade that we can trench with. Ditcher is my preferred method for off shoot water lines. Quick and easy. :thumbsup:

But if you need to go 24" deep, a ditch witch will work very well for you and should really only take around an hour. As others have mentioned, if you have "stuff" in the ground, probably want to get a ride on unit.

Good luck.

 

[RobA]

Thanks. The ground is fairly level so the ditch witch should do the trick. Murphy's Law says I'll run into some 'stuff' along the way.

 

[EddieWalker]

It's super easy. The hardest part is just keeping your mind on what you are doing and not day dreaming because it's so boring. Fortunately it's a fairly short distance, so that wont be too bad. Remember that there will be a fair amount of dirt that does not come out of the trench and it needs to be shoveled out by hand. You can buy a special shovel to do this. They are almost the exact same width as most trenches, somewhere around four inches. You will find that it binds on the sides while digging. I cut about half an inch off each side of mine with my 4 1/2 inch grinder so I can get in and out faster and easier.

 

[Ranger Rick]

I rented a Dingo with a trencher attachment on the front of it from our local hardware/rental store. It is stand up ride on which was nice. I had to dig a 140' long 30" deep ditch for the main power line to my barn project. The tench it made was 8" wide. I had great soil to dig but the dingo trencher could not move all of that dirt off to the side far enough to be out of the way. It piled up between the trencher and dingo and made it so you could not move forward if you needed to get an area a little deeper on a second pass. I spent 9 hours digging the trench and shoveling dirt out of the way. The Dingo may work well on a smaller ditch but in my opinion is not the machine for what I was doing.