Biting the bullet and planning on sinking a bore (which should have been done long ago). Problem is I either need to run 40mm PVC 80m around a house or 6m under a driveway.
6m under driveway is looking like the go
Basically, I need 40mm supply line PVC off the bore, and 240v supply running in conduit to power the bore.
I plan on putting a 75mm pvc storm water pipe under the drive, then putting the 40mm pressure pipe and 20mm conduit through it.
How would you guys get the pipe under? I see the pneumatic driver type ones like this https://www.kennards.com.au/for-hire/underground-borer-horizontal-pneumatic-75mm but draw blanks on availability for hire.
My other (and preferable) option is use my briggs pressure washer (3200psi 9lpm max) and a telescopic lance like this https://starproducts.com.au/products/telescopic-wand-lance-24-foot/ with a turbo nozzle and drive the 75mm under the driveway.
What do you guys think?
Next week, going to speak with the sparky who has done a fair bit of electric work for us (as he will be doing the wire up and start relay) to work out what gauge wire I need to run about 35m from meterbox to bore.
Any preliminary thoughts on wire gauge for those of you who are electrically minded (1.1kw pump)
Last problem, I have figured out that I need to budget $3500 in parts alone to completely redo the retic zones themselves so I will be running existing 13mm poly for now. Will join zones together, but what do you guys reckon - will I constantly be chasing bursts?
If you're going to be spending that kind of money and going to all that effort and upheaval to have bore water, is it worth it? A good half hour of watering every part of the lawns once every five days shouldn't break the bank and you won't notice the cost as much.
Ahh, if only victa had kept producing the thumblatch catcher series, they would be in better shape today!
I have a water system hooked up to a lift pump, there’s lots of hills on my place and the [Censored] is way down the bottom.
You’re likely to blow 13mm barb connections if your system works like mine does.. I use water supply pipe with the good quality Aussie made connectors which are screw down flange type. Leaks in these types of systems are a complete pain. Often they don’t show up for some time and then tree roots have impinged on access or a nest of bull ants has established itself nearby - lovely. I actually spent two days this week fixing an older part of this system with exactly these problems.
For final distribution I would suggest at a minimum using 19mm, 25mm is better. You experience much less loss of flow and pressure.
I made my own high volume hydro mining setup for a bit of impromptu pipe laying. I used a cheap fire pump with a bleed on it. The bleed stops the pump from overheating and cavitation.
In operation the key thing is to have room for the waste water as it washes away the dirt. You’re likely to have stones and rocks that will stop you getting the exact line you want. I started from one side with decent drainage and dug down using a bigger pvc pipe as a sleeve as I displaced the spoil. This way you can control the line better and not get a massive gaping cavern at the entrance.
I did it this way because I wanted to run the pipe at a time when the usual contractors in my area were very busy. It may have been cheaper and less hassle to get a professional to do it.
Cheers
Ironbark
Last edited by Ironbark; 29/12/2209:54 PM. Reason: Typo
MF, definitely worth it in my eyes. I should preface - I am trying to look after a 600sqm garden incl 150ish of lawn. Summer water bill in excess of $600-700 with 1 person and everything still struggling for water - could easily put down $1000 worth. Last bill was $340 (just since september). just to compare, a water bill for a single person in a house with a bore same period was $170 ish ($120 in service charges is unavoidable).
Our soils over here are simply bloody awful - I am roto-hoeing compost by the trailer load and clay in trying to get it to hold onto water (exact opposite of the clay mud you have over there). It is terribly hydrophobic - soil wetting agent helps but clay is the long term answer.
I'll admit, what really p**ses me off is how people with bores can manage to have a half decent lawn without doing a bloody thing - ie my mate simply has the bore come on for 25 minutes twice a week, never fertilises, never dethatches, yet the f****ing buffalo just grows on nothing. I'm out working my ass off and getting no where
Hi Ironbark
Many thanks Long term plan is 40mm pvc backbone to solenoids and 25mm pvc after solenoid but until bank balance recovers will have to stick to 13mm existing. will give a few contractors a call and see what money they want to do it properly, I think i will end up using the pressure washer
Hi Tyler, sounds like a monster project not sure what your regs are over there but here your electrical cable has to be 600mm deep, that may be an issue for you not sure.
I should have said that the bore will be professionally drilled and the wiring all done legally, just need to lay the supply pipes myself. Needs a 42m deep bore so would have no hope of doing it myself
conduit needs to be 500mm, pvc is fine at 300mm depth most trenchers go to.
My main obstacles are a drainage pipe (which I vaguely know where is), a water main (which I know where is) and a telstra cable (which I have NFI where it goes or how deep it is). Theres a pit in the verge and the lead into the house, so I guess I will run a string between the 2 and dig down and try to find the wire.
Telstra/NBN cables are a nightmare. I tried the “dial before you dig” thing before installing a line for high pressure water in case of fire and they were about as specific as asking where the moon is and someone pointing up at the sky.
Turns out mine runs down beside my drive on the far side of a garden bed in a giant arc before coming around the back of the garage and up to the main bedroom. Not a straight line anywhere and the regs about minimum depth largely ignored.
With the ,How would you guys get the pipe under the driveway?
It kind of depends on if it's a bitchumen driveway ,concrete drive ,single drive ,double drive and the type of material that needs to be removed and then how much you want to spend.
The pressure washer idea I can see as being messy and not very successful if you have rock to get through.
If you have a single drive, a 2 stroke or hand post hole digger (auger) may be used from both sides to join up in the middle.
If it's a double driveway it may just be a lot cheaper and easier to get a angle grinder and cut out a foot of the drive and dig the trench ,then re cement or re tar or even put a line of bricks as a pattern in the middle of the drive.
Mostly in my area when people have to put a pipe under the foot path or drive they just cut a section out with the grinder then re cement after the pipe goes in as the cost in drilling wouldn't be worth it.
"Next week, going to speak with the sparky who has done a fair bit of electric work for us (as he will be doing the wire up and start relay) to work out what gauge wire I need to run about 35m from meterbox to bore."
"Any preliminary thoughts on wire gauge for those of you who are electrically minded (1.1kw pump)"
The length of the wire does not have a direct impact on amperage, but it does have an effect on voltage through resistance. The longer the wire, the higher is cable resistance and voltage drop.
You need to know the Amperage draw on the 1.1kw pump ,I think it's around 8.5 amps
There are voltage drop calculators online to check.
I have drilled under several driveways over the years, usind a 100 diameter hand post hole digger. It is slow and tedious but it can be done but you get drop in the hole the further you go as rotating to the right all the time makes the auger drop towards the right. This means if you start at 500 below the ground on one side by the time you get across an 8 foot driveway you will probably be about 700 deep on the other side and then you have to dig a hole to find where you are. Can be done but as I said it is tedious
i talked to a guy last year who layed telecom cables back in the 80s and he said exactly that - they didn't give a crap where it went or how deep, they just layed them as fast as possible.
Its a single concrete drive, 3.1m wide in the place i want the pipe.
My hydro mining type operation was done in early spring here. There wasn’t as much mess as you might think but it’s not the sort of operation I’d do if I had neighbours close by or if there wasn’t a big runoff area on my own property. We had all the water at no cost because my [Censored] was overflowing owing to the record rains we had at that time. That rain also meant there was no mess to be seen within a day or so because it all just got washed away into the grass and trees below.
This was through earth that had been compacted with a few rocks in it. I really didn’t want to have to dig it all out as the path the pipe needed to follow was quite deep and a trench would have been risky to the structure of a very large buttress earth wall.
I’m going to need to run 15m of 16mm 4c+e under a concrete apron this year. The total run of the cable is just over 35m and it’s about 25mm in diameter, so it’s unwieldy and doesn’t like sharp turns. With this I think I’ll have to cut the slab for the trench as there is no way to drain water from the origin or destination; with one end against the house and the other at my brick workshop. My sparky mate suggested an overhead line but I’m not keen on the potential obstruction.
Yes it shouldn't be to difficult to make a hole under a 3.1 meter drive even if you were like Norm and used a hand post hole digger Tyler.
I've dug many a post hole just using a crow bar and a hammer and chisel to get through clay and rock. It's just time consuming and is why some people just cut the cement rather than spend more time boring a hole.
Making this hole is hot weather, I would rather try the hydro mining ,I would have thought you wouldn't necessarily need to buy a longer lance but could just extend the one you have.
Then again if I was happy to use a crow bar to dig the hole and didn't want to spend money on something I would use once only then I'd use the crow bar or if you can borrow a auger .
There are contractor-focussed hire facilities around larger towns that have all sorts of weird and wonderful tools that can be hired by the day or half day. I’ve hired a few things that have saved me bringing in a professional, e.g, a water cooled, petrol powered concrete cutter and a 5 tonne roller - no way to do the job effectively without the tools and they save days.
Mine has huge magnetic drills and massive pipe laying trenchers along with other stuff I’ve no idea as to what it does.
Thought I should update this. The bore was drilled on 10 feb. I worked from Monday the 6th 6:30am to 7-8+pm to the Thursday getting all the necessary stuff in.
Ended up running 40mm, used 40m worth total plus 12m of 25mm. Got it (legally) in the car as well haha
Going under the drive was the easy bit. Basically I got a piece of 20mm conduit, duct taped the hose in at one end and marked the conduit so I knew when it was about 50mm proud of the end of the 40mm pvc. Then I plunked/ hydromined it under very carefully so as not to wash too much sand out and under mine it. Took me all of an hour to do it.
With help of my victa SPFC TAC edger (with disc blade) and my masport home gardener rotary hoe (set up with 280mm wide tines) I dug the trenching out. 30-40cm deep through the lawn and 20-25cm in other areas.
The rotary hoe really saved my back, doing the hard yakka breaking up the soil and ripping roots.
Then lifted 10m of paving and ran the 40mm and conduit to the front solenoid location. Pulled a swift one by running the 7 core through the old poly pipe going under the back path (saving lifting 8m of slabs).
Ended up using 6x Hunter PGV 25mm valves (3x front and back) and made my own manifolds which was easier (and cheaper) than the commercially available ones. Ran 7 core through the roof cavity so only 2 pieces of (hidden) conduit up the wall.
Also plumbed in 4x taps into the main line to hand water with, and have provision for 2x venturi fertiliser injectors.
Ended up teaming 2-3 of the original poly stations together per valve. Getting minimum 250kPa pressure on the biggest one, mostly 300-350kpa. The bore seems pretty happy to run to around 80-90l per minute before it starts drawing down too much. Ended up expanding some stations, adding several extra hunter pgj gear drives to the front lawn and will add another in the back soon.
Bore ended up being 35 metre deep as opposed to the 42m other companies quoted. The guy who drilled it said to me when he quoted in January that the groundwater atlas is off in the area and we should hit water somewhere around 24-26 metres. Ended up hitting at 25m so it’s a good 10m into the ground water.
Have tested it at 6.3-6.4 pH and TDS of around 300mg/l so low salt level and no iron staining expected touch wood.
Couple of niggling issues I need to finish off like the gear drive aim and add a couple more heads to sort out a few dryer garden spots. And I have a dicky valve on zone 5 – it will water hammer when the bore is turned on before shutting itself after 10 seconds.
Garden has gone absolutely nuts, especially the lawns. All I have done is put Baileys 311 + grosorb on the lawn. The other day I went and did the rest of the garden, due to size that is around (at recommended rate) just under 20kg of grosorb soil wetter and around 40kg of pelletised manure (in this case a mix of Neutrog Rooster booster, Gyganic and Multigrow organic2000 Blood and bone).
This week (when I get a chance) I am going to have a play with the venturi and apply some liquid ecohumate, seasol and molasses
The only real casualty from the whole thing is my right arm – I don’t know if I have torn a tendon in my shoulder, arm or popped something in my back or what but the first week after install was terrible – couldn’t get 2hrs of uninterrupted sleep without shooting pain down my arm. Still not good, but getting progressively better. Thankfully nothing else immediately went out.
All up, it was a fairly sizable investment, but glad I have done it
Hi Tyler, sounds like a huge project you took on there, should make it a lot easier to water the garden. Hope the shoulder gets better quickly, they can take a long time to heal and the older you get the longer things take to heal
