Crazy? Hand Dig a 530' water line trench to 3 foot deep

As long as you have the right tools, it will make it a bit easier. As another poster pointed out, a deep narrow trench is difficult to stand it. Besides a regular shovel, as Switchman said, a narrow trench shovel with a long handle makes it easier to remove the soil from the bottom. You'll need a spud bar for prying out rocks and breaking up soil and a post hole digger. Post hole diggers can be used to clean out trenches too. BTDT

Get the longest handle on the trench shovel you can. I've seen 6' handles. They're more clean out tools than digging tools. Also great for cleaning out trenches dug by powered trenchers.

It depends on the ground. I wouldn't try to hand dig it if there are rocks or roots. Look in to renting a ditchwitch or a trencher, not a backhoe. Check Harbor Freight under keyword "trencher' to see one. A backhoe is overkill. Does a neighbor have one already they would let you use or rent?

You are lucky, up here water lines have to be down about 5 feet so they don't freeze.

I've dug trenches with shovels, I've dug em with picks..

Everything depends on the sail and amount of rocks and roots..

I would rent a ditch witch if I could, if the soil is right for one. Otherwise I'd likely hire the $1 a foot guy.

Good move. It's likely that back-filling the trench by hand is a worthwhile application of muscle-power (if you don't have a capable machine on hand to do the job). God gave you a brain so you could work smart, rather than just pant, grunt, groan, use muscles, and misuse your single one-time-issue frame. Asking advice, thinking things through, and not insisting on making your own mistakes is a worthy use of his gifts.

I'll 23rd the trencher rental. It's a lot easier and a lot faster.

One thing that puzzles me is all of the talk of injuries and destroying your back. From digging? Ya'll are kidding me aren't ya? I kind of expect a bit of work when I work on the place. I reckon if you physically can't do it, you can't do it and you hire in some way. Just seems like there a lot of folks that are in some rough shape.

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I would get a few more estimates and might price renting a machine also.

One missing puzzle piece.

Can you earn greater than $530.00 in the time it would take YOU to dig the trench?

Good question!

Now let's do some math to try an answer that question.

If you can dig 10 feet per hour it will take you 53 hours to finish the trench.

At 20 feet per hour you will have 26.5 hours in just the digging.

Thirty feet per hour, 17 hour 40 minutes.

It seems to me this 'project' would be a multi day affair. Were it me (it was two years ago) I'd hire the trenching and I'd start laying the water line while the trencher was finishing the trench. If you time it right you will be ready to fill in the trench by the time the trencher leaves.

Now, what could you be doing in those 18, 27, or 53 hours rather than digging that trench?

Jim

I did a trench for my phone line, which admittedly doesn't really compare to your project. My trench was 130 feet long and was required to be 18 inches deep. I rented a 24 inch trencher to do the job. It seems to me that the trencher rental was about $125, and the trench job took maybe 1 1/2 hours to actually do. I believe that the rental yard had a larger trencher, but was considerably more, maybe twice that amount.

In the photo you can see the trench to the house, and the trencher is on the trailer behind my Explorer ready to go back to the rental yard.

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To answer the question, yes. For one thing the odds are you'll get the trench about half way done and it will rain washing the trench 3/4 full (DO NOT ASK!!!)

For another your time and effort are most likely going to be better spent else where. This is one of the times if there was any way possible I'd drop the cash to get it done. But I'd check on renting a trencher and doing it myself vs hiring it done.

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My problem was with snow. Shortly after digging the trench we got a weather advisory saying that heavy snow was on the way, but the appointment to do the phone line was a week away. I called the service department to ask if they could put the cable in the trench (not hook it up, just put it in the trench before the trench filled with snow). Of course, being a phone company the lady on the phone really seemed to enjoy refusing.

I went to the phone company facility to explain the situation to an installer. He sent someone over with some cable that afternoon. The next day we got over a foot of snow. The trench didn't get filled-in until spring.

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Strange. All the places I have ever lived the phone company installed the cable right up to the box on the house.

From the looks of your soil in the pic I don't see why you'd have to use a trencher to put in a phone cable. Most places where there's no rock they use what looks like a large chisel plow. Best pic I could find quickly. Notice the 'hook' on the rear. They just drive that into the soil and drive forward. Puts the cable down as fast as you can drive and there's no trench to fill behind it.

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Remember, when seconds count. . .
the police are just MINUTES away!

Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. . .Davy Crockett

Frontier only takes it to the pedestal, you have to trench from there. This is the second time I've had to to it, since TDS had the same policy in Arizona.

I don't know that the plow would have worked. The soil isn't rocky, but it has a lot of clay. It also freezes & thaws often there. The soil is pretty hard down to the frost line, maybe 3 feet. It's nice and soft below that, but the first 3 feet is tough going, particularly the first 10 inches.

I helped my neighbor dig the post holes for his railroad tie posts with a power auger. The auger couldn't penetrate the soil very well. It liked to just turn in place.

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They make a heavy duty ditch witch that is mounted on a bobcat like tractor and is easy to operate with just a couple min of instructions from most equipment rental places. Rental prices run about $100 a day here and having never touched one before it should be easy to get it done in 2 days even in heavy clay or rocky soil, it can be done in one day without much problem if you have someone that knows how to run the machine or if you pick up on things fairly quickly.

Digging by hand is insanity today, there are much more productive ways to spend your time other than digging ditches IMHO.