Running Pipe Under a 24ft Driveway

Installing new pipe under a 24ft driveway in a residential neighborhood using the Roddie Inc. Pipe Ram Directional Drill.

[stevebutler]

I'm a 63 year old plumbing contractor. When I started working summers in the late 1960s we did this same thing by digging a 24 foot trench back, lay a full length of 1 1/2 pipe down on bricks to level and drive it under with a sledge hammer. Take the couplings with plug off and drag it back out. Then slide the new 1 inch plastic pipe thru. It took us 6-8 hours to complete, but labor was cheap back then. Wish we had this machine, well done young man

[zacksrandomprojects]

Years ago I worked for a security alarm company that also installed the wiring for automatic gates in peoples driveway. Often we would have to run wires from one side of the drive to the other. We would dig a pit on both sides and use like roughly 1" pvc pipe with the coupling on the end that you can screw the twist type water spray nozzle on. Put a coupling on the other side that you can hook a garden hose to. Turn the water on and slowly push it under the drive towards the pit on the other side. When the nozzle comes out the other side cut the pvc pipe on both sides of the drive and pull the wires through. It worked like a charm.

[davesica]

Had to have a new water line run from inside the foundation of the house, out under the front porch, under the lawn, under the sidewalk to the water main in the street about 30 years ago. This technology was relatively new at the time and I ran across a guy by chance who was able to do it this way as opposed to excavating the whole distance. Cost me a fraction of what everyone else wanted, and he made more profit.

[DannoTull]

We did that, only we used a garden hose a jet nozzle and some pvc pipe, and it cost less than $50.

[PNWJEEPER]

Working for a service plumber when I was a kid, we used a similar method (hydraulic boring) to run re-pipe water services (the pipe from the meter to the house) without digging a big trench through the yard, and especially when the new service had to enter through the wall of a basement or travel under concrete.
We used a "Hole Hawg" drill motor with a chuck attachment that had a hose bib on a bearing shaft so the bib could stay stationary, but feed water through the spinning shaft. You would solder a union and a length of thick wall "K" pipe onto the shaft, then use your bunny-whacker to beat the end of the pipe into an "X" shape so that it would cut the soil and jet the water out as it spun. Every so often, you pause to cut the pipe off the attachment, solder on another union, attach more pipe, rinse and repeat until you get across the yard. We were usually able to hit within 12" of the meter with a 1" pipe over a max length 75' bore in around 2-4 hours.
Cheap, accurate, old school.

[jeffcourtney]

Interesting. Looks like its a bit of a gamble as to steering it. A decent sized rock could cause it to veer off course causing it to be in the side of the trench instead of the middle. Which isn't necessarily bad its just something to take into consideration as its done. And its a hell of a lot cheaper and less work than a horizontal boring rig.

[nelsong]

Use to do this with all types of boring machines from 2 inch in diameter to 6 feet in diameter, water and sewer and pipeline even directional under rivers. Your little pusher is adequate for the job but you almost missed the receiving pit. Couple of tips. Use two baseboards that are positioned on grade and lined up properly by sighting with a straight edge to your target. Spud your lead pipe slowly ensuring it is on line and grade. From there it's clear sailing.

[funnyfarm]

It looks as though the hydraulic pressure damaged the end of some pipes. I would think you would want to put the coupler on end of new piece of pipe b4 pushing,

[MarkoVukovic]

Very cool, thanks for sharing! Would it not be better to put a coupler on the end of the pipe and push on that? That might minimize the chance of the back plate squashing the threaded end of the pipe.

[timdouglass]

I seen a young man get electrocuted in a similar operation 40 years ago in Gresham OR. The hole was muddy and when they excavated they hit a under ground electric line. They didn't see it because of the mud. When he was in the hole he got it and it killed him.

[robervine]

Very well done Sir! Good to see a unique engineered solution that works, magic!

[Imwright]

I shot across mine with a garden hose and pvc. It was just as far and it went pretty easy.

[highrx]

In the 80’s, I worked for a water company that used a very similar set up but it used solid threaded rod. The once we punched through the other side, we used wire web wrap on end the rod and then connected on the soft copper water line and reversed system to pull back the line through punched dirt. The setup was easy. What wasn’t easy was not knowing if there was large boulders or rocks in the way. We once pushed a Boulder squarely out the other side. We had too shut down the county road due lack strength of soil under road way. We had to order a large excavator just to lift the Boulder out ditch because the 580 wasn’t a match too move it.

[ZeroStatic]

Nice little machine, gets the job done without too much mess. 👍

[fernandogarza]

I can only say that this didn’t went as expected.
The pipe moved up and to the side, it didn’t came out where it was suppose to come out.

[johnpeters]

i don't think you would have the same success here in PA..that soil is soft, soft, soft!! frost line is 3' here

[kthwkr]

That looks like soft sandy soil. In North Georgia we have hard packed red clay. Similar operation but the front tapers down to point. And it took repeated punches from the air piston moving the pipe about 1/4 to 1/8th inch with every hit. Took about 5 minutes for each 3 ft section. About 30 minutes to get to the next hole where it came out. Then they started again from that hole to go further. Finally the hole was non stop for 400 ft length and they pulled the fat coax cable through. And filled all the midway holes. I had figured they would pull a long plastic tube then pull the coax through that. But the coax was made to be by itself. It worked fine. There was lots of techs standing around as the thing pounded for about 5 minutes. But I was pleased that the guys had no issues and seemed to be well practiced in the technology.

[johnjaco]

i used to do this for a living except we used 5' solid steel pipe. Same prep work as you have got Dug two level holes1 on the pushing side and 1 on the receiving end. On the pushing side we used to John Deere 450 crawler to push the rod five feet on each push, than Attach another 5' section And so on.

[gmcjetpilot]

I went under my 4ft wide side walk with PVC and pressure washer. It was a muddy mess but worked. The bottom side if side walk was not flat and thicker in spots... which required rerouting. PIA but got my 1.5" pic through curb.

[martinschulz]

I had no idea that anything like this existed. Works pretty slick.