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July 30, 2008
| While replacing all the plumbing in the house, we decided it would be worthwile to replace the water service line from the meter to the house. It was also old galvanized steel pipe which was probably badly corroded. Since we'd been disturbing the pipe, we were seeing rust in our water. So, we rented a trencher from Home Depot, and dug the new trench. We used flexible polyethylene (PE) pipe which made it real easy. |
The trencher was fun to drive and operate. It didn't take too long to get used to the controls.
The trencher worked pretty well, despite the fact that it had been
poorly maintained and actually fell apart on me 3 times. I had to
work hard at keeping the thing in one piece, but that sure beat digging
a 2 ft deep trench by hand.
The finished trench running from the back of the house up to the water meter in the front of the neighbors yard.
The water company gave us the copper pipe to connect to the water
meter with fittings to connect it to our PE pipe.
In order to avoid having to go into the neighbors yard to shut the water off to our house, we decided to put a shut off valve in the line just before it goes under the foundation at the back of our house.