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Directional Drilling for Sewer Line

6K views 62 replies 22 participants last post by  Mrlunchbox 
#1 · (Edited)
Still snowing here, so I am puttering around online.

I share the first several hundred feet of my driveway with a neighbor. His house is about 1000' from the road, a piker compared to my 1500'. He has battled his septic system for years, maintaining a swampy section of lawn above the drainfield most of the time. He finally caved in (might be looking at selling the place in the future) and decided to connect to the sewer system that runs along the road at the end of our driveway. Back when the sewer lines were installed each homeowner was required to connect unless your setback was longer than a certain distance. I and neighbor were well beyond the required distance. At that time we were offered the option to "buy" and have installed the T in case of future need/desire to connect. It was made clear that installing the Tee during the installation would be substantially cheaper than doing it later should it be needed. I did, neighbor did not. Fast forward 10+ years, neighbor needs it and the price is more than 5 times greater what I paid. And, though he tried to convince the sewer authority to just tap into my Tee they were on the ball and protected my future.

Now to the purpose of this post. To get the line from house drain exit to the street connection, my neighbor selected to have a grinder and pump installed at the house, then run the sewer line through 1¾" PVC to the street. He also decided on contracting a directional driller rather than opening a trench. It saved him from trenching his turnaround and parking area, and also saved trenching the road (our luck, the line is other side of the road). Of course, my neighbor would never consider digging and repair like I did a couple years ago, (See Jere work: https://www.mytractorforum.com/88-my...ld-repair.html) he is more of the "money is no object" kind of guy.

Now, in another thread I was accused of being a snoopy neighbor, I prefer to think of myself as an "inquisitive Neighborhood watch" guy, and as I mentioned, this is a shared driveway for which I hold deed. So, I feel authorized to observe and chat with the workfolks (they bid this job and are not being paid by the hour by my neighbor).

A couple pictures:

This is the drill, the business end tips down into the ground and has a radio control that manages the steering:



You can see the battery of drill extensions there kind of boxed to the right, the operator backs his force exertion ram back, rolls another extension out of the box and drills another length. There is a large tank truck of water connected to the drill which provides some lubrication to the drill face. They tell me this drill is good for about 500' runs, but not in rocky soil (and it is very rocky here) so they are making 3-400' drill runs. Then they steer to the surface, hook the pvc to the ugly looking drill face, and pull it back to the drill machine.



Ultimately they will have three places where they have drawn two overlapping pipes to the surface. Here a backhoe will be brought in to excavate enough of a hole so the two pipe sections can be joined and buried.



I'll not likely ever hear a cost for this project, and I certainly hope I never learn what my even longer connection might cost. For now, I'll keep my shovel polished in my garage.
 
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#2 ·
Always nice to see Scout supervising, he should be paid well.
 
#3 ·
13/4 inch PVC?...I see your pictures showing it happen so it must be approved there.....around here 4" no hub, cast, cement or clay is typically used...I don't think that diameter or material would be approved here...but I don't know of anyone with a sewage grinder here on Long Island either...
 
#5 ·
Small pipe like that is the norm for pumped systems, although I would think 2" would be the minimum for the distance & quantity to be forced thru the main.

Jere, I would not want to think the cost of this either. I only have about 100' to road, but it will be a long time before our town even considers public sewers so no need to worry on our end. Thanks for the pictures and Scout should get a stipend from the utility co. for his inspection services.
 
#4 ·
Jere, it's always a good idea to keep an eye on whats going on in your neighborhood. Several years ago when the State put in the big box culvert for the seasonal "salmon stream" here they buried and plugged the perimeter drain outflow on my parents house even though we told every planner, designer, engineer, and county/state official that looked at the project years before the actual work began. We finally got it fixed at their expense a year after the project was completed at a cost of $4500 for 25 ft of 6" drain pipe and 2 guys with a pick and shovel to install it. It took them about 2.5-3 hours to complete.

On the other side is by observing you can learn something that may come in handy down the road. Local people can also point out things that can often be missed by outsiders. I'll end by saying I enjoy your threads on all of these different topics and it doesn't hurt to have a pic or two of scout in them also. :tango_face_wink:
 
#58 ·
I does pay to keep a close watch on any "new construction" in your neighborhood.

I was lucky I was home the day the contractors installing new sewer mains on my street --they had a huge track hoe and dug a deep trench in the middle of the road about 8 feet deep and installed the plastic sewer pipes (about 8" diameter" in a matter of minutes,they would have 50 feet done..

But when they came to the area at the end of my driveway,they dug up a old galvanized culvert pipe,one of those spiral looking ones,that went from my front yard,under the street,to the other side..it also was teed into another culvert buried under the end of my driveway,that had a storm drain right next to the driveway..so rain water would flow into the drain,across under my driveway,and then join the other culvert that crosses the street..

I watched as they ripped the old culvert out--I assumed they were going to install a new one--but nope,they just started filling in the trench and were going to "delete" it!..

I went out and told the operator of the track hoe he was going to make both the street and my yard flood,if that culvert wasn't left intact!..they were angry with me,they had to stop all work,call the highway department supervisor to come look the situation over,and he tells me "we have NO indication there ever WAS a culvert here on our prints...hmm...

After much "discussion" ,he agreed the culvert had to be there,and he had to go get a new section of it--they were able to pull the new section in under the already installed sewer main,and backfilled it with crushed stone..

Since my house was built 41 years ago,and another new home was built on a lot we used to own next door,that new house had the property built up with hundreds of 18 wheeler dump loads of dirt,so it is not at least 5 feet higher than my lot is--it used to be all one level lot..so now my yard is even more prone to flooding..

If I hadn't been there that day to see that--I wouldn't have ever known they "eliminated" the culvert,until the next heavy rainstorm,then the ground level of the house would have flooded!--it has even flooded a few times over the past 41 years with the culvert there--they put it too high up,the front yard where the water collects like a pond is a bowl shaped depression,lowest point in the yard,but the opening to the culvert that directs water across the street is a good 2 feet above ground level--by the time the water gets that high,it comes very close to entering the garage under the house thru the overhead door..

I have a submersible pump I keep handy in case we ever get more monsoon rains for a few days straight so I can pump any water out before it gets high enough to enter any of the other rooms--the slab has only a 1" "step" up from the level of it in the garage..the builder made the slab in the garage level with the asphalt driveway,which over the years has frost heaved up some and water now wants to flow towards the garage instead of away from it..
 
#8 ·
A neighbor and I just this last October had grinder pump lift stations and septic mounds installed. Anytime poop has to run uphill it's going to need to be pumped. We had our grinder pumps and mounds installed at the same time to save a little money by having the same contractor here doing two systems. Both of our systems had to go under the township road and used directional boring-mine about 250' ($3200) and his about 420' (a bit over $4000). According to the boring crew, wet clay is absolutely the best and easiest for boring. We have really wet clay here-especially down about 6'-8' deep.

1-1/4" Schedule 80 PVC was used for the low pressure sewer line. I had a 2" Schedule 80 pulled along with the sewer line for power to the mound pump with plenty of room for future electrical options for a garage on the property across the road. The neighbor had an 1-1/4" Schedule 80 pulled in for the power to his mound pump. There was only one boring done for each of our systems and the pair of PVC lines (sewage and electrical) were pulled back in the same hole. My research on the grinder lift stations found the 1-1/4" is the standard size and will allow for some pretty good head pressure height. I'm only lifting about 12'. No gravity flow here. We are rural lakeshore homes and use property uphill and away from the lake for onsite sewage treatment.

I always wondered (mechanically wise) how the "direction" in directional boring actually works. Because the crew was being paid by me (and neighbor), I could ask a lot of questions and got a nice tutorial on how directional boring works. It is mechanically clever. The foreman on the job indicated that if I could understand how it works, I could have a job immediately. I did catch on but too much shoveling for my old back.

Describing how directional boring works would take a really long post!

Thanks for the interesting read, Jere!
 
#9 ·
Now, in another thread I was accused of being a snoopy neighbor, I prefer to think of myself as an "inquisitive Neighborhood watch" guy, and as I mentioned, this is a shared driveway for which I hold deed. So, I feel authorized to observe and chat with the workfolks (they bid this job and are not being paid by the hour by my neighbor).
For sure you are being a snoopy neighbor. I like that a lot. Some folks that don't live in a rural neighbor hood won't likely get how valuable it is.
We have a young fellow with a wife and 2 kids not to far away from us that fired "warning shots" at someone who had broken into their place because there was not enough community involvement. Luckily he got off. The way it should have gone but easy to see how things can get out of hand.
Now we have new rules coming in along with more policing and government led neighborhood watch information.
Then there is always the info you seem to get. And that is just plain interesting.
Why bother retiring if you can't enjoy it!
 
#11 ·
We have a neighborhood watch program where as every block has a captain that you report suspicious activity to and they report it to the police. We also have monthly homeowners association meetings. Most residents have burglar alarms and cameras. But its always good to have a resident like Jere walking around checking on things.
These signs are posted in our neighborhood.
 

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#10 ·
Jere, In our area we have a lot of electric underground transmission lines and in DC a contractor bored right into a 69,000 volt transmission line that was in a steel pipe with pressurized oil. The oil leaked out, contaminated the soil and leaked out all over the place and into the Potomac river. It knocked the power out in a substation and the neighborhoods the substation was feeding. Oil spilled into the river, they had to get environmental people out to clean up the river. Contain the soil in 55 Gallon drums. It cost the contractor 1.5 million dollars and put him out of business.

I hope your guy called Miss Utility and dug test pits on the obstructions he's crossing. Otherwise he may accidentally hit them. If he's crossing the road he's going to need elevations of the obstructions (other utilities).
 
#12 ·
Here it's called PA 1 Call, and You probably can't see the flagged and painted lines indicating route of various underground utilities, but they are there, and properly away from where these folks are drilling.
 
#13 ·
Jere, That's good they called to have the utilities marked. A lot of times they are inaccurate. If he is working along side of your driveway take some pictures of the machine on your driveway and any vehicle or equipment so you have full recourse if they damage your driveway or any bushes they knock over or trees they hit. That bore machine is on tracks and you know he's tearing up the grass. I'm surprised they don't install a 4 inch inter duct instead of 1 and 3/4. All the house sewer lines where we live are 4 inch but I think none of them have a sewage grinder with a jet pump. I would think you want the largest conduit or pipe because of any blockage in the future you want to be able to clear it. When they pull back that one and three quarter inch tubing or duct it will flatten out underground just from them pulling it in and not be a true one and three quarter inch in diameter. It will be less. If there is any rock underground the tubing they are pulling in could get cut up, just from scraping against the rock.

On another note: The electric service and communication/fiber lines to the new "Building the House" thread they may be directional bored in too.
 
#14 ·
You and I are used to flowing sewage as opposed to pumped...to pump into a 4" line would probably require a larger pump...what we are seeing called a "grinder" is called a macerator on a boat...sounds like it is being pumped uphill, at least for part of its trip out to the street connection....so the uphill section of the line has to get filled all the way...and to fill up a 4" line would take a lot of the slurry being pumped...a lot of weight, so the need for a bigger pump...and a check valve....boy, I would not want to change a broken one of those things :tango_face_devil:
 
#16 ·
The company I retired from had 3 directional boring machines.. The drilling head where all the electronics are located cost about $5000.00 alone. I lost one under some railroad tracks. Hit something hard and couldn't go forward or back. The railroad made us go deep to get under them and they certainly weren't going to give us permission to dig it up. It just about took an act of Congress to get permission to go under. We were installing conduit runs for Homeland Security so they handled all the permits with the railroad.

Petroleum pipelines are almost as hard to get permission to go under. The railroad and pipeline people are on site the whole time we are working around their right of way. We also had to stop drilling when a train passed by.
 
#18 ·
I've seen one of those 4 inch metal drilling heads melted after it hit an two 13,000 volt feeders underground. Its a miracle the operator wasn't electrocuted. I know the machine was grounded. I asked the operator if he dug a test hole on the electric lines prior to drilling perpendicular to them and he said he did to the top but not at the bottom. It was a 5 foot tall electric duct bank encased in concrete. As a result, the bore hit the middle of the duct encasement damaging two feeders. That cost him $200,000.
 
#17 ·
When the head got stuck and we were trying to push and pull we had to put the bucket of the excavator on the drill tube to keep it from wanting to push up out of the ground. I figured I could chance having a big wrecker rig on site for about an hour to try and pull it out. If we were successful I would have been money ahead retrieving the head and drill tube lost. I was not successful unfortunately. Had to get a new head and try again the next day. We were successful that time.

Sorry Jere, not trying to hijack your thread. Just thought it would be an interesting side bar to the drilling machines.
 

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#21 ·
Haha, you've definitely been there.
 
#22 ·
In my area, they have been putting the "high pressure" natural gas lines, under the sidewalks, instead of in the terrace. It' like 3" plastic pipe. The operator said they steer the head with "high pressure" water jets in the head. Pretty cool way of doing it. Then they pull the plastic pipe in as they retract the bore pipes. The neighbor had the lead water service pipe replace last summer, they dug a pit, cut the pipe, fished a 1/4" cable through it, hooked that onto a 3/8" cable, dropped a hydraulic winch in the pit after the larger cable was pulled through, the new plastic water line is attached in the basement,then the winch starts rolling up the lead pipe with the cable inside and pulls the new water line through. The hydraulic unit was running around 4000 psi. Pretty neat.
 
#25 ·
Something along the lines of the classic Sci-Fi film 'Fantastic Voyage' from 1966?
 
#24 ·
Brought in the excavater and hauled out the borer this afternoon. Kind of blocked my driveway with the water truck for no apparant reason.

And, as has become all to usual, the pictures are upside down, sorry.
 

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#26 ·
Jere,


I'm having a hard time trying to turn my monitor upside down. Can you adjust the pics? :tango_face_grin::tango_face_grin::tango_face_grin::tango_face_grin:


Just kidding!!! I love the fact you update us on your neighborhood! I actually look forward to see what you post each day!
 
#28 ·
Jere,
I'm surprised they are burying PVC. In our area, that's a complete no-go, will get you fined if the County finds out.

My best friend married a gal who was super-tight-cheap. She (and her first husband) built a house WAY away from everything, top of a substantial 'mountain' with a 4500' run of PVC for the water line, and it was ALWAYS breaking, and they were ALWAYS digging it up and fixing it; because in this area, the ground MOVES. Her reasoning? "Well, ABS was 15% more..."
 
#29 ·
You may be correct, but these days PVC is almost generic for many different types of plastic piping, much like xerox is for copies.
 
#30 ·
I may have mis-identified it as pvc. I'll take a look tomorrow to see if there is any identifying marking on it.
 
#31 ·
I've worked on quite a few directional bores for force main and gravity 4" most of the people did it to stop from having there lawn dug up! what they didn't realize was they were going to have holes dug for clean outs to be added anyway!hahaha.
I did about 800 houses and a yr. later you couldn't tell which were trenched and which were bored!some of the laterals were almost 10' deep, that's when a trench box is a must!
 
#32 ·
we have had natural gas for yers the first line put in the 60s i was a kid couple yeas ago they put in new plastic lines they had this thing they called mole it went under ground and connected lines from houses to the main line it was radio control pretty cool
 
#34 ·
My work shop is on the other side of the highway from my home.
Many years ago I wanted to run electric, water and phone to my shop.
There was no way I could do this overhead so I ran everything under
the highway my self. I pounded a 4 inch by 30 foot long heavy wall
Steel pipe all the way under the road. I hung a 320 lb weight off the
boom of my backhoe and swung the weight by hand hitting the pipe.
It only took two days of swinging.
 
#36 ·
Ok folks, Scout and I strolled down the driveway this morning and picked up a 40' piece of the pipe and snapped photo of the markings. It is manufactured by Flying W to ASTM D3035 and AWWA C901 standards for polyethylene (PE) pipe. Sorry I used the term PVC, my mistake, I admit I used it as a generic description of a plastic pipe without giving any consideration to the implications of precision.



and:



And while correcting my mistakes, I'll add a right side up version of the little excavator:



The water truck:



And, in response to whether the contractor had made proper PA 1 Call, which they did, a picture that includes the proximity to the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant emergency warning siren tower:



Think of the catastrophic implications of hitting a signal line for it and back feeding some rogue spike to the Homer Simpson-esque operators back at the reactor (please note this is all tongue in cheek, and the power for this tower is delivered overhead)
 
#38 ·
Frost depth based on 25 years in this area is 24-30", but recent weather patterns shift cold and warm so frequently, that the cold spells rarely last long enough to get that deep. I'll make no reference to global warming, but even though we still get cold days as cold as my memory recalls, including a couple -5 days this year, a week later we might be in the middle 50's before the weather turns again. So, ground does not freeze as deep, ponds don't freeze as thick, our rivers that used to freeze for ice boat saling rarely get thick enough for safe skating any longer.

In reference to this particular project, the line is running about 40" deep, dropping under 4' to pass under a water line near the sewer connection point.

Now just because pictures always make a post more interesting:



My Brother on skates and my Dad in Tingleys passing puck on the Susquehanna near my birth place where it is about a mile wide. This was quite a few years ago. We used to drag drift wood from the islands to make a hockey rink (no lifting the puck over the logs or you had to skate to chase it, and it might drift over half a mile. Made for long time-outs)
 

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#44 ·
All boring complete, including under the road, and into a convenient man-hole just the other side of the road. They re-sealed the bore into the man-hole, but of course did not actually connect to the common sewer line yet. Boring machine is gone, the excavator is still here. I heard them chainsawing yesterday, I assume there was a tree, or large ornamental in the area they intend to place the pump pit. But it is in an area that can't be seen from my property, so I'm not sure.
 
#43 ·
I was wondering how they could run the lines that shallow and not have frost problems. I would have thought frost would go a little deeper there.

Locally the average frost line is usually 50" t0 55" below pavement. Farther north average is 65" to 70". They measure under cleared pavement so there is no insulating snow cover. Gives them a better idea of what is happening under the roads winter and spring.

Depth of snow, ground cover and tree cover can make a lot of difference.
Back in 2013-2014 frost went down to 72" below pavement here. Officially this year the frost is at 54" in the county.
We got down to -25° a couple nights, but not as overall cold as normal.
 
#47 ·
This is an integrated pit, with grinder pump pre-installed:



And this guy is digging the hole to set the pre-integrated pit in. It is right against the house wall where the old line passed through the wall and down to the septic tank and drainfield:



It will be interesting to see how they decommission the old tank and drainfield.
 
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