Trenchless water service & Sewer line repair, Outdoor plumbing

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Terry

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Living in older homes, sometimes the piping to our homes needs repair or replacement. Years ago I used to hand dig those lines. Now there are outfits that can dig or mole under driveways and lawns. A few holes in the right spot and they can pull new lines through. It's not the kind of work I'm doing, but here are some pictures of the guys from Akers Outdoor Plumbing. They're located in Seattle. They love doing this stuff.

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That's Ryan Ferrell in the white overalls. These guys were hard at it when I took these pictures and when I drove by later in the day they were all done. The home was a 1978 done with 1" black poly pipe. I have noticed that this entire street has been replacing their water service lines. I installed miles of the stuff in the 70's when I had open ditches to drop it into. And for a while when I was younger I was hand digging replacements. I've done a few with a rented mole before, as replacement under a driveway, but I never bought one. I'm totally fine doing the indoor work and watching these guys do this. The mole works off of a compressor that pounds through the dirt, hopefully horizontally.

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The line will be under the driveway, and then there is a hole under the hosebib and near the red bucket where the final connection will be made.

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Before any digging is done, the utilities are marked.

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1" soft copper L coming out alongside the foundation at the driveway. That brings back memories. :)

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They had a way to go for this one. The meter is where the farthest person is, near the tree. The line will be heading across the lawn and then under the driveway. Akers Outdoor Plumbing

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Trenchless water replacement.


 
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Reach4

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The home was a 1978 done with 1" black poly pipe. I have noticed that this entire street has been replacing their water service lines.
Any theories on the failures? I was thinking poly pipe is used a lot without issue. Maybe they put the pipe too tight, or put rocks next to the pipe?
 
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That mole is pretty nifty. I might look for one around here. 23' would be a lot less than they're doing in the video.
Interesting comments about the black poly. I've only seen that once before in a house I was listing and I knew the home inspector would call it out. There wasn't that much so I just replaced it with PEX before we listed.
 
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