Another Baby Step to Building a House; Water Line

Last winter we did a fair amount of clearing toward our intended house site (as I said a few blog entries back).  And I have been doing a bit more here and there since.  The "road" down the hill to the house site is well established and has had many trips up and down by vehicles,  so it is well packed dirt. But it is rather steep and is just dirt, so I do worry about erosion during rains.   We wanted to get it to a more finished point and put gravel on it ASAP. 

Spring and Summer are my busy work time and I didn't get a lot done around here between work trips.  But this August, when I got home from my trip to New York (Millbrook Horse Trials, www.millbrookhorsetrials.com), I found myself with a little time, nice weather, and a few dollars in my pocket.  Time to gravel that road.  Only one complication: the best place to run the water line to the house site is right under this road.  If you look back to the early blog about the water line, you would see that I installed a valve box in the ground near our entry gate that split the line for the shop and stubbed and valved a line for the potential house.  I needed to install that pipe from this valve box up by the entry , down the hill through the road, and toward the house site before it gets covered with gravel.

 

I used 1inch PEX pipe and "sharkbite" type connectors as I had for the initial water pipe installation.
I borrowed a big, ride on, ditch digger from my Son-in law's Uncle Sam Burkey, who has an excavation and earth moving business.  It's great to have such generous friends in the family; saved me about $500 in machine rental.

 

  My plan was to run that main pipe down the hill under the road (really, driveway) to a point where the ground levels off , set another valve box in the ground there with a split (one way that could continue on in the future to some unknown spot or use and another to toward the house site).  Then closer to the house site, I would install a frost proof hydrant and another valve box for a future run to the house.  All totaled, this would be about 300 feet of ditch and pipe.