Irrigation Pipe on an Old Farmhouse
Hey, Brian Freeman here. We’re starting a remodel for an old farmhouse in Middleton, Idaho, but we’re not working in the house yet. We got the tractor behind us and did a little bit of digging.
Before we get going here, I wanted to show you a new guy. He’s a new member of the team here, our dog. This is Mack, like a Mack truck. He’s five months old. He is a Great Pyrenees and about 65 pounds. His dad was 180 pounds, so he’s on the way to being a big boy. Now, we’re going to take a look at what’s going on out here.
The Backstory
So, this property was purchased on this project, and there was an issue with the irrigation line. It had a pressurized irrigation system and was about a four-inch line hooked up to an actual pump back this way. It was literally like half and maybe a mile away from here. Okay, so way away.
The owner next door put this pond in. When he did, the guys working on it broke the pressurized line and tore it out. So now, there’s no irrigation water down on this property.
What’s Happening?
Water supply was a bigger piece of the property with irrigation rights. So what we started today was digging and retying the irrigation pipe back in so we can get pressurized irrigation. I want to show you what’s going on.
This is the line where it broke off. Down in the jump down here in the trench, you can see the end of it here. It has a bunch of dirt all shoved up inside of it. So that’s all going to have to get blown out.
Another thing I wanted to show you is the irrigation pipe. This is a four-inch inside diameter pipe. And you can see it’s a turquoise color. On the ends where you have your couplers, these push together — they don’t glue together.
You can see it has a black gasket, which has been out of the sun for a long time. It’s sun-rotted because of that, but you can put some oil in the opening and glue your fittings together on the ends.
But we’re going to be putting some brand-new material in the ground. It’s about 300 feet running down the other neighbor’s property. There’s Mack; he’s having fun. He likes these dirt piles to play in and digs in them.
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Digging the Trench
The tractor that we got is a Massey Ferguson. It’s a 2005 model with a backhoe attachment on it. The crew is running this little forward tractor we had out here, so it worked out to dig with this. It has a little one-foot bucket on here, so it’s got the stabilizers down.
So there’s about 300 feet that’s gotta get dug for this trench. The crew should have this done tomorrow. After that, the irrigation pipe will be picked up, thrown in here, and connected. Then, we’ll go ahead and get the lines pressurized, and then we’ll test it. They’re going to be shutting this water off. It will get cold and freezing here, so you must ensure that that’s shut off.
Timeline
The first week in October is about when it gets shut off. So we got about till then to get her done. We took a paint can here and marked this out on the ground. And then the connecting point is actually out of the way. You know.
This is the pond down below us where that line was at initially. We took these caps off these risers to figure out the depth of our trench. So, this is the original pipe in here for the pressurized irrigation system. We took this and went ahead and ran our tape down in here. And these things are about three feet long, giving us the bottom of our trench. We’ll add another inch and get the full cover on the irrigation pipe.
Wrapping Up
If you need help building a custom home, ADU, or whole-house remodeling, request a project consultation with us. We have offices in Ramona, California, serving the San Diego County area, and Middleton, Idaho, serving the Boise Metro area. You can also explore our comprehensive collection of similar videos on our YouTube channel, The Real Property Show.
