With the mission of automation in mind, I added a new irrigation run to water plants along the far side of the driveway. This, of course, involved running a line UNDER the driveway.
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| Planning the irrigation run |
Irrigation is not the worst of improvement projects, but it is one of the messier (not quite as bad as furniture refinishing, but certainly right up there.) Running irrigation under driveways and walkways is a muddy proposition since it involves water and dirt.
If you are planning to try this yourself, you'll need a walkway tunneling kit, which is available at any big box improvement store for cheap. The tunneling kit is really just a nozzle and cap by which you use your garden hose and a piece of irrigation PVC to blast a tunnel under the concrete with water. It requires some planning since your PVC pipe has to be long enough to reach completely under the concrete.
Which also means that your trench in which to run the pipe has to be long enough to accommodate the length of the PVC pipe. Since I only had about 28 inches to work with in terms of trench space there in the middle, it required 3 separate pieces of PVC that were joined together by couplers. You can see the segments in the picture below.
Getting this project done was a waiting game since you have to wait for the water to filter down into your soil after you've spray blasted your run under the concrete. In heavy clay soil like mine, it can take an hour or more. This project took about 23' of PVC and various couplers, elbows, a new battery operated timer, and plenty of patience over two days.
Plus some muscle relaxers for an aching back, afterward :)
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