The Almost No Dig Garden Trench

I am starting my new spring project of a Backyard Chicken Co-Op in my garden in Las Vegas, and needed to run water to the area where the coop would be built, and had to trench out a large area to run the PVC water piping.

I recently hurt my hand shoveling dirt, and was looking for a way to dig a 3" trench, without strain, and came upon the idea of using a Shop Vac, now wait before you laugh, A shop vac can handle about 8 gallons of dirt, even if its wet dirt It has great suction, so it would suck up dirt, small rocks, etc -- and then you could use the same dirt you vacuumed to fill up the trench...  Have a bigger job, dump the dirt into a larger pail, and keep working.

The way I did this job, was racked away the larger rocks from the area, I wanted to trench.
Then vacuumed up the dirt / rock / sand
Ran piping and some low voltage wiring
Used a small shovel to refill up the trench with the dirt I vacuumed
re-raked the rocks back over the filled holes.

Comments

[MrBeta]

Too funny that I found this today after doing the same thing to repair a sprinkler system. Neighbors were staring at me for vacuuming my yard. :) Such a good way to dig!

[Geeks with lasers]

... found this just after hurting my arm digging a 3" trench for my irrigation system... why couldnt I have found it before :@ lol. Nice ible

[the_tool_man]

Lol. That would not work in the southeastern US! The soil is clay, and must be broken apart mechanically.

[snakelips1]

You are one lazy sombitch. lazy is the mother of invention though.

[macgeek]

It's True!! I have 23 instructables to help me be more lazy!

:)

Jonathan

[macgeek]

oops make that 29!

-J