When we had the trailer in we began work on getting all the utilities ran to it and connected. Water was already at the office, so we planned on running water from there to the trailer. The office is a metal building on a concrete slab foundation. Our first attempt at getting water was to find the main water line coming into the office. We dug four foot down by the back of the office where the water line comes in through the slab. We started started digging further out when we didn’t hit it. After going three feet or so in each direction and digging a little deeper we gave up. Luckily there was a frost proof spigot by one corner of the shop and we trenched over to it to get our water. Either the line coming into the office is really deep, or it comes into the office from a different route, either way I didn’t feel like digging a moat all the way around the office.

While we had a trench we laid several pipes to transfer water from future cisterns at the office and shops. We also ran several telephone lines, LAN cable, speaker cable and other cables at this time while we had a trench. Never let a good trench go to waste.

The trencher we bought dug a 6″ +/- wide trench and could go a little over three feet deep. It was a hydraulically powered walk behind unit. It saved a lot of work, but was a pain trying to run a straight trench with. While trenching it would start to curve and you would have to bring the trencher up and realign. The resulting trench had to be widened by hand in areas so you could fit the sewer pipe into the trench straight.

During trenching the engine on the trencher blew a head gasket. Not the end of the world if you know what engine you are dealing with but we had no idea. The engine was a 8-10hp air cooled engine buried under hydraulic hoses and a solid frame. We finally found the data plate on the side with about an inch clearance between it and the frame of the trencher. Pulling the engine was not necessary for replacing the head gasket luckily, but it took a lot to clean up the data plate so that it could be read with flashlights and mirrors on sticks.

It was getting late in the year and we were flirting with freezing weather. Freezing weather will turn an easy to shovel pile of sand for bedding the pipes into a solid rock that takes a pick to get into manageable size chunks.

Through luck and sheer determination we finished the trenching in December. Our work was far from done, but we were close to being able to move in and take a break. It was not to be though, as we turned on the water to the trailer it flowed everywhere but where it was needed.