No Diggity - No Dig Trencher / Tunneler

A few years ago, I came up with a way to dig out a trench for a chicken watering system, using my shop vac.

Instructables: No Dig Garden Trench

I had another project where I wanted to move my water main into my garage, and needed to tunnel under slab to re-route the copper piping.

Nothing was made to do this ... Until NOW.

:)

1. 6-8' of 2" PVC pipe
2. 3 or 4 2" couplings
3. Dremel tool
4. Shop vac

All of the stuff I had left over from other projects, so my costs were minimal.

THE PROJECT:

I needed to tunnel 7' under a 2" thick slab, but I could not use a normal trenching tool because my access space was only a 15 x 15 'box'. So I needed to think "OUT OF THE BOX" and this idea was born.

Using the Dremel, I cut teeth into the PVC. The first piece doesn't need to be too long, only like 5-6"—just long enough to fit into the 2" coupling.

Since the pipe is 2" and the shop vac is also almost 2" round, I used some black tape, just to make the connection snug, but not too snug, because you will be removing the vacuum hose a lot to remove larger stones.

Starting small, I started poking and turning the digger and the vacuum sucked up the dirt and occasional rock.

As I filled up the shop vac with dirt, I would empty it into a bucket to be used later as a back-fill.

I added couplings and more PVC pipe to keep extending it, as the hole got deeper.

(The white box marking was the point where I met the dig on the other side, so I had a guide how deep to dig.)

Well it's a HOLE ... :)

18" deep and 7' long.

Took me about 3 hours to complete the project.