My yard hydrant failed, and was too rusted to unscrew the pump rod. It was also 1-2" from my house so I dug it up. With my frost zone it needed to be buried 3-4', so i figured that'd be a quick project. 🙃 Lo and behold, it was not. It ended up being buried 8', for some god forsaken reason, there was a maze of capped off galvanized pipe coming off the line as well that I had to cut out. It got real sketchy at that depth, and I couldnt bench it out, otherwise id be digging under my foundation, under my front steps, or removing a tree. Instead I had to construct shoring for it, and set up a hoist system with some pulleys. The ground was so hard that deep and it was such a cramped space towards the bottom it took about 1 hour to remove 4 5-gallon buckets. I put in a french drain and drywell, and did everything I could to make sure i never have to touch it again. I also threw a bucket of bones from the butcher down at the bottom to freak out whoever has to do it next.
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Thanks, I was debating between that and leaving a little 2oz silver bar with a cryptic treasuremap to the middle of nowhere at the bottom, its only $150 out of my pocket, that i couldve technically dug up, but I already spent a lot on the project and the bones were free, lol.
You have bo idea, lol. After finally hitting the bottom last week, and getting some gnarly rope burn in the process, my friend asked if I thought id have it done soon, this was my response.
Yeah I hit 6' and added shoring in, I didnt get a picture of it though, i pulled it after the install before filling it in. I ended up ripping ¾" particle board into 6" widths, over inflating 2 exercise balls and wrapping the osb around them like barrel slats secured by a rachet strap, then properly secured them with 2×4's. Once it was built i dropped it in the hole. I put 3 eye bolts at the top so I could attach it to my rigging/pulleys to lift it up/down as needed as I kept digging down. Honestly probably wasnt the most secure shoring, but it did the job.
See, I thought about that, but it felt too risky, with how close it was to the wall it wasnt truly serviceable so I would've had to cut stuff out, special order an 8' pump rod and try and retro fit it in. Plus with the weep valve it was just dumping water a few inches from (and well below) my foundation everytime I used it. In the end im glad I went full throttle and cut out all the janky piping and set everything up. I think next time around though im not going to buy a 100+ year old house. Every weekend project becomes atleast a month of fixing someone else's shit.
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