Down in the Trenches-Building reliable utility installations just got easier

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Creating the best possible utility trench for supplying your next building project with power, water and communications cables involves more than just digging a long hole of the right depth. By choosing the best kind of equipment for the excavation, and laying the right kind of wires and pipes inside, you’ll get reliable performance, minimal site disruption and an efficient work flow that gets you onto the main act sooner.

With all the disruption typical at the beginnings of any construction project, it’s easy to forget how much a pain it would be to dig up a utility trench to fix something a few years down the road. That’s why reliability is a key virtue of anything you install underground. The good news is that new technology and equipment makes this goal easier to achieve than ever.

Digging In
An ordinary back hoe is the machine of choice for digging utility trenches, and it does a pretty good job in many applications. But when you’ve got a situation where minimal disruption of the surroundings is important, then consider hiring a micro-excavator instead.

These small, track-driven machines do two things that a regular back hoe can’t. First, they cut a much narrower swath (some as small as 12” wide), and they do it much more neatly. You’ll also get an especially tidy job if your operator uses a toothless bucket for the last part of the work. This is especially useful for getting soil completely off bedrock, helping you get the most trench depth on shallow-soil situations. The second advantage of a micro-excavator is obvious when working around lawns and existing driveways. The rubber tracks on most machines are especially gentle, creating much less damage than even a rubber-tired hoe. Used in the correct hands, a micro-excavator becomes an instrument of precision.

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