Boring a drainage pipe under a driveway

3/4" pvc pipe with fittings glued to the end for a water hose straight nozzle.

then dig a trench on side of driveway to give you room to slide the pipe just under the driveway. usually this requires at least a 4-5ft trench so the pipe can be pushed under flat and level rather then angling deeper.

add a fitting to other end of the pipe and connect your water hose then turn on water and slide the pipe under the driveway as the water blasts its way through

its a home made hydro blast tunneling device used by contractors to run anything under existing driveways from gas and power lines, to water and drainage lines

I don't know what drove me to finally create an account on TD and actually post something instead of lurk. Oh I remember, it's because I spent a weekend doing exactly what keakar, LSUtigermE, etc said to do with the water jet and PVC pipe.

It does work. I drove a 3/4" PVC pipe under a 9' wide driveway for an electrical raceway for a driveway gate operator. Like others have mentioned, you need to dig a pretty long trench to the depth of the concrete so you are driving the pipe in flat and it does not angle down (I did not and my pipe was about 20" down on the other side).

We also had a lot of pine trees in the vicinity so digging was tough (constantly cutting roots) and I'm sure I was hitting some under the driveway causing the pipe to deflect.

This was not happening by just pushing and forcing the pipe under the driveway either (at least my soil conditions didn't allow for it). I ended up putting a PVC Tee on the end, connected the hose at a 90 degree, and then put a PVC cap on the end so I could drive it with the sledge hammer. (Buy several caps because you will break some).

At the end of the day, it was a total pain but damn it was satisfying once I completed it.

I will attempt to post some pics...forgive me if they don't work. First post and first pics.

16ft is a LONG way to bore under, baw. Just sayin'!