Hi Folks , I am planning to re do our front drive myself (Suds compliant) and may be scraping off around 200mm of existing badly layed hardcore/topsoil and gravel. How deep are services generally and if I am scraping off using a small man sized Tonka toy is it easy to avoid ripping through gas pipes etc using one of these? Apart from the usual gas electric and sewer etc there is also what looks to be a drain pipe which I presume goes into a soakaway from the porch roof. What should my main concerns be when undertaking this work?
Cable tv cables, bloody nightmare, normally a few inches under the ground. Mains services should be well down, but never take anything for granted, if using a mini digger, use a ditching bucket with no teeth, that way it hand to hook under a cable/pipe pulling it out, but be warned it will cut through one before you know it.
Go & hire a CAT 'Cable Avoidance Tool' & genny for a day, was around £30 for a day, you can then mark the buried utilities. Even using a ditching bucket on your mini digger, it's still possible to damage cables, pipes.
Gas pipes "should" be a minimum of 450 (depending what they are under) and water (I think) is supposed to be 600mm to prevent freezing. As for stuff like ntl cables is can be centimetres below the surface.
I always hand dig at the top end (nearest house) across the drive to a spade depth and half (450mm) and least this will show you where any services are and you can track them back. Obviously not perfect as services can run all over the place but will give you a good start. This may sound obvious but refill the trench to the excavated height and use this as guide as you scrape backwards watching the edges for depth - you don't want to scrape towards the house and you want to be on the old "good" surface. BTW always keep a few jubilee clips and some plastic to hand just in case you nick the edge a water pipe - it can put a real damper on the day with mains water squirting everywhere.
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