Getting a piece of 2" pipe under a sidewalk

dig down to the bottom of the slab and use one of those hand drills that they use at the mountain for the putting in the race gates.

stick a pvc pipe in the made hole and stuff in a water pressure hose in the opening of the pvc pipe and just keep feeding in the pipe as the water eats away at the dirt

My other option would be to use the rotohammer and the mini jack hammer and make a little gutter through the sidewalk and repatch it with some Portland, I am a little worried about this cracking though. Any ideas?

REBAR!!!    just dig a small hole on each side of the walk  and shove a peice of 1/2" rebar through -  it will help to grind a point or just caveman it and hammer it to a semi point ..

no need to mole shoot it with air unless the side walk is super wide, like 5 feet or more.  you can hammer the rebar through and then work it back and forth to loosen up.  a lot of times with 2" sched40 pvc you may be able to just brute force it through depending on the subsoil  obviously.   if you have drainage use a hose to help flush out the hole to a larger diameter. 

I have had laborers dozens of times install 4 inch thin wall gutter drainage to rectify poor drainage problems.  Good builders will include conduit as a provision for future purposes like wiring and drainage sprinkler suplies..  wink wink

Hey Papa thanks for the advice, I wont be doing this for probably a month or two so I'm just starting some conversation, getting some ideas. Saw your post in the other thread

"r example Caveman I just read your post on the 30" side walk and then read you got some schooling drafting experience? ha! 30" fucking inches? quit being a pussy, grab a shovel and sent the handle under the side walk to widen a hole large enough for the pipe. put some glove on though, we wouldn't want you to get some blisters. :)"

I'd rather use a spud bar than a shovel to go under the sidewalk, I brake enough shovel handles....

I never thought of using rehbar to break up a hole, thats a good idea.

I've had some people tell me to break out a piece of the slab and form in a gutter. This idea seems like it would make major ice problems in the winter. I'm also worried about the new concrete cracking. If I went through the slab and put in new concrete from dirt up for a gutter then I would be better off to saw cut it and start fresh but the concrete would be damn thin at the bottom of the gutter... so dig down, put some gravel down make the slab thicker at that point?
The other thing people have said is to take a roto hammer and chisel out a gutter and float it with portland cement. Seems like this would create cracking problems too?

When doing sprinkler systems i uses poppa's technique. Works like a charm

Time  is money.   Why would you spend all that time chisling, chopping, sawing or what ever?  Then when you patch it back it wont match and will look like crap.  Forget that the sidewalk probably has some rebar in it and will have to drill the edge of the channel and put bar back to keep it from settling or that it will be closer to the surface and more likely to freeze.

if you were for some reason to remove the sidewalk you would want to do it at the nearest joint. for reasons of mismatch, here again it will take you a lot more time energy and effort along with cost to remove the concrete and put it back.  just burrow under it.  Hell  I had laborers burrow under a 10 foot driveway rather than saw cutting it for patching mismatch reasons. Albeit it took 2 guys a solid 10 hours, it was far cheaper than having to overlay a drive plus the saw cutting and hoe work.

Hang on ..  I seem to remember a water boring drill that works off a garden hose

Just in a quick search..






 I think there are other homeowner type of gizmos.  Hell you could just try sticking the garden hose against the dirt and see if it washes out whats infront of it. 

I don't know if you have enough slope for drainage but I am betting a rental center might have the wand you need along with a pressure washer.... if you are afraid of breaking a $10 handle/shovel, of course.

BTW - since you have a month. If you decide to dig and bore.  Bring along a sheet or two of scrap plywood or tarp to throw the mulch, sod, plantings, dirt on, so that you do a clean neat job with the excavation. Your customers will appreciate you leaving the job the way you found it a lot more than a cheap cost that is a left a mess.

another way of looking at these type of jobs is to do a pro/con - task list. In other words: list out the steps of each method. The short list is usually the best. 

Fast, Right and Cheap - pick 2, you don't get the third.

that seems like way too much for such a small job, you can easily hand dig that with a a shovel and a small bar, just tunnel right through, adding some rebar underneath the sidewalk when finished should help prevent cracking

Ya I got a piece of 4" thinwall through no problem. I'm going to glue a piece of 4" perfo pipe onto the end for drain tile and then cover it up. Any idea if 10' is enough?

what is the total length away from the base of the house

OK so I finished the drainage portion of this a few weeks ago. I have 4" thinwall sewer pipe under the sidewalk. Then I have it coupled to a 10' piece of 4" perforated pipe. These are both grading away from the house too. At the end of the perfo pipe I put a perforated cap on it and built in a rock overflow chamber so that if enough water is coming into the pipe it wont back up but instead will bubble into the lawn. I was also thinking it might be cool to plant some cat tails around the end but the root system would probably clog everything up.

Now I am going to build a collection pond on the other side of the sidewalk. I went and picked rocks yesterday and now I have quite a collection of field stone and flag stone. I am going to make a self draining collection pond that will still hold water when its not raining and add some planting shelves. It is raining now but I plan to go get started after it lets up and take some pictures of what I have so far.

Today I finished this project.

starting to put rocks down for the collection pond


getting ready for the plastic liner


need to clean up a little and maybe plant some sage brush


freshly seeded grass, you can see where i dug up for the drainage pipe and the overflow i put at the end


im going to get some more rocks to fill this up