Anyone on here operate a ditch-witch for drainage work ?

[ConanPB]

Am told that it will go down to 80cm and makes a 6 inch trench.Also any ideas for gravel dispensing into the piped trench welcome !

 

[Clockwatcher]

Am told that it will go down to 80cm and makes a 6 inch trench.Also any ideas for gravel dispensing into the piped trench welcome !

We have a case 460 trencher which is similar to a ditch witch.we mainly use it for laying water pipe, electric cables etc, but we have laid drains with it provided that there is a reasonable fall and the ground is smooth. The ground needs to be smooth and not undulating too much because the trencher boom is rigidly attached to the machine and any ruts or undulations will cause the boom to pitch up or down and could mess up any fall on the drains.
we use a Hoes trencher for land drainage and the boom on that is floating free when operating so it irons out any ruts and undulations that the Case won’t .
Having said that in the right conditions our small Case can do a good job provided you pay attention to what is going on and will be much faster than a mini digger, in an hour with the trencher you will do more than a mini digger will do all day.

the only sensible way of putting gravel in the trench is with a proper gravel cart unless you are doing a very small amount of drainage, possibly a swivel skip dumper would be ok but a gravel cart with conveyor is the best way to go

hope this helps

cw

 

[organicguy]

we used a ditch witch for putting water pipes. Brilliant piece of kit, so much quicker than a digger and tidier.

 

[daveydiesel1]

We have a case 460 trencher which is similar to a ditch witch.we mainly use it for laying water pipe, electric cables etc, but we have laid drains with it provided that there is a reasonable fall and the ground is smooth. The ground needs to be smooth and not undulating too much because the trencher boom is rigidly attached to the machine and any ruts or undulations will cause the boom to pitch up or down and could mess up any fall on the drains.
we use a Hoes trencher for land drainage and the boom on that is floating free when operating so it irons out any ruts and undulations that the Case won’t .
Having said that in the right conditions our small Case can do a good job provided you pay attention to what is going on and will be much faster than a mini digger, in an hour with the trencher you will do more than a mini digger will do all day.

the only sensible way of putting gravel in the trench is with a proper gravel cart unless you are doing a very small amount of drainage, possibly a swivel skip dumper would be ok but a gravel cart with conveyor is the best way to go

hope this helps

cw

How do they cope with larger stones?

 

[organicguy]

They bounce over sarsens!

 

[biggles]

I owned a 4500?? I think it was about 10 years ago, in the right conditions it could fair crack on. It would leave the spoil like sand so we’re easy to back fill. Wet clay would just clog the chain no matter which cutters we tried though, it was a wheeled one and would just spin in greasy conditions and make a mess, would have been much better on tracks. It had two leavers on the transmission for drive and chain drive, just push more for more speed and bull back to slowdown and reverse, so very easy to operate, the chain drive side of this became weak and the chain would stall to easy so had the transmission lump thing repaired, can’t remember the price but it hurt bad, about 2 years after (maybe only 200 hours) despite perfect servicing it started to show this fault again so it was sold on before it became unusable. Do miss it but couldn’t afford to run it any longer

 

[Clockwatcher]

How do they cope with larger stones?

Depends on how large, but they won’t cut through rock with the standard cutters.
we tried a mixture of rock teeth and normal cutters but it slowed it up too much in normal trenching so we took the rock teeth out and just have the normal cutters and dig out any large rocks with a digger.
Cw