One of the questions we had from the very beginning of thinking about making a gravity-feed water system from Sunbeam Creek, was how were we going to cross the road, since all of our houses were on the opposite side. We knew we would never be allowed to dig a trench across the road, so just how could we get our line to the other side?
I didn’t have a clue how this might be accomplished, but fortunately, my neighbor James, who had grown up on a local farm and had a lot of practical experience, suggested that we could buy some used oil well pipe, make a steel point to screw onto the front of it, and then have the big backhoe just push the pipe under the road. Once we had pushed the four and a half inch oil well pipe through to the other side of the road, we could unscrew the steel point, and just run our 2 inch, PVC water pipe through the oil well pipe, and continue from there.
This seemed like a bit of a gamble, because we didn’t know what boulders or obstacles might lie under the road, but that was the only plan we could come up with, so that is what we decided to do.
We bought two lengths of used oil well pipe, that when screwed together, would give us the 50 foot we would need to go under the road from one side to the other.
James arranged for a steel point that could screw onto the oil well pipe to be created by a company in Prince George, and luckily, just when the backhoe had dug our waterline trench to the road, James’ friend, who had been sent up to Prince George to get the point, arrived with it. We held our breath as we screwed the steel point onto the pipe, and it fit perfectly.
The section of the road where we planned cross was elevated, with deep ditch on mountain side and Glen’s field which was 10 feet lower, on the other. I don’t remember all of the logistics that it took to get the oil well pipe in place, but once it was, the backhoe which sat on the lower side of the road, got the end of the oil well pipe into its bucket and began to push.
The operation began about 4:00 in the afternoon. Things seemed to go well, but then around 6:30, after we had gotten the pipe about 40 feet under the road, suddenly the pipe stopped, and the backhoe could push it no further. We assumed there must be a big boulder or something under the road that the pipe was hitting. We called off the work for the day and arranged to have a big Caterpillar tractor to come the next day, to see if it could push the pipe further the next day.
Unfortunately when Cat arrived, it couldn’t advance the pipe any further, so we decided to pull the pipe out, and try pushing it in another spot. In the new spot we were only able to push the pipe 2 feet further than in our first location. We had the backhoe move to the opposite side of the road and dig into the road foundation a bit from that side. Once that was done, we were able to push the oil well pipe all the way under the road to the other side, to everyone’s great relief.
The steel point was unscrewed from the pipe, and we were able to feed our 2 inch PVC pipe under the road, through the oil well pipe, allowing our water line to proceed from there.
The photo below shows the waterline route in white. The waterline was done in 1987, so the trees on the left side of the road, were tiny and not an obstacle.
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