Author Topic: Can I Just Bury Garden Hose?  (Read 30165 times)

Mgmny

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Can I Just Bury Garden Hose?
« on: August 02, 2017, 08:51:28 AM »
My garden is like 75 feet away from my house water spigot, and it would be super handy if i had a water supply at my garden instead of bending over under my porch/deck, grabbing the hose, turning it on, and schlepping it across my yard to my garden.

My question: Can i just put a 2 way hose splitter at the spigot, dig a trench, and drop a normal garden hose into the trench to the garden? I live in minnesota, so our grounds freeze, so i would need to be able to blow them out (but would freezing in a rubber garden hose be a big deal anyways?).

Will this work, or will it fail? Better ideas?

Fishindude

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Re: Can I Just Bury Garden Hose?
« Reply #1 on: August 02, 2017, 08:54:00 AM »
Sure, that will work.
Many summer homes in Minnesota have piping that isn't buried below the frost line.  They just blow the lines out each fall.

Clean Shaven

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Re: Can I Just Bury Garden Hose?
« Reply #2 on: August 02, 2017, 08:54:08 AM »
I haven't tried that, but would expect the hose to crush and restrict flow. Alternatively, what about putting in a run of PVC hard pipe (think lawn sprinkler), and attach hose fittings to the ends? Then you can add an upright hose bib at the garden end.

Cromacster

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Re: Can I Just Bury Garden Hose?
« Reply #3 on: August 02, 2017, 09:03:58 AM »
I have thought about doing something similar.  I was thinking this would be a good situation for a PEX line vs a garden hose.

I will still have to blow it out for winter, but I would think it would last much longer.  I would think a garden hose would crack and leak eventually from the frost cycles.

Mgmny

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Re: Can I Just Bury Garden Hose?
« Reply #4 on: August 02, 2017, 10:54:48 AM »
great suggestions/help everyone!

Hard pvc and pex is probably more work than rubber garden hose (garden hose would be more forgiving if i don't dig straight compared to pvc, and pex requires additional tools).

If anyone has any good evidence to elect either of those instead of rubber hose, i'm all ears!

Cadman

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Re: Can I Just Bury Garden Hose?
« Reply #5 on: August 02, 2017, 11:04:11 AM »
What you want is polypipe. It's inexpensive and available at your typical homecenter. The "potable" variety is what's used to connect a well pump to the house, or for running underground to a yard hydrant. For your purposes, the cheaper non-potable 'irrigation' version should do fine. A buried garden hose will end up collapsing or getting chewed through by moles and voles and isn't designed for long term pressure. Being that the real work here is the digging, it's a no brainer to use the stuff designed for burial.

Elbows and hose fittings are cheap with this stuff, too.  To give you a feel for price, our local box store has 3/4"x100' for $17.99 regular price.

Mgmny

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Re: Can I Just Bury Garden Hose?
« Reply #6 on: August 02, 2017, 12:05:39 PM »
What you want is polypipe. It's inexpensive and available at your typical homecenter. The "potable" variety is what's used to connect a well pump to the house, or for running underground to a yard hydrant. For your purposes, the cheaper non-potable 'irrigation' version should do fine. A buried garden hose will end up collapsing or getting chewed through by moles and voles and isn't designed for long term pressure. Being that the real work here is the digging, it's a no brainer to use the stuff designed for burial.

Elbows and hose fittings are cheap with this stuff, too.  To give you a feel for price, our local box store has 3/4"x100' for $17.99 regular price.

Ok cool. I see Menards near me is the same. I'll look into this. I can find the fittings, but i'll have to figure out how to deal with this stuff and garden hose connections.

Thank you!

Cadman

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Re: Can I Just Bury Garden Hose?
« Reply #7 on: August 02, 2017, 12:30:21 PM »
Yep, Menards is the place : )

There's a couple ways to go, but the one you usually see at campgrounds would be to sink a couple feet of 4x4 treated post in the ground and clamp the polypipe to it. You could install a $5 hosebib on the garden end and be able to turn the water on/off there. At the house you could do something similar, and just use a short garden hose to connect between the house spigot and the polypipe (with either just a hose fitting or another cheap hose bib).   

Since polypipe doesn't like to bend, you'll need a 90 deg plastic elbow at both ends when you transition from vertical to horizontal underground. They also make a yard hydrant for this application but it's $40 (Menards SKU 6912051). Don't forget, wait for their frequent 11% off sale to really save.

Cranky

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Re: Can I Just Bury Garden Hose?
« Reply #8 on: August 02, 2017, 12:37:59 PM »
I ran an extra hose along the back of my house, to the garden area, and dumped mulch over it. When I need to use it, I screw the short hose at the spigot into the extension, and turn it on.

I'm guessing that this setup will not last forever, but it's been fine for 10 years. I do drain and store the hose that connects to the spigot every November, but I just leave the extra hose where it is.

Sometimes low tech works fine!

big_owl

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Re: Can I Just Bury Garden Hose?
« Reply #9 on: August 02, 2017, 07:32:22 PM »
This will work fine.  I did the exact same thing for 100ft run of hose to my garden, I just buried under the leaves and mulch.  I don't even blow it out in the winter, I just unscrew it from the house, remove the sprayer end and sort of let it gravity drain.  It's been almost 8years and still looks like new. Just buy a quality rubber hose and not some cheapo one.  I got mine from gardengate online. 

Spork

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Re: Can I Just Bury Garden Hose?
« Reply #10 on: August 03, 2017, 03:41:59 PM »
great suggestions/help everyone!

Hard pvc and pex is probably more work than rubber garden hose (garden hose would be more forgiving if i don't dig straight compared to pvc, and pex requires additional tools).

If anyone has any good evidence to elect either of those instead of rubber hose, i'm all ears!

FYI... you can ben the heck out of pvc pipe.   I've run it alongside curving flowerbeds for sprinkler systems using only straight fittings.  The longer the pipe, the more flexible it is.  (I.e., the area with the straight coupling makes it slightly less flexible.)   I've got several thousand feet of PVC -- all hand trenched.


 

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