looking for old auger bit for brace

[scrapcan]

OK that should be off topic enough. Now to tell you what I am looking for.

I am looking for an old auger bit that I can turn into a small soil auger. It needs to be 1 to 2 inches in diameter. It need not be in excellent shape as I am going to modify it a bit (no pun intended).

The project that my wife and I are working on is a take off of work done in Africa, death valley, Israel, and a few other places in the world. It is called deep pipe irrigation. you use a drip irrigation system coupled with a pipe that extends from surface to root zone.

We have done this with new plantings of native trees and shrubs and would like to try it on existing plants. But I need a way to install the tubes, and I am too cheap to buy a soil auger.

here are a couple of references

http://nativeplants.for.uidaho.edu/Uploads/2-1NPJ25-29.pdf

http://www.ecocomposite.org/restoration/deeppipe.htm


anyway off topic, but still a special project. that I know some of you might be interested in and might be able to help me out.

[Buckshot]

...............I did the same thing for a couple Crepe Myrtle trees in our front yard and an Avocado in the back. You can make a soil auger of that size easily if you have a welder to put it together. I used 1.5" PVC pipe, pipe wrench and a sledge hammer :-). If you have any soil type besides heavy clay, the PVC pipe deal is very easy. We have clay soil here in Redlands, CA and that's how the town got it's name. From the red clay soil.

Cut off a piece maybe 3' long. Skive one end down sharp. Drive it into the ground aways (you'll know how far you can go each time), then remove it and with a broomstick, knock out the dirt in the pipe. Re-insert in the hole and drive it in further. Repeat to the desired depth. I haven't found it necessary but you may want to put a coupling or cap on the driven end of the pipe.

The pipe wrench is if the pipe gets stuck you can twist it back and forth. If you hit some rocks a brass washing nozzle on the end of the hose dropped down the pipe will flush them loose enough to drive the pipe past.

Once to depth, cut your other sections of pipe to length. Drill 1/2" holes all around up to about a foot from the top. Drive it down into the prepared hole.

We have drippers feeding a row of rose bushes across the front of the yard. Each one of the trees has 3 pipes 3' deep. Each one of these pipes has a 2 gallon/hr emitter on it and the system runs for 3 hours. Twice a year I drop a fertilizer stake in each pipe.

When we moved in one tree was severly stressed with many dead branches, and it barely flowered. I pruned it back and cleaned it up and did the pipe thing 5 years ago. It took 2 years for the tree to really respond, and now it's unbeleiveable.

...............Buckshot

[scrapcan]

Buckshot,

I had thought about the idea of building a drive shoe type core removal tool. I was not sure if I would be able to drive it in and then be able to pull once it got very deep. I will put together a setup like you suggest. I may even be able to fab up a t-post type puller to pull the core tool out of the ground. Yeah another project to keep me out of trouble.

I had thought about getting out the pressure washer and just doing a wash the casing down technique, but that means hauling out another piece of equipment. Your idea sounds like a better one to me.

Our experience is very similar to yours as far as watering amount, times, and results. The trees and shrubs that we have the pipes on are doing very well.

As that we are a bit tree challenged in this area, we would like to do what we can to help survival and decrease water pumage.

[Buckshot]

............I edited my post to reflect a 3 FOOT long drive pipe vs the 3 INCH one I'd typed in :-)

Unless your soil is like solid rock, driving in the PVC pipe should be fairly easy. The clay soild here was used way back in the Spanish mission days to make adobe bricks, and the Mission San Gabriel Asistencia (satelite) mission buildings were built with it. When wet it's like grease and when dry it's like cast iron.

I have a pile of round cylinders of it I had pushed out of the PVC pipe and over the past week (I just did the Avocado tree last week) they have become so hard you can barely scratch one with your thumbnail. The problem I had was twofold. I had to dig a hole to fill with water to start the pipe. I think the water evaporated out of the hole faster then it soaked in! Otherwise it would have been like trying to drive the PVC pipe through my concrete driveway, and THAT just wasn't going to happen.

The other is that once the clay soil was wet, it was so thick and greasy the suction created between it and the pipe made it a real chore to pull the pipe up and clean it out for the next go.

My house was built in 1951 and the entire project was built on a slight slope, so there was some cut and fill done. The 3 pipes for each tree in the front yard will almost fill with water with those 2gal/hr drippers. That is except for one. One pipe will just about take the entire full flow from the 5/8" hose in the front yard!!!!! I don't know what I drove into but whatever is down there (3') it will suck up a tremendous amount of water. Maybe a sand pocket?

When I lived out in the canyon south of here, the valley floor was all aluvial fill. There were layers of sand over gravel over clay, and mixtures thereof. I had a gasoline 2 man auger for setting cornerposts (RR ties). If the spot was clay, I had to use a railroad spike pulling bar (6' x 1.75" octagon ) that had had a digging spade (like a screwdriver blade) forged on one end to bust through. Otherwise the auger tip would just sit on the top, even with both of us lying across the handles :-) !!!

.................Buckshot

[scrapcan]

We get a pretty good calcium carbonate layer that cements the particles together at about 16-18 inches. This is basically dossolved and translocated CaCO3. That is where I would have trouble. We have bit of clay but nothing like you mention, at least in this area. Other areas of our state supply some of the best bentonite in the world.

great to hear someone else is having success with this method. Got any pictures of some of your trees with the deep pipes?