Trenching for Utilities for our new Kit Home

Unless you are building in a rural area, you will most likely be able to connect your kit home to a public water and sewer connection. If public service is available to you, it is unlikely that you would be allowed to opt for a septic system and well, even if that's your preference.

Regardless of which type of system you will be connecting to, it's very important to adhere to local codes when installing your supply lines. Our building inspector allowed us to perform this work prior to getting our building permit, but you should definitely get permission before commencing work and call DIG SAFELY at 888-258-0808 several days prior to digging. Inspections were done after the trenching was in and again after the pipes were laid out.

As a general rule, your sewer line must maintain at least 1/4" fall per foot in order to flow properly. The size of ABS pipe used will vary ~ we used 4" ABS with a clean-out every 100 feet or less. Our sewer line actually had to travel up a slight slope for about 650-700 feet, so we had a 400 gallon cement holding tank with an ejector pump installed next to the house. This was a bit overkill - the county only required a 50 gallon tank, but that seemed like asking for trouble!

If your local water supply to your kit home is greater than 80 psi, you may need to install a pressure reduction valve to reduce the wear and tear on your pipes. The size of PVC pipe used varies and you should try to match the size used to the size of water meter available, the water pressure, and the length of the run.

	We had community water and sewer services available, but it required a great deal of trenching. In this picture our excavating contractor John is digging a 4 foot deep trench coming from the last power pole that was placed to our kit home site.
	Shown at the left here, John is digging the connection to join the two trenches. From where we tapped into the community water and sewer, the trenching was about 2 feet deep, which is well below freezing for our area. In the next picture you can see the connection with the second trench.
	Our local building codes did allow us to share a trench with electric conduit, telephone, water and sewer. Where we needed to combine them, the electric and telephone line conduit were placed at the bottom of the trench at a depth of about 4 feet and about 2 feet apart.
	Shown here, the electrical and phone conduit are laid out. We had about 230 feet of conduit from the power pole to the building pad, then about 200 feet going up to the shop. We used the water and sewer line trench to carry the shop conduit, which saved us some money on the trenching.
	Before placing water and sewer lines over the electric conduit, we backfilled with sand and then dirt. About this time we bought a John Deere tractor as we had a lot of dirt work to do. This saved us from paying the excavating contractor to come back out to do the backfill.
	One rookie mistake we made was buying a higher grade of sand than we really needed. This caused a few chuckles from some old-timers, but we're always happy to entertain! By the time Loren had backfilled all the trenching, he was an old hand on the John Deere. Shown to the left, our trenching ran across our neighbors' property (we have an easement) to tie into the water and sewer mains.

If you're looking to save a fair chunk of money on your kit home, consider laying these pipes yourself. We paid our electrical contractor a whopping $1,622 to lay about 230 feet of electric conduit and 430 feet of phone conduit (less than $400 in materials).

We turned down a bid from a plumber for over $3,500 to lay the water and sewer lines. Our cost was less than $700 delivered for about 800 feet of ABS and 900 feet of PVC pipe plus all the connections. ABS and PVC pipes are amazingly easy to work with.

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