Originally Posted by
Barry_White
I don't know about being a Spring Chicken at 49 but he certainly isn't a worn out old rooster. When I was that age and building my house I dug over 300 metres of trenches by hand using a shovel and a bar some up to 3 feet deep for the electrical, water, stormwater and septic as well as the adsorption trenches for the septic as well as the hole for the septic tank 7 feet deep by six feet in diameter. Apart from the topsoil all the subsoil had to be barred with the pinch bar.
All this was in granite soil during a drought which goes as hard as concrete. The last three feet of the septic tank hole was gravely clay.
That was in the days before Dingo or Kango machines and I couldn't afford to hire a Bobcat or Backhoe operator. So it can be done in a pinch.
Apart from that I dug probably another 100 metres for a dripper system in the orchard.
Probably at the age of 69 I would have difficulty doing it but then I was young and silly.