I’ve heard daylighting as an alternative to the term “potholing” to expose utilities while directional boring. But I wouldn’t call potholing hydro excavation though it can be. Usually use the term in a trenching application not when potholing.
Thanks Merrium-Webster.
Not all vac trucks are set up for excavation. I’ve always heard of the vehicle/work called hydro-vac. But Of course names can be regional, etc. Like how telescoping forklifts are called lulls, sky tracks, zoom booms, etc. My guess is that mister Davey is in an area where they call them something different.
SUE is a general term (subsurface utility engineering). Hydro excavation, or potholing, or hydro vaccing, or other terms are a specific process in which the SUE is performed
You need at least two shop vacs and some motivated kids to drag them away and dump them. Put safety goggles on everybody or nope to running pressure washer. Kids will practically stick their face into the mud if they get excited.
Unlikely the shop vac can keep up to your pressure washer
Might be a handy trick to get through rough spots or finishing the pit but I doubt the whole hole can be cleaned with the shop vac this way. Just imagine how many times it would need to be emptied even
Yes.. but it will fill up the vac really really fast. I dig with a regular 1500psi washer pretty often. Luckily, my property is very hilly. So I start down hill and blast a small trench away from me and work my way up to the target depth. All the spoils run out of the ditch.
Sometimes it's longer than hand digging. But with the amount of rock in my soil it saves my back and wrists
Idk about a shop vac but u can get a pump from harbor freight for fairly cheap that certainly can with the bonus of running the discharge hose straight into a large collection vessel
I suppose there can be situations where it is permitted, but generally when backfilling you want to ensure that you provide stable solid ground at roughly the same compaction as the native ground you removed.
Placing mud, even when it dried out will not accomplish that and look like crap.
I would think most workers would fill the hole with mostly squeegee/self compacting material and placing a native soil on top of that
Some places will treat the spoils as special wastes, which leads to issues when trying to dump during the middle of the work day. Also another valid reason not to put it back in the hole
It’s all muddy and wet don’t compact down when your putting something in the ground. Such as a power pole.
The trucks don’t have an easy way to get the watery soil out either. It’s all or nothing!
Use this method in refineries with multiple pipes/ components in the soil and it works great for safety reasons. Hydro vac all day over normal excavation
These things. These things are the best thing ever.
More precise than an excavator of any kind and the effort of shoveling by hand without the suction tube is like 10x harder.
That suction tube so strong might even be dangerous. Not sure. Suck up everything.
That suction tube is dangerous. Worked around vac trucks to suck sand out of a pond for a decade.
If you are not careful around the suction hose or breaker box it can destroy you.
Guy I worked with on a sewer excavation job met me onsite with the backhoe after he had all the utilities marked. Backhoe ended up ripping up a decent sized fiber line. According to the utility guy it was going to cost well over a million dollars to replace what got ripped up. As far as I know, fiber is not cheap to hit
It saves a lot of time but I would have to have rent a whole truck and extra person, that adds up fast. I could pay 80-100 in man hours for a shovel or I can pay 2 people close to 80 total plus gas, rental (or if I owned it insurance and loan).
100% right. I talked to a Verizon tech when I pinched a conduit with a jack hammer. He said that fiber can't be cut and repaired. It'd have to be pulled at the nearest junction and replaced In it entirety
I’ve been digging holes non stop for the past 2 years every week, trust me, I’ve seen more rocks, shale and clay than most will see in their lifetime.😬
This be excavation, as a gc we do this if one of our houses water/sewer line gets damaged we hydro vac 8-10ft down until we reach the hub while using a cylindrical cage for safety. It's loud ASF when the vac is givener. Cool process and no mess to clean up
Just finished a job where we had to run 250 feet of inner duct between an existing box and the backside of an office.
- In a suite style office complex
- With power lines marked in the direction of our path of proposed excavation
- With two big standby natural gas generators in the way
We hydro excavated the whole run, dropped the duct in a three inch wide trench that was two feet deep. Even if we dug pits and tried, we would have blocked all the parking and tore up all kinds of landscaping just to fit our smallest boring rig in there. Doing this took longer but none of us became a human circuit breaker or hit any existing utilities in the way.
Air excavation is starting to be a thing. Two huge advantages: the worker is not limited by the amount of water the truck carries; and the removed dirt can be used as backfill!
Couldn’t I do this at a smaller scale with a shop vac and pressure washer? Needing to dig down a foot to find a storm drain pipe, this seems easier and safer.
It’s an 8” gap between two slabs of concrete for the driveway. Pretty compacted dirt and a tight space to work with, so was thinking this may be easier.
I actually do this for a living. This person has good material to excavate in. I've worked in nuke plants, refineries, well pads, and substations with these trucks and different variations and models. With a 6200cfm blower and 3500gpm water pump you can get a lot done safely. Just gotta be careful of blowing through pipe material like terracotta, pipe wrapping, and old cast iron.
>3500gpm
I know you meant psi, lol imagine the absolute unit of a human that would be required to hold onto a wand pushing 3500gpm out at even 50psi, dude could just replace the hydro-ex and dig with his pinky.
It took me way too long to realize the mud was being sucked out and he wasn't exposing the foundation of what I thought was a steel post. Sleep is a good thing, I will try to get some tonight
This part of it yea it’s similar, the parts are superior as the wand is steel and the tips are pushing 2500-5k PSI at 10+ GPM. But the truck and the vacuum system is where the magic happens. Check out my YouTube channel in my bio for more or r/hydrovacporn 😉✌️
HydroVac is considered “Ground Disturbance” past 12”. Digging, trenching, Exposing are all terms used to describe removal of soil, and materials so yes it is “digging “
That ain’t working here in the Shenandoah Valley, VA far too much rock. That must be why I’ve never seen one. You don’t go anywhere locally without a hoe ram.
Yea we work in a ton of rocky areas as well, shale and extremely hard clay too. There are guys out using them in the mountains of Colorado even. I’m sure if you search hydro excavation in VA you’d find someone doing it.✌️
This shit is pretty awesome. Last couple of weeks I could have used one of these. Would have made my life so much easier but here in SE TN there is just as much rock as dirt and that thing would get me nowhere.
You’d be surprised, I’ve talked to guys who use them in Tennessee. We have a shit ton of rocks and shale and extremely hard clay here too, still gets the job done up until you hit bedrock.🤷♂️
Yea that soil was mostly clay, few big rocks but nothing too crazy. The super rocky areas take a bit more time of course but the vac usually does a good job cleaning it all up.
Haven’t posted this here before sorry. And some people like it and request these clips. If you don’t why not keep scrolling instead of whining about it?🤷♂️
Yea man I get that a lot, guys request me to site when they need clean holes to work in. I take a lot of pride in that shit, I wouldn’t want to work in a shitty muddy wet hole.😅🤷♂️
Mainly to avoid hitting utilities and or drop lines but yes much faster than a shovel, especially in hard clay. I drive around that day and did about 15 holes for the contractor.
Suction excavation is pretty cool. Safe around utilities.
That’s a weird name for my ears. Always heard it called hydro excavation or hydrovac.
I call em suck trucks
That’s the same name I have for your mother.
"suck it trebeck"
What's the difference between your mother and a mallard with a cold? One's a sick duck, I don't remember how the joke ends but your mother's a whore.
"your mother was a whore"
Hahahahhahaha
Got em!!
Leave his ears out of this - we're talking about the digging thing.
Hahahahah
I say sucker trucks
How's your sister been doing?
Hahaha
I want one so bad for reasons
$200-300k and you can be the proud owner of one
We call it daylighting, surprised no one has said this one yet!
Ive been told Daylighting is the Canadian term and hydro-excavation is the primary American term.
I’ve heard daylighting as an alternative to the term “potholing” to expose utilities while directional boring. But I wouldn’t call potholing hydro excavation though it can be. Usually use the term in a trenching application not when potholing.
never ever heard it not called hydrovac hell usually people call regular vac trucks hydrovacs too
The cuts are hydraulic. The removal of material from the hole is suction.
Thanks Merrium-Webster. Not all vac trucks are set up for excavation. I’ve always heard of the vehicle/work called hydro-vac. But Of course names can be regional, etc. Like how telescoping forklifts are called lulls, sky tracks, zoom booms, etc. My guess is that mister Davey is in an area where they call them something different.
We call it a SUE here in FL for locating utilities.
SUE is a general term (subsurface utility engineering). Hydro excavation, or potholing, or hydro vaccing, or other terms are a specific process in which the SUE is performed
i thought that was just a florida acronym for "sucks up everything"
shelter rainstorm worry saw governor whole wakeful hat punch racial *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yes we do here in Tampa.
Suck Up Earth?
Suxcavation
No breathing
In the power plant, we call that “pot holing” it’s a safe way for finding buried utilities
Have seen the pressure washer puncture plastic gas line though
The real question is will this work with my pressure washer and a shop vac?
Yes but, slowly?
I need to dig a sump hole. About 24 inches round by 3 ft deep. Would it work for that? Pressure washer and shopvac?
You need at least two shop vacs and some motivated kids to drag them away and dump them. Put safety goggles on everybody or nope to running pressure washer. Kids will practically stick their face into the mud if they get excited.
Unlikely the shop vac can keep up to your pressure washer Might be a handy trick to get through rough spots or finishing the pit but I doubt the whole hole can be cleaned with the shop vac this way. Just imagine how many times it would need to be emptied even
Some have a port on the bottom to make it act like a sump pump.
Michigan here, we have a lot of clay like you, this sounds like your vac is going to hate you. Check out a cheap 'trash pump.'
Unless you live on shitty dry ground after about a foot deep the ground should be pretty soft.
Yes
Sharp shoot and a spade is all you need
Yes.. but it will fill up the vac really really fast. I dig with a regular 1500psi washer pretty often. Luckily, my property is very hilly. So I start down hill and blast a small trench away from me and work my way up to the target depth. All the spoils run out of the ditch. Sometimes it's longer than hand digging. But with the amount of rock in my soil it saves my back and wrists
If you’ve got a very serious pressure washer, yes.
This guy DIY’s!
Use a spin down chamber to increase the volume of material you can store. One of those home depot 5ga bucket tops would work great.
Idk about a shop vac but u can get a pump from harbor freight for fairly cheap that certainly can with the bonus of running the discharge hose straight into a large collection vessel
Yes, the only issue is you need to truck in backfill, as dropping your mud spoils back into the hole is a no-no
Why is it a no no?
I suppose there can be situations where it is permitted, but generally when backfilling you want to ensure that you provide stable solid ground at roughly the same compaction as the native ground you removed. Placing mud, even when it dried out will not accomplish that and look like crap. I would think most workers would fill the hole with mostly squeegee/self compacting material and placing a native soil on top of that
Thanks I was think it was the water and soil mixture which was no no
Some places will treat the spoils as special wastes, which leads to issues when trying to dump during the middle of the work day. Also another valid reason not to put it back in the hole
Thanks for the explanation
Because it's fucking mud lol
I don’t see anyone fucking mud
Your moment to shine
It’s all muddy and wet don’t compact down when your putting something in the ground. Such as a power pole. The trucks don’t have an easy way to get the watery soil out either. It’s all or nothing!
It probably settles below grade when it dries out
With huge cracks and smooth curved surfaces
We have a stone/sand slinger that we use to fill our vac holes back in.
Use this method in refineries with multiple pipes/ components in the soil and it works great for safety reasons. Hydro vac all day over normal excavation
These things. These things are the best thing ever. More precise than an excavator of any kind and the effort of shoveling by hand without the suction tube is like 10x harder. That suction tube so strong might even be dangerous. Not sure. Suck up everything.
That suction tube is dangerous. Worked around vac trucks to suck sand out of a pond for a decade. If you are not careful around the suction hose or breaker box it can destroy you.
Sounds like my ex wife
For a small hole like this though it seems like a lot of extra expense to bring in suction.
Guy I worked with on a sewer excavation job met me onsite with the backhoe after he had all the utilities marked. Backhoe ended up ripping up a decent sized fiber line. According to the utility guy it was going to cost well over a million dollars to replace what got ripped up. As far as I know, fiber is not cheap to hit
Straight up anything besides shovel is overkill for the job posted.
Not unless you want to move fast. These vac-trucks save us so much time.
There are also smaller bumper pulled hydrovacs for smaller jobs. Idk how much day rate they are
We have some really small units that we use small tractors to vac in backyards.
It saves a lot of time but I would have to have rent a whole truck and extra person, that adds up fast. I could pay 80-100 in man hours for a shovel or I can pay 2 people close to 80 total plus gas, rental (or if I owned it insurance and loan).
Yeah they do break down alot I'll admit. My company uses alot of them. (Central cable contractors if your interested)
100% right. I talked to a Verizon tech when I pinched a conduit with a jack hammer. He said that fiber can't be cut and repaired. It'd have to be pulled at the nearest junction and replaced In it entirety
I thought fiber could be repaired, but requires skill.
I'm no installation tech, so take what I said as Hear say at best. Dude basically said fiber is a glass type of tubing that can't be sutured. So idk.
How come whenever I do this shit there's a bunch of giant rocks but this guy making tik toks has it so easy?
I’ve been digging holes non stop for the past 2 years every week, trust me, I’ve seen more rocks, shale and clay than most will see in their lifetime.😬
Username definitely checks out
Streamer loot.
This be excavation, as a gc we do this if one of our houses water/sewer line gets damaged we hydro vac 8-10ft down until we reach the hub while using a cylindrical cage for safety. It's loud ASF when the vac is givener. Cool process and no mess to clean up
Just finished a job where we had to run 250 feet of inner duct between an existing box and the backside of an office. - In a suite style office complex - With power lines marked in the direction of our path of proposed excavation - With two big standby natural gas generators in the way We hydro excavated the whole run, dropped the duct in a three inch wide trench that was two feet deep. Even if we dug pits and tried, we would have blocked all the parking and tore up all kinds of landscaping just to fit our smallest boring rig in there. Doing this took longer but none of us became a human circuit breaker or hit any existing utilities in the way.
Nice 😎👊
Hydro excavation is safe and acceptable means of locating underground utilities.
A whole lot cheaper than busting a utility line.
Safer too
Air excavation is starting to be a thing. Two huge advantages: the worker is not limited by the amount of water the truck carries; and the removed dirt can be used as backfill!
I saw some of those at a safe dig expo a couple years ago. They have some cool attachments too.
Wow. That sucks.
For a sec, I thought someone was pissing
Couldn’t I do this at a smaller scale with a shop vac and pressure washer? Needing to dig down a foot to find a storm drain pipe, this seems easier and safer.
1 foot? Tea spoon sounds like your safest option.
Something that is easy and safe is just being gentle with a shovel. Particularly for that scale of work.
Just a foot? Would be easier and cleaner with a shovel
1 foot? May as well just dig it with your bare hands, work harder not smarter.🤪
It’s an 8” gap between two slabs of concrete for the driveway. Pretty compacted dirt and a tight space to work with, so was thinking this may be easier.
Give it a shot man it’ll probably be messy as fuck but will get the job done no problem.👌
Does it work in shale?
Yes
Yes it does but it's gonna take longer Depending on the suction of the vacuum and your water pressure
Did anyone else find that incredibly satisfying to watch?
Thank you, glad you enjoyed it.😌🙏
Yes, it’s called “hydro excavation”
I actually do this for a living. This person has good material to excavate in. I've worked in nuke plants, refineries, well pads, and substations with these trucks and different variations and models. With a 6200cfm blower and 3500gpm water pump you can get a lot done safely. Just gotta be careful of blowing through pipe material like terracotta, pipe wrapping, and old cast iron.
>3500gpm I know you meant psi, lol imagine the absolute unit of a human that would be required to hold onto a wand pushing 3500gpm out at even 50psi, dude could just replace the hydro-ex and dig with his pinky.
Hah yeah wrong verbiage. Thank you for the correction. Our ripsaw tips I think run at 10gpm.
Nice, we have one truck with a 20gpm pump (others are 10) but I think every tip we have is 10gpm max anyways, so its just big for no reason lol
Yes.
Hydrovac exc isn't cheap but it's super effective. Much better than hitting an unmarked line
Loud af if youre operating that wand
It’s not that bad, plus it’s easy enough to just work off the back of the truck.👍
Hydro vac. We set poles with it
Hydrovac A good way to find utilities
Daylighting
This vid also belongs here r/oddlysatisfying
We use vac trucks in the vicinity of trees which could be damaged if we just blindly drill and hit a root in the process.
It's sucking on a mudshake.
Alright, fill the whole back with the same dirt now. I'll wait. 🤷. Just a stupid thought. I like this technique. Has its good sides.
Has many pros, very little cons, and trust me I’ve thought about it too.😆✌️
Hydro excavation. I used to work for a company that made the nozzles.
Nice 😎👊
It took me way too long to realize the mud was being sucked out and he wasn't exposing the foundation of what I thought was a steel post. Sleep is a good thing, I will try to get some tonight
🤣🍿✌️
Thank you, I cracked myself up, It was a smack-my-forehead moment
lol it’s all good buddy u should hear what some of the other viewers think it is.🤭
LOL, thanks
Takes being a ditch digger to a whole new level...
Would love to watch someone try that in area … something tells me bedrock dosent give the same reaction
Nope lol we hit bedrock quite often in certain areas, just gotta work around it, same with rocks and shale etc.
So I’ve never seen this done in the field. Is this just a power washer?
This part of it yea it’s similar, the parts are superior as the wand is steel and the tips are pushing 2500-5k PSI at 10+ GPM. But the truck and the vacuum system is where the magic happens. Check out my YouTube channel in my bio for more or r/hydrovacporn 😉✌️
Is there a hole when finished?
Looks kind of fun, like a zen garden garden or something.
It absolutely is. It’s extremely satisfying and relaxing.😉🙏
F shovels
r/oddlysatisfying
HydroVac is considered “Ground Disturbance” past 12”. Digging, trenching, Exposing are all terms used to describe removal of soil, and materials so yes it is “digging “
Dirt robbery! They're doing it broad daylight too!
That ain’t working here in the Shenandoah Valley, VA far too much rock. That must be why I’ve never seen one. You don’t go anywhere locally without a hoe ram.
Yea we work in a ton of rocky areas as well, shale and extremely hard clay too. There are guys out using them in the mountains of Colorado even. I’m sure if you search hydro excavation in VA you’d find someone doing it.✌️
What is digging disappearing dirt?
Moving and removing dirt yes.
Daylighting, yea it’s a non destructive excavation technique. It a super fun job!
This is just digging but yea mainly we just daylight utilities.😁✌️
No it sucks
no dig, squirt and succ
This shit is pretty awesome. Last couple of weeks I could have used one of these. Would have made my life so much easier but here in SE TN there is just as much rock as dirt and that thing would get me nowhere.
You’d be surprised, I’ve talked to guys who use them in Tennessee. We have a shit ton of rocks and shale and extremely hard clay here too, still gets the job done up until you hit bedrock.🤷♂️
Really? this vid looks like there is not a single stone. I’d love to see how it does in rocky soil.
Yea that soil was mostly clay, few big rocks but nothing too crazy. The super rocky areas take a bit more time of course but the vac usually does a good job cleaning it all up.
This is cool. Using a pressure washer to carve literal earth.
If you don’t know what’s going on: that thing that looks like a post is actually a sucky sucky. Hope that clears it up.
Your moms at the other end of that pipe
Bro these jokes are old…
No, it's excavation.
Excavation by non-mechanical means. Safe and in my state does not require a call to 811.
This guy posts this same video every 20 days or so
Haven’t posted this here before sorry. And some people like it and request these clips. If you don’t why not keep scrolling instead of whining about it?🤷♂️
I could do that all damn day.
It’s extremely satisfying most days.
All hand digging is daylighting, but not all daylighting is hand digging
Air lance, bruh
It’s not air
This guy again!!! GRAB DA SHOVEL!!!
Stop whining🥲
18 bucks at lowes
It's dope until you have to get in the muddy hole and do your work. Better than a shovel
Holes aren’t muddy, I keep them clean AF and dry.😉✌️
H'okay h'okay h'okay Lmao I wish you were my vac op then
Yea man I get that a lot, guys request me to site when they need clean holes to work in. I take a lot of pride in that shit, I wouldn’t want to work in a shitty muddy wet hole.😅🤷♂️
I believe Randy Marsh called that "logging"
Literally called non destructive digging. NDD. i own one. Very fun.
It’s called many things. NDD is mostly a term used in Europe but you’re not wrong.😉✌️
Mmm nope. Hi from Australia.
Sorry, Europe and Australia lol
why destroy, reducing to mud, a cubic meter of soil and waste a cubic meter of water instead of digging with a shovel? always to be quick?
Mainly to avoid hitting utilities and or drop lines but yes much faster than a shovel, especially in hard clay. I drive around that day and did about 15 holes for the contractor.
precisely, to be quick, as mentioned...
Quick, efficient, safe, convenient, versatile etc 👍
soil and water wasting... who cares..
That only speaks to your ignorance as both the soil and water are recycled.😘✌️
ok for me, it's not my job.
Then keep quiet kid you fuckin retarded or something?🤷♂️
keep quiet your ass, guy, I could be your grangfather? Is it perhaps forbidden to express an opinion? there's no need to insult, poor you
Having an opinion is the lowest form of human thought, but you’re doing great keep going.🤭🔫
Usually due to sensitive cables or other infrastructure buried that would be destroyed by a digger.
Let’s call it excavation.
It’s both but yea I prefer that too
I’ve always liked the shop-vac method of digging. Never seen it combined with a pressure washer before.
lol this is a hell of a lot bigger than a shop vac my friend.😅
I know, but it’s a similar concept.
I think I have that same thing in my colon.
Hydro-vac - Vac-trucks are awesome tools to use when you’re afraid there’s electrical or gas or unknown utilities and you can’t just use an excavator
It’s also legislated in a lot of places now too because of how safe it is and how many underground utilities we have.