buring water line under road?

I heard of a few underground water lines were frozen this winter. 60 years ago, my father would put the water lines in clay tile before they were buried. He claimed the air pocket would help protect the line from freezing.
I plan on putting a water pipe under the county road using a Borzit. I am thinking I will use plastic tile or foam pipe insulation to add some freeze protection. I would appreciate any opions.

I've got one under a Class A road. It's been there since the 30s. Originally it was just 3/4 inch galvanized. It never froze,but we've had to change it out twice. The last time we did it,we used a trash pump hooked to a two inch plastic pipe to slide the plastic over the galvanized. Then we pulled the galvanized out and pushed 3/4 plastic through it. The big thing I guess,is that if we have to do it again,we can just pull the old one out and a new one in.

I do not know about the clay tile, but would put it some kind of pipe.

"burying"

If your gonna have it bored in just have them go plenty deep. They can go 7 foot deep as easily as 5 foot.

depends on the depth you plan to put the waterline. if you are putting the pipe in at 3 feet below road grade youll be fine with just the waterline. the convience of the pipe you want to use for the caseing pipe is just that. if something was to crap out in the waterline itself thats under the road ,you will be able to dig out both ends and just pull the old waterline out and slide another one in without the hassle of boreing another hole under the road .i actually did this for a living untill bout 13 years ago.. Hope it helped

3 fet below the road surface here won't protect it from freezing.

well, i do live in north carolina , i should have also said. depending on you regin and frost depth in you regin. would be simple to figure out just ask a water or sewer line contractor there regulated waterline depth where you live.

(quoted from post at 21:39:14 05/15/14) 3 fet below the road surface here won't protect it from freezing.

Click to expand...

Code used to be 5' deep here in north central IL. Cities and county got tired of all the roads being torn up to replace frozen/broken water services. Code is now 6' minimum depth.

yes it will help, just like standpipes under mobile homes. I've seen frost around the tiles they are in but the water still flows...

I put a water line and a 100 amp electric service under our road 25 years ago. Normal frost depth is 4 feet. I put the line 7 feet deep with no conduit. Never froze yet. This in central NY. I've alway been told that frost goes 1/3 deeper on plowed roads as compared to snow covered ground. We get max cold temps around 22 below F.

Doesn't the county road dept. have guidelines as to how deep the line has to be. I would also think a permit from the county would be needed.

At least that is how it is done in my county.

mmidlam,
Quite a few years ago, I made a blunder with our original water lines. We had them buried 4 feet deep, but used our TD 20 dozer to clear some trees off and grade a building site for the garage and garden. Well when finished the water line was only about 2 ft deep. That winter they froze. We tried to heat the ground to no avail. For a temp fix we run it above the ground til spring.

We pre assembled this set up. We wrapped both 1 and 1- 1/4 lines with visqueen, then wrapped that with R-13 fiberglass insulation, rewrapped it with visqueen(plastic) and put it in a 6inch corrugated(non perforated) plastic tubing.Sealed both ends with can of spray foam insulation, and buried it 8 feet deep, with 2 inch high density darafoam on the sides and top of the tubing when put in the ditch. Around here our ground will freeze 5 foot deep if walked on and 7 feet if driven on,atleast that was what the engineers told us at Dupont insulation department when we called them. With all said and done,we are good. The city of Rice Lake uses the 2 inch darafoam on top and sides of their city water lines on new installation to stop freeze ups, they are only 45 miles from us to the south. Pictures are what we did with ours.
Hope it helps,
LOU

Years ago we had one freeze up under the road that was 6 foot deep..here in upstate New York...when we replaced the waterline in 1968, we put 1.5" pipe inside 3" and also wrapped heat tape around the 1.5" and brought the plug to the surface. If it would freeze up we could plug it in, but we never had an issue with it.

I worked with two welders thawing pipes 6 days a week, 8+ hours a day, for 3 1/2 months this winter in the mid-Michigan area. We did well over 300 jobs successfully with no damage.
Most problems are caused by road grading after service installation (reducing the actual depth of the service), shallow installation, and no water usage for weeks at a time (people going on vacation). Even then, water lines rarely freeze as long as there is regular continuous flow (flowing water will actually thaw pipes).
We had frost in excess of 72" beneath most roads during this past winter, with most services buried no deeper than 60". Still, less than 1% of services in our area froze. Also, hard winters like this come to my area only once about every 20 years. So, there is no reason to knee-jerk your way into paying extra money for something that may not help you for another two decades.
My advice to you is to forget about the heat tape and insulation. Install soft copper (not rigid from the hardware store) like the local utilities use at a depth at or below the recommended depth for your area, and then don't worry about it. Then, if it gets really cold for a few weeks and you are planning on going on vacation to get away from it, just run your water while you are gone.

water lines always froze up where the traffic crossed it on bare ground or gravel roads. Put the welding leads on both sides of the road & it thawed right out. Was the only place in the whole line that would freeze up.

Lou, that's an interesting assembly, you'd get a real kick out of my fathers convoluted water line insulation, his means and methods etc. Its comical when you think about it, I've buried lines at his behest with pine shavings, some with insulation board on top. It takes all kinds and two "heads" are better than one, that's why I like this site, I would have never thought of using corrugated polyethylene drainage pipe like that, and I think that's the black material, I know A.D.S. and similar manufacture it. I've been around excavation and pipe work a good part of my life, learned something here ! I would have to believe that would work well in these parts, we don't often get a real deep frost, 'cept traffic areas, this would suffice where the lines cross those areas, inexpensive and if you have to dig it up, you have a buffer of the corrugated outer casing, which you could paint bright orange, back fill in light colored sand or place caution tape above it, any careful operator could work around that casing, nick a section or just touch it, won't hurt a darned thing, its a great idea Lou!!!!