How much to dig trench.

[ProDave]

Job to do, power to a shed in a back garden.

Customer wants me to quote including digging the trench. Something I don't normally do, I ask the customer to dig the trench (or get someone else to do it)

But this customer (care home) doesn't want that, they want an all inclusive price.

It's a 15 metre trench, new build house, so probably just building rubble and 1" of topsoil followed by turf.

I don't really want the job, so I'm tempted to add

 

[Smilers]

Hire labour and pay them 100 keep 200 winner

 

[ProDave]

I like that. Off to look in Yellow Pages to find someone willing to do that.

 

[Sharpend]

I'd go to the scouts and enlist there help, it's only a bob a job(didn't say how many scouts supplied per job).

Seriously though, digging trenches is an unknown and back breaking. Although if it's a new build you might find that the toughest part is the first 6-8 feet from house the rest might be simple depending on whether the ground has been disturbed during the build? What distance too shed?

 

[ProDave]

15 metres from house to shed.

Where I'm planning to bring the cable out of the house is next to a manhole cover, so I'll be trenching next to the drains, so hopefully that will avoid hitting any immovable solid objects.

 

[Sharpend]

Dave you have checked the route of the drains? You don't want to be digging under them!

 

[betty swollocks]

Dave I had this once

The job didn't include digging trench but when I got there customer who was going to do it had hurt his back so he paid me 200 to do it for him while he went shopping!?

@10m across a drive( before block pavers turned up)

I went to pub round corner and asked if anyone wanted to dig a trench for some cables for

 

[SteveT]

yep - good labourer and have your 'finders fee'

I got a guy who will dig all day - enjoys it 22 years old strong as an ox (and as bright)....

 

[Riggy]

Slight tangent. Was once overseeing the digging of a trench for the alarm system on an explosives store. We knew that there was an HT cable crossed the route, but didn't know what depth. As we were discussing hand digging this stretch, an employee overheard us and volunteered. I set him off digging and went off to do something else. If I'm honest I forgot about him for a few hours. When I went back he was down over 9 feet! The trench was a thing of beauty, flat bottom, vertical sides, square corners, an absolute work of art. To the side of his (huge) spoil heap was an enormous stone he'd removed which must have weighed quarter of a ton, how the hell he got it out I've no idea to this day!

I congratulated him on a good job and told him to fill it back in to four foot. He was quite happy.

 

[Evans Electric]

As a Sparky you could probably put light fittings up all week long but a day digging a trench could do your back in TBH . Well it would mine not to mention my Electrician's knees so get a price from a builder's labourer who will do it in half the time anyway.

 

[ProDave]

Yes, that's why I want someone else to put their back out, not mine.

At our last house darn sarf, when we had an extension built, the builder sent a labourer round who dug the footings by hand in 2 days. Beautiful parallel sided flat bottomed trenches. They called him "JCB" but that was nice soft soil down there.

Up here it's all hard and very stony ground, and that's before you consider what building rubble may be buried there.

Anyway I've found the number of a local "handy man" I'll see if he wants the job.

 

[Revved Up Sparky]

I got a guy who will dig all day - enjoys it 22 years old strong as an ox (and as bright)....

 

[SteveT]

I thought slavery had been abolished !. Give the poor lad a bit more, he would get about

 

[a1]

Give someone a oner for cash.

Betty Swollocks, you crack me up, mate. :^O

 

[Evans Electric]

Cash!!!...Cash!!!! Nobody ever works for cash in the building trade do they ???? Thats a new one on me !! I never knew that !!! :C

 

[batty]

My brother does my trenches as he's a landscape gardener don't think he would work for