Took a chance on that old drag hose setup my uncle swore by

I always thought his method of using a worn out 12-inch drag hose on hard pack was lazy. But last month at a site near Baton Rouge, I tried it on a tight spot and it cut my cleanup time by half. Still don't fully trust it on deep cuts, but has anyone else found an old timer's trick that surprised you?

2 comments

2 Comments

emery_black1mo ago

Took a chance on that old drag hose setup my uncle swore by" - you're right about the cleanup time, but that worn out 12 inch hose is actually better for deep cuts, not worse. The soft rubber lets it flex into the trench without digging in too hard. I ran a job near Lafayette where a newer stiff hose kept jumping out of the cut, but that beat up old one stayed put and saved me an hour of rework. Your uncle probably knew that, even if he couldn't explain why. Just keep an eye on it when you hit wet clay, that's where a worn hose can wash out the sides.

kaih361mo ago

That Baton Rouge clay is exactly what I ran into with my uncle's old hose. I was working a narrow drainage ditch near the Mississippi levee and the wet clay kept collapsing on my new 10-inch hose. Swapped to his worn out 12-inch one and it actually held the sides steady better because it didn't scrape the bank loose like the stiff one did. But you're right about washing out the sides in wet clay. I had to slow my water flow way down and still lost a chunk of bank on the second pass. The old timers probably learned that the hard way too.