Mole Plough - Flexible Pipe Layer

The key to any farming venture in Canterbury has always been the water supply and efficient irrigation systems.

Recently Gough Engineering was asked by a local Contractor to design and build a Mole Plough - Pipe Layer for a D6H.  The Pipe layer is attached to a long shank ripper and the pipe is feed under ground with the minimum of surface disturbance. Another advantages of the system is speed with the pipe being laid in about the time that it would take you to walk the distance. In this case it is planned that 20km of pipe will be laid on this one site.

Once ground levels have been established the procedure requires little in the way of planning with straight and curved runs being possible  by directing the tractor to pre-placed markers.  The pipe layer is pivoted on the ripper shank so it follows the machine without loading the mounts and with the mounting pins removed the ripper can also be used without the pipe layer.

The pipe can be laid out to the side of the tractor before the run including any joins but a coil attachment could be fitted to the blade with the pipe going over the roof of the cab.

The tractor and ripper being able to handle the ground conditions is the only limit to the system; in this case the pipe is being laid about 600mm below the surface. The rear of the pipe layer can be removed so that the pipe does not have to be cut to load into the pipe layer.

The attached pictures show the pipe being feed into the pipe layer. My estimate was that it took about 2 minutes to lay 100metre of pipe.

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