Before you begin any work on the project you are required by law to call to have all existing utility line locations marked. This is a free service but they generally require a minimum of a 48hr notice. The actual name of the organization that makes the survey varies from one location to another by example in my region one are calls it "Dig Safe" while in another area it is known as "One Call".

You can call your local code enforcement office or any local contractor that does any excavation work, I.E. excavaton contractor, gas company, water company, plumber or electrician, and they will gladly give you the local phone number.

They will be able to mark the location of any buried public utility lines which are on your property such as your electric line, gas lines, municipal water, sewer or steam lines, cable tv lines or commercial gas or oil pipe lines. Generally the public lines are only in the easements adjacent to the roadway but such is not always the case. By example, my sister has a 60 acre farm and there is a 16" diameter commercial fuel pipeline running across her property from end to end.

Once again, this is a free service but if you fail to do it and you happen to damage one of those lines you can and will be held both civilly and criminally responsible for any damage that results from damaging one of those lines so I caution you to take this step very serious.

The line to the barn must originate on the discharge side of the pressure tank which if I understand your description correctly is in the house.

You should install a full bore type valve (ball valve or gate valve) where the line ties into the pressure tank or at any convenient point inside the house before the line goes through your footer wall.

The line must be buried a minimum of 6" below the frost line. Your frost depth is 24" so your minimum line depth is 30".

The line must pass through your footer wall and into the structure at the required depth and you must sleeve the pipe where it passes through the wall. To make a sleeve you first install a short length of pipe at least two nominal pipe sizes larger than the desired pipe through the wall and extending out 2" to 4" on either side. The sleeve is then sealed to the masonary wall by any convient means, mortar, tar pitch, expansion foam etc. After the desired pipe is passed through the sleeve the space between the OD of the desired pipe and the ID of the sleeve pipe is then filled with expansion foam.

Operating a ditch witch is fairly easy but they tend to jump around a lot and even an experienced operator will refrain from operating within 3 or 4 feet of the foundation wall or within 5'either side of any buried utility line. For safety these areas should be carefully hand dug.

Whether you go over or under the electrical line would be dependant upon the depth of the electrical line in reference to the required depth of the water line. This would be a judgement call once you have hand dug that area and located the electrical line or confirmed that it is below the depth you need. Also, in some jurisdictions buried electrical lines are encased in concrete. When encasing an electrial line in concrete they add a red dye to the concrete so if you happen upon any red concrete try to avoid disturbing it.

You could install a Curb box type main shutoff valve at the barn end of your line in the same manner as a residential water service curb side shutoff but these valves are rather expensive and if you have the main shutoff at the house you really won't need it.

Check the installation specs on your hydrants carefully. The actual valve of a hydrant is below grade at the bottom of the valve and when you turn the water off any standing water in the riser then backflows and discharges below grade. Genearlly they require a pea gravel bed at the base of the valve to absorb the water in the same fashion as a french drain.

Typcially we use roll polyethelene pipe for this type of run.

At the pressures permitted on residential water service a 3/4" roll poly line has a friction head loss of one foot of vertical static head per 100 linear feet. (-.434psi per 100ft). Your run is 200' so the friction loss would be approximately 1psi (not enough to be a problem).

The change in pressure from elevation is determined by the total difference in vertical elevation from the source at the house to the demand at the barn. The change is .434psi for every foot elevation change. In this case the barn is lower than the house so the pressure at the barn end is actaully higher than the pressure at the house.

When the line goes down then back up the pressure loss to the rise is offset by the pressure gain on the fall so that portion is self cancelling and the overall pressure remains the same at the load end.

Thank you very much lazypup.

Of course I agree with you 100% about calling the utilities to come mark their lines & will do that.
We had the lines marked a year ago when we first bought the property, as we were installing some board fencing. I took a ton of photos of all line markings as future reference, too. Will call again before we begin the project just to get a refresher.

I think we *may* be able to avoid crossing paths with the electric lines altogether if we run the waterline out the rear of the house, now that I think of it. duh.

Would it be possible to encase the polyethelene pipe in some sort of protective conduit as an extra measure of caution?

thanks again!

OK, discard the conduit idea, I agree with your point #3.

The advantage of PEX over polyethylene roll is that it can withstand freeze/thaw, correct? (I mean it shouldn't freeze, don't want it to freeze, but insurance is nice)

Is PEX tubing more $$ and harder to install/connect?

My understanding of PEX (at least compared to copper) is that the pipe is MUCH cheaper, but it takes a very expensive set of tools to properly connect to fittings.

Oh, yes, I'm certain PEX must be cheaper than copper.

Sorry, I should have clarified: I wonder if PEX is cheaper than Polyethylene?

That's a valid point about the PEX tools, as I don't have any!

We just bought a house and also have a horse barn and need water there. My problem is that I already have a hydrant in the barn which is fed from the house through 1" black poly-pipe. The system is probably about 30 years old. The hydrant head is screwed onto a galvanized pipe which is concreted into the floor of the barn. What were they thinking? The hydrant was dripping out the faucet end. I had a plumber try to just replace the hydrant head. That didnt' work, the entire pipe spun and would not loosen or tighten all the way in either direction. So we dug it up. The pipe is actually coming in from the opposite side of the barn where I thought it was. That means that when the pipe leaves the house through the basement wall I now have no idea where it goes between the house and barn - about 150 feet. Oh yeah, it's only about 30 inches deep. The frost line is 42 inches here (Michigan). My point is if you're going to do it, spend the money and do it right. I thought about feeding a continuous roll of 3/4" or 1/2" PEX through the existing black poly pipe and just continue to feed it until it comes out in the barn avoid the freezing problem.

Take a look at "push connectors" if you want to use PEX. They are a bit more expensive, but eliminate the need for those expensive PEX tools.

or check out renting Pex tools, probably more readily available these days.

The clamp crimp tool for pex is cheap. Not sure where yall are seeing its expensive. Its literally just a large type of pliers that crimps the clamp. The push on aka shark bite connectors can't be buried. Yes you can use regular clamps with pex but the crimp clamps are best for under ground. Several farms i work on have poly buried between 26-36in in Michigan and they have not had issues with freezing of the underground line. Usually the milk house water pipes freeze if anything is going to. Best suggestion is to be atleast 3ft deep if it has to be shallower then apply heat trace tape to it prior to burial and run the plug into the hose with the pipe. Generally if the first roughly half of the pipe has heat tape it will be enough to thaw the other half. The water will get pretty warm from it and then thaw the pipe farther down or you could set up so the farthest hydrant is able to have a slow running drip to prevent freezing as running waters don't freeze. Only have to do that if its going to be extremely cold. As long as ur atleast 36in you will be fine. As for the guy that has the leaking hydrant not sure why the down pipe wasn't being held with a wrench to prevent it from turning obviously the plumber wasn't a plumber. Regardless of what he did wrong there's a rebuild kit for them that replaces the down pipe rod and valve thats at the bottom of the pipe. The head is unlikely to be the cause of the problem. If you want or need to replace the hydrant I've replaced several by being sneaky and with the water turned off to the line turning the pipe and being able to unscrew it from the elbow in the ground and then having the new one ready with Teflon tape applied and gently pulling the old up trying not to wiggle too much so as not to cave in the hole that it leaves and slipping the new one down in. I've been able to do several of them without having ant dirt cause it to not screw in but have had a few that dirt was preventing me from being able to get it to screw in so I had a helper turn the water on a bit to push the dirt out of the threads as I was moving the down pipe a little bit and trying to start screwing it into the elbow. It worked out well and I was able to screw it in and no leaking from it.