By trade

Pipelayer and services

Opening narrow, laying heavy, closing clean.
This trade has one particularity that governs everything else:
people are sent down into the trench.

This trade also covers: laying pipes, drainage, water mains, dry services, land drainage, connections, common trench.

The essentials

Common classes: 5 to 20 t
Coupler: Hydraulic, often
Constraint no. 1: Time in the trench
Tools per job: Three to five

The typical machine class →

01 The trade

What this trade demands of the tooling

Shored trench in a village street, a pipe slung above it by an excavator, nobody at the bottom of the trench — The shoring holds the walls, the slinging presents the pipe:
nobody goes under the load.
Synthetic image.

The pipe is lowered slowly into a shored trench.
Nobody stands under the load: that is the rule everything else follows.
Synthetic video.

Roads-and-utilities firms and pipelayers often work the same trench, and the movements are not the same.
The roads firm opens the road and gives it back: it cuts the asphalt, excavates, backfills, remakes the surface. The pipelayer lays the service that goes in it: lowering, aligning, jointing, testing. See the civil engineering and roads page.

The difference shows in the tooling.
A road job is judged on what it leaves at the surface;
a pipe job is decided at the bottom of the trench, where the pipe is jointed and where somebody is standing.
It is that zone, narrow and never stable, that governs the choice of tools before any other consideration.

This trade has a constraint that no other carries so plainly:
people are sent down into the trench. Everything that reduces the opening time and the volume of excavation is first of all a safety gain, and only then a money gain.
The movement to deal with as a priority is always the same:
passing a pipe above an excavation where somebody is working. A tool that presents and releases the pipe without anyone guiding it by hand does away with that moment, and that is exactly what is asked of it.

02 The tools

The tools that matter, in the order of the job

01 — Opening just what is needed The narrow trenching bucket respects the useful section and nothing more:
less spoil, less backfill, less reinstatement.
Over a length, the trencher and the chain trencher give vertical walls and an excavation that stays narrow.
02 — Not opening at all The directional drilling rig takes the pipe under the obstacle with no trench.
It is the only answer that does away with the excavation instead of shortening it:
under a carriageway, a tree to be kept or a structure, it changes the nature of the job.
03 — Profiling and bedding the bottom A pipe is laid on a regular bed, not on a saw-toothed bottom.
The ditching bucket and the tilting ditching bucket grade the slope without repositioning the tracks;
the trapezoidal bucket gives the V section in a single pass.
04 — Lowering and laying The pipe layer lowers, presents and releases the pipe at the bottom.
The pipe clamp grips it instead of slinging it:
it no longer turns, it no longer swings, and nobody guides it by hand.
The load cell or load limiter says what the machine is really lifting.
05 — Closing up The compaction wheel moves fast along the trench, with no hydraulics and with nobody going down.
The vibrating plate deals with the special points and the bottom of the trench where no ride-on roller gets in.
06 — Giving the ground back The grading blade takes up the spreading again and erases the trace of the works.
It is the pipelayer's last movement, and often the first of whoever remakes the surface.

As long as the pipe is in the air, the operation is a lift, not an excavation. That changes the devices expected on the machine, the way it is sized, and the organisation on the ground:
a known load, nobody underneath, an operator who sees what they are doing.
A laying tool reduces the time spent at the bottom;
it does not make the excavation stable, and it replaces no protection.

03 Check

What is checked before fitting out

What is already under the line Locating the existing services is not a matter of choosing a tool, but it entirely governs the method and sometimes the type of machine.
A trencher is not started on a line that has not been surveyed.
The shoring and the width of excavation The support chosen imposes a section, and that section designates the bucket before you do.
Those conditions are given to you by the client and by your management, not by an attachment supplier.
The hydraulic functions left A pipe clamp, a tilting bucket and a hydraulic coupler each call for their own circuit.
It is what is left after feeding the coupler that decides. See the 7 criteria.
The load chart at the laying reach The pipe is not lowered at the foot of the machine but on the other side of the trench, arm extended.
It is at that reach that the calculation is made, the laying tool counted in the load.

Have your fleet checked.

Tell us the nature and the range of the pipes you lay, the usual depth, and the method of support chosen.
Tell us also whether the same machine has to open, lay and close up:
it is that point that decides the coupler as much as the tools.

Written study within 3 working days, complete file.

Tell us about your worksite Written study within 3 working days, complete file · no obligation

Other trades

By machine

Laying without going down

By trade

The same tool is not chosen in the same way depending on who fits it, and on what is around it.

The 12 trades

Agriculture Drainage, ditches, hedges, land clearing, handling.
Pipelayer and services You are here. Open narrow, lay heavy, close up clean.
Quarries and rock Blasting out, picking up, loading a material that wears everything.
Local authorities and roads Roads, green spaces, winter maintenance, weed control.
Demolition and recycling Bringing down, separating the materials, crushing on the spot.
Railways The tool is the simple part; access to the track is not.
Special foundations Driving, boring, supporting — before anything comes out of the ground.
Forestry and silviculture Mulching, felling, extracting, stump grinding, restoring.
Hire companies A tool that goes on several machines earns; a dedicated tool sleeps.
Landscaper Getting in without damage, working the soil, maintaining.
Recycling and waste Sorting, gripping, separating, recovering on the spot.
Civil engineering and roads Opening, laying, closing, and giving the road back in good order.