Moleploughing Videos

These have been borrowed from various sources, in the interests of research.

All the comments are meant to be helpful to the ‘next guy’ rather than critical of the ‘guy in the video’. However experienced you might be, a video of your work will always show ‘imperfections’. In fact, the moleploughing in all these cases was perfect because it achieved its objective – to get the duct in the ground.

Just a set of moleploughing videos with comments. Please comment yourself if you can add anything. Suggest another video for inclusion.

embedded videos sometimes refuse to play, if you watch them direct from Youtube they should work

Reel carriers sometimes stick or do not turn freely. Sometimes it works better if someone takes the tension off the drums before the duct enters the plough. In this video it looks as though the man at the front would be better positioned at the back, but probably the cameraman is actually the person keeping an eye on the back.

In this picture from Garsdale the same thing is happening. Because the plough is on a slope there is a lot of extra friction on the drums.

Moleploughing is basically this. A drum of duct being fed through a tube at the back of a slicing blade into the ground

With good soil, the operation could be as simple as this, but not really a one-man operation still needs an assistant or two at the back of the machine to ensure things go smoothly.

Moleplough attachments vary, this particular set-up is very well designed specifically for duct laying.

Most ploughs are not as sophisticated as this and require more active helpers. For example, many ploughs do not have reel-carriers and duct needs to be laid out on the ground before operations begin.

Near Ingleborough 2015

B4RN ducting being laid. The duct has been laid out and a single helper is at the back of a more typical ploughing attachment.

Notes

The duct has been laid out along the fence and is in the way of the tractor, if the duct had been laid on the other side of the vehicle then it could be less trouble.

The helper is not doing much where he is, the duct will feed itself into the ground. He does not have to have his hands this close to the feeder tube, where your fingers are in danger.

He is not paying much attention to the spare duct behind him which could easily snag on the fence or hedge, especially as the duct has been laid out on that side. He is paying no attention to the duct ahead of the tractor, partly because he can’t easily see it – again because the duct is laid out on the fence side. The driver will be keeping an eye on the duct ahead, but if it needs to be moved out of the tractors path then the operation halts for a minute.

Cowgill 2018

Another typical operation with many aspects of ‘not good practice’ Cutting wheel is not touching and the tractor is going too fast - this is ripping the ground up somewhat. And no-one is guiding the duct.

However with a little bit of hand work in arranging some of the turves before the tractor rolled back over this was a very neat job and was invisible the next day. In fact, because the ground had been ripped a bit, it disguised the ploughing better, a straight knife-edge cut would have been more visible.

A perfect result, but not quite as effortless as it seems. This was because the single duct had been carefully laid out beforehand and the field was just right in terms of soil, grass length and wetness. The tractor driver and helper were experienced, had worked together before many times and both were keeping a watchful eye on proceedings throughout.

Surrey 2018

A similar example to the first one. Another B4RN group climbing the learning curve.

0:26 Helper tells the driver to lift the plough slightly, so that the cutter wheel is at the right level. Necessary as the tractor driver can’t see the wheel. (Once the tractor sets off, the helper appears never to look at the cutting wheel height again)

0:33 As the tractor sets off, it’s not clear what the helper is doing, the duct is guiding itself.

0:37 The helper suddenly notices that the duct is being dragged along, and he appears to get another person to hold the duct end stationary in the ground.

1:06 Again the helper is doing nothing effective. He becomes interested in the camera and fails to notice that the duct nearly snags on a log. Also, if you look closely you can see that he is pushing the duct into the plough – this is pointless.

1.20 The helper is unaware that the tractor is nearly running over the duct ahead of it, and also the duct in the air at the back is getting close to snagging on the tractor tyre.

General

The helper could have been further away and to the side of the tractor and looking around at where the duct was in relation to the front and back wheels.
The duct maybe would have been better laid out on the field side of the tractor rather than the fence side, then it could have been well away from the wheels and less likely to snag as it will be on better ground.
The helper could have stayed in roughly where he is but tread down the slit from time to time as necessary.
The helper never seems to look at the front end of the plough to see how well it is cutting.

Ingleton 2018

Steve Foster plus his purpose-built plough.

Video 1: Someone is holding the duct as the plough moves off – there will be quite a tug with that number of ducts. Steve’s son (in yellow) checks that the cutting wheel is at the right level. The plough looks too deep - it is making heavy going on good ground.

Video 2: Many helpers mean they can all be involved and motivated, even though they may not all be necessary. In this case there were 6X15mm ducts, so it did need a couple of people to keep the bundle organised.

To organise the bundle, the ducts were loosely taped together when the duct was laid out – when the ploughing takes place, the ducts invariably get out of step from the initial taping, so it has to be ripped off as you go, so don’t over-tape.

Nobody seems to be looking ahead, but the duct is well away from the tractor and on the field side.

The three people guiding the duct should ideally be further apart, but it is well under control, so there is no real need. The volunteers are assisting and seeing progress, so are being motivated.

Someone is checking the depth and doing a bit of treading down. Steve’s son (aged 11) already knows the trade, inspects and does some patting down

Tractor is going nice and slow.

Video 3: Guy at the back of the tractor knows what he’s doing – he inspects the cutting, communicates with the driver, looks ahead, notices the duct on the ground will be in the way soon and waves to the other helpers to sort it – all in 10 seconds.

All the while happily ignoring the duct which is feeding itself into the ground.

Clapham

There seem to be plenty of helpers, but there seems to be a lack of preparation. The blue duct is being fed from a coil, which is very likely to get tied in knots or at least produce an unwieldy spiral to deal with. The orange duct also is in a spiral and haphazardly draped over a wall.

It looks like this section hit a problem and had to be re-thought through at the last moment, it isn’t all plain sailing. This happens to everyone from time to time.

Longsleddale 2018

Tony Swidenbank with son Liam and Graham Knowles.

This is what it looks like when professionals do it with a specialist machine.

Even on good going, three people are actively involved. Each person is alert and sorting things out before problems occur, stopping grass building up in front of the plough.

The duct is being fed from a reel carrier on the machine, so the duct can look after itself, they are paying little attention to it. The reel carrier is well designed - on a more basic bit of kit, the drum may need more attention as it may not rotate as freely, especially on a side slope.

Same machine, different view.

Machine is going nicely slow.

The method is designed for 3 people. Each person at the back is watching one side of the cutting blade and chopping any build up of grass. There is not a lot a fourth person could do

- Maybe walk ahead to check for surprise rocks, debris, holes and remove them or warn the driver. Especially if approaching a known obstacle like a telephone cable.

- Maybe check the intended line and tell the driver to go more to the right or left.

- Maybe walk behind and tidy up the cut – put bits of turf back neater, remove stones that have surfaced, before the vehicle goes back over the line for its final ‘pat down’.

Barbondale 2016

Tony Swidenbank again, with Graham Knowles

Neat job especially considering that the edge of a road is often very rocky.

Machine rides up over rocks from time to time.

Small rocks will not cause a problem and will flatten easily when the machine pats back down later.

Medium rocks might leave a slight hump and could possibly cause the duct to get damaged, but you take your chance.

Large rocks are extracted by hand and the resulting hole hand filled. Rock is tidied up on adjacent wall or recycled in convenient stream.

Dentdale 2017

Tony Middleton – The very first field that this machine was used on.

Machine going a bit fast, allegedly to keep it moving as it was a fairly boggy section.

The machine slows at 0:22 as it hits a tree root when the tracks start to slip, but eventually rides over it.

The plough will cut through small roots easily.

A large root may stop the vehicle.

Some ploughs have a leading spike in the ground at the front of the blade, this can inconveniently get hooked under a large root and get completely stuck, or conveniently hooked under a medium root so that it can be forcibly broken out of the way.

Cowgill 2018 This is going perfectly. Off-set plough going up the side of a gravel road. We have the camera guy at the back keeping an eye on the duct getting caught on the vegetation, and we have another guy at the front tidying up the duct, ensuring the right amount of slack and keeping it to the side.

The key here was taking the time to plan whether to go up the left, right or centre of the track. This decision probably took longer than the ploughing. You have to look carefully at the whole track. This worked better than we hoped in fact. With a made track, there could have been rubble the whole way.

What might have been an issue was that some of the track had a "weed stopper" underfelt layer. If we had gone down the middle of the track this would have have been pulled along. This would have wrecked the track.

Gawthrop 2016

The worst piece of moleploughing ever.

We were persuaded to try a moleplough attachment that was clearly unsuitable. You can still buy them on ebay for £500. It's the red one in the picture next to the attachment we had already been successfully using.

Graham Knowles with the Ditchwitch machine - a mini moleplough ideal for gardens. It goes faster than that once it's going properly. It also got through a fair number of bolts.

It makes a really neat job over good soil

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