danako wrote:
Thank you all for the advice, yes I know the $900 was a waste of money
but we did not know what was wrong with the plumbing or what kind of
pipes we had. So trimming not an option, neighbours ahhhh love the tree
and its soooo beautiful, but they do not have the plumbing issues or
the lets clean thousands of leaves and peel of the purple flowers off
the paving.

well, the leaves and flowers are still going to be there.

The pipe is ceramic (old) and it runs for about 6 metres on
a guess, but removing all the paving and grass, is painful as its all
clay. Can we dig a trench and the put the plastic pipe within the
ceramic one?

Yes, if you don't mind money (guess $300), then 4 hour hire of a walk
behind trencher should do it. Question, can you drive a 1metre wide
piece of machinery into place?

Otherwise, buy a trenching shovel or two (narrower = less clay) and a
mattock (wide pick) and start at the lower end. You can excavate over
time. If you want to dump or compost the clay, then backfill with sand
or gravel. I think 6.6 metres is the length of the sewer pipe (or is
that steel pipes). The only thing I am not sure of is the conversion
from pottery to plastic and back again. Perhaps a lump of concrete is
needed there.


if you need more that one length of plastic sewer pipe, then you need
the pipe-jointing glue. Clean, wipe glue over inside and out side, then
push hard from either end.

To dig out a trench in clay, I preferred to swing the mattock and lever
out a chunck or few, then use the trenching shovel to lift it out of the
trench. Also, if you are doing it by hand, look at playing with water
levels, i.e if your clay is dry atm, water well before starting and dig
down to dryness. Stop when it becomes hard. Worst case is too wet as the
clay is really claggy and hard to get out. I actually prefer swinging
the mattock into dry clay than wet, but I have a range from mattock
(2")_to fine pick to match condition of clay.

Have fun. I think everyone needs to do this once in their life {:-).