Needing some insights on a rural waterline project. Supply is a rural water company. Meter is installed. Plan to run about 2500' eventually. For now, aka Phase 1, I need to run about 500' of 2" line. This is water for deer camp and later some back up to livestock / wildlife waterers until a well is drilled.

I will trench with my SVL 75 machine. Plan to go 18" deep. I really want to avoid 21' glued joints. I've been reading about coiled HDPE pipe. I've spoken with 2 area plumbers that seem to be uninformed on this idea of coiled HDPE vs jointed PVC.

Surely somebody has some insights on the pros / cons of my plan??

What you describe is an ideal use of HDPE. The only thing your local plumbers would need to learn about is using the proper fittings to connect it to the rest of the system. It is not rocket science if you have the Internet to look up how to install it.

HDPE (Poly) pipe is great, fewer joints, flexible.

Drawbacks will be cost for materials. Brass fittings are eye wateringly high compared to regular PVC. Depending upon the time of tee you purchase, anywhere from 70-300+ dollars per tee.

What size water meter & what is your pressure at the meter?
You'll want to size the pipe accordingly to avoid too much pressure drop due to friction loss, but IMO 2" is very likely overkill.

I'd for sure do poly pipe. Tee off to PVC for house, troughs, tanks because easier to find repair parts.

HDPE is generally the term used for heavy wall pipe that has to be fuse welded together.

Poly pipe is the thinner wall black pipe you can get at a plumbing supply house, TSC, Ace Hardware, etc.

Both are more or less the same material, but the poly pipe is what you are wanting to look at. Thinner wall, cheaper, can be joined without needing to be fuse welded, fairly durable and used all over the place for exactly what you are talking about.

Make sure you put a few expansion joints in every 250 feet or so, you'll be glad you did later down the road.

Apache said:

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HDPE (Poly) pipe is great, fewer joints, flexible.

Drawbacks will be cost for materials. Brass fittings are eye wateringly high compared to regular PVC. Depending upon the time of tee you purchase, anywhere from 70-300+ dollars per tee.

What size water meter & what is your pressure at the meter?
You'll want to size the pipe accordingly to avoid too much pressure drop due to friction loss, but IMO 2" is very likely overkill.

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You can get push to connect fittings for $50-ish off of Amazon all day long.

I did 2000 feet of 1.25" SCH40 on a 40' drop a few years ago. It was a bit of a pain but the trench cut was the hardest part due to sand + chert in places.

With a 2 person team the wife and I were able to knock it out in a weekend. She drove it and I threw out 20' pipe sections off the trailer, then we walked it with a wagon and a speaker, ice chest, pipe dope and prep and a few joints and a cutter and a trench shovel for some clean up, and we got a system down where we could do a section about every 3-5 mins if the trench was clean. About 250-300' an hour. Not that bad. Because it laid down nicely in the trench bottom instead of having to battle the material coiling off a reel or roll.

I did run improved pex from the house to the barn about 250 feet but that was only a 3/4" line.

Kinda wished I did 1.5 for the first 1500 feet or so to where I set the first cutoff, loop up and access point but the calculation gave me 1.25 as adequate.

Ive used a good bit of poly in running water from wells to duck ponds. One run of about 1000' of 1.5". I don't remember the PSI rating but it's pretty thick. Only problem I've had is after a number of months, it collapsed on itself just before it enters the 90* to drop down into the well. It's solar so it stops pumping at dark. The discharge is downhill the whole way with a significant elevation drop. I assume what happens is the pump stops pumping but gravity continues to pull on the water that is already in the pipe and suction collapsed the upper end of it. It still seems to flow ok once it starts to pump again the next day but Ive been meaning to try to come up with a solution.

For fittings, Ive used brass, stainless, and the grey PVC. The grey PVC is obviously much cheaper and has given me no trouble from being in constant sunlight for 5 years.

2" is really large. If you can go smaller, it's going to save you a lot. I have a run of about 1500ft of 2" oval hose. That handles 30-35 gpm. It has lasted surprisingly well in the sun but its not meant to be buried. Also doesn't play well with cattle, squirrels, etc. The 2" fittings run a good bit more than the 1.5" stuff. How much flow do you need?

Also, my trench varies between 16-24" depth mostly closer to 24 but shallower some spots. I was concerned it wouldn't be adequate but had no issues during snowpocalypse when we got temps in the single digits a couple of nights snd were below freezing like 4 days straight.

I've run miles of one inch schedule 40 water lines on the ranch. I think the longest one is about 3,500 feet from the well and connects to two cattle troughs about 9' diameter. Another goes to several water troughs, a ranch house and several barns. The one inch we use has the belled end and about 20 ft joints iirc. Plenty of flow with one inch and I've never seen two inch water lines in Se Tx for ranch use.
I've used different ditch witch type trenchers over the years and got rid of our old gas one after renting a big diesel powered one. Huge difference and the bigger the better/ faster. Pretty cheap to rent one for a day imo.
No experience using the skid steer trencher. But a large diesel machine here can go a half mile in half a day probably.

Also ran 3 plus miles of 2 inch plastic roll pipe- Drisco pipe iirc to feed natural gas irrigation motors. The pipe came with rented electric pipe heater and clamp device to fuse it together. Worked great but patching a couple times over the years when a backhoe accidentally broke it was a pita. Used a small generator to heat the ends where it fused together. If you go with roll pipe, get emergency repair materials/ multiples. We did eventually.

For materials, Moore Supply in Humble, Tx always had the best price and supply/ parts/ advice. Some times half price of Home Depot, etc. Not sure if there's a more supply in your area but their sales department is good here.

I would probably opt for Sch 40 pvc, although as said 2" is probably overkill. 1.5 would be more than enough unless you plan on running lots of stuff at once. Installed lots of waterline in my 69 years as a contractor, and the easiest way is to do all your connection work on long runs up on top, next to the ditch. Prime it, glue it, give it an hour to dry, then push it in at your start point, and watch it take off pulling itself in the ditch.

I'd go schedule 40.Lay the pipe out, make the connections, kick it in the trench, cover it with a box blade and terminate accordingly. I have nothing but hill country limestone and flint cobbles, I am not sold on poly pipe for it. Over a few thousand feet of new line I don't want to think about repairs.

This. When we first bought our ranch back in 1991 we were in debt up to our eyeballs and money was very tight.
I needed to get water from a storage tank on top of a hill by a windmill to our little house site about 3,000 ft away.
Was doing it all myself and I was going to use poly pipe to save money and had started digging the trench with a rock saw (after all it's the hill country ). The water well man was working on our windmill and saw what I was doing and I will never forget what he said that day…." Son, unless you want a lifetime of misery, I wouldn't use that poly pipe in this here hill country".

i did the same thing. I just used the black roll poly.

had a couple of up rights for cattle troughs

I don't know why you guys all seem to be so adamant about preventing leaks. Don't all of your water leaks happen on beautiful spring days when all of the parts stores are open and the ground is soft to dig in?????

We have both poly and sched 40. While they both work fine, but I probably do repair more of it than the sched 40. Poly is probably a slightly quicker fix if that matters.

If you have gophers/sand, I'd stick with PVC.

For a house far from the water source, the best solution is to put a water storage tank near the house and pump from it w/ a booster pump to a pressure tank. That way you can fill the large tank w/low line pressure & a shut-off valve, and house pressure is more controlled/readily available. Other plus is bad water may have an opportunity to offgas/for sediment to settle some before going into your house. And you still have some water if a well goes out on a holiday weekend (although you said rural water supply).

Poly roll pipe is probably either LDPE or LLDPE, not HDPE as mentioned.

Rural supply is not more reliable. They drained line in Zapata county to reduce muddy taste, the Rio Grande and Falcon lake are 40' low, so it won't help. Took about 6 weeks to work past the air bubble between our house and the feed from the meter.

I'd much rather be able to blow the bugs out of the pressure switch contactor than wait for guv employees to come fix things.

I ran 1500' of 2" HDPE in a similar situation. Did it about 5 years ago and the pipe was about $2200 and all the brass fittings I needed were about $500. It looks like the brass couplings today are about 2X what I paid 5 years ago.

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