Over this past weekend I had the joy of needing to run 3/4" poly sprinkler pipe under my 4ft wide sidewalk on each side of my driveway. I considered buying the Sidewalk Sleever, which is a $100 piece of steel that you slide inside of a PVC pipe and then pound underneath the sidewalk with a sledgehammer. Once through, you slide the metal rod out of the PVC pipe.
$100 seemed a little steep for such a simple tool. My solution was to buy a 5ft long piece of 1" Schedule 40 natural gas pipe from Home Depot. I left the end of the pipe open so it could fill with dirt. I gave it a couple of taps with a 16oz hammer and then used a sledge hammer on it. It worked perfectly.
Once the pipe popped out the other side of the sidewalk I could twist it by hand and pull it back out of the hole. I now had a nice 1" hole going under the sidewalk and I could easily slide my 3/4" poly pipe through it.
I have seen people recommend using a garden hose attached to the other end of the pipe but I worried about washing too much sand out from under the sidewalk and having it crack on my many years down the road.
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