Length is the smallest of the three things that decide it. A 100-foot run is priced from what the trench has to be dug through, how deep it has to go to keep fall the whole way, and where the water is allowed to end up. The same 100 feet is two different jobs on two streets.

What 100 feet costs to dig here

The survey maps most of Ogden as Urban land and rates it in its slowest drainage class. That is the expensive end of a hundred-foot trench and it is worth knowing before you read a quote. Built-up ground hides fill, old service runs and made surfaces, and clay reaching 23% will not go back into the trench as usable backfill. Stone has to be imported for the full run and the spoil has to leave. Ask any firm quoting a hundred feet here what they have assumed about both.

The reasoning behind that

A per-foot figure is the part of the quote that varies least. Digging 100 feet through sandy loam with a trencher and digging 100 feet through wet clay with a mini excavator are the same line on an estimate and not remotely the same day of work.

Depth compounds it. A drain has to fall the whole way, so a long run finishes deeper than it starts. Add fall over 100 feet and the far end can be a foot deeper than the near end, which changes the spoil, the shoring and sometimes the machine.

Then there is the end of the pipe. A run that daylights on a slope costs what the trench costs. A run that has to reach a dry well, a sump, or a permitted connection has a second job priced into it, and that second job is frequently larger than the first.

Ask for the quote broken into those three. A single per-foot number tells you nothing you can compare against another firm’s single per-foot number.

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