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southern MN | Just had 14000 feet or so put in, mostly 4 inch on 80 foot centers to pull out 3 sidehill spots, about 20-25 acres. Rolling hills, these are small hit & miss pattern tile plots. Some 5 & 6 inch mains to gather the 4's. Last summer I put in 5000 feet - wow was that nice to plant corn this spring. Dad already had miles of tile in this farm, but to all the low spots; now it's the sidehills that stay wet. I was looking on the USDA Web soil survey deal a few weeks ago, and found 1/2 of my land is classified as a water table at zero inches - yea it's wet clay.
They dug in 3 trenches to set up 3 of the lines, and quit for the day. The next morning, all three 20 foot long trenches had water running to the main line. Just oozing out of the subsoil & channeling to the tile on it's own. Pretty neat to see.
Got a bit of a sand pit, I've put a little sand column in the trench sometimes to allow surface water to soak down to the tile quicker. Don't do that with the tile plow deal of course now. In my clay, the water will move around without it underground. Used to be they spaced tile 100 feet apart - now they suggest 70 feet, and I hear of putting in shallower tile at 40 foot spacing as others mention.
Lot of art to the science of planning out & laying tile. You got to go to the upper side of the hill - wherever you stop on a hill, that's where the water will be. You can't stop in the middle of the wet spot, you need to go through it and past a bit.
--->Paul | |
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Would drainage tile work in Alberta?
