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Kingston,Mi | As mentioned, on very flat sites, sub-irrigation would require only minor additional items (head stands, a device to regulate the height that water is allowed to back up before over flowing into the next step in the system). Our state conservation (Bud Belcher) engineer resigned his position to research sub-irrigation at Michigan State University. It worked well for most crops, but is too slow to respond to frequent changes such as forage harvest. Corn, soys, wheat and sugar beets responded well because you could start to fill the soil profile after spring work and start to drain the profile of excess water before harvest so that you were working on a dry profile. Other than some what slow, it is water efficient and required only a reliable source of water and a small pump. There was an installation just north of my office that irrigated an 80 acre site with a 4 inch well and a household sized submersible pump, down side was it was rolling topography and had 13 head stands in 80 acers with 1 of them controlling a lateral of 50 feet. Not the most cost efficient installation by a long shot.
The head stand would normally control about 1 to 1.5 feet of fall, so if the tile were on a 1/10 grade (1 foot of grade per 1000 feet) and placed at 3 ft. average depth, the wetted horizon would be 2 ft. below the field surface one place and a ft. below at the down grade end of that particular site. Head stands have adjustable flash boards to regulate the water table, put the water in at the upper end and let flow thru the tile, over the flash boards in a head stand until the water flows out the last head stand and into your outlet. | |
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Drain tile question
