The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Techniques and skills => Topic started by: DIGGER on March 26, 2011, 11:58:37 am
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Hi All,
During the winter I have found that a section of my newly purchased land has become waterlogged. The soil type is peat and gets sandier the further you go down. I think the possible cause may be recent building work. I have been told by a builder it may help to put a 4 inch drainage pipe in and fill around the pipe with 2 inch clean chips. There is a drainage ditch at the side of my field. Can someone tell me what pipe is available for drainage and how deep should I put it. I have already been advised about ensuring there is a drop.
Any and all info/advice on this subject will be appreciated,
Digger. :dog:
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it is very difficult to give advice without viewing the problem
there are 2 important pionts with water you can help it on its way and you cant stop it
peat and sand is difficult to drain(without going into a long winnded lesson on what can and cant be done)
plastic wavincoil but the peat and sand silts it up also the chips get silted up after a while
start at your lowest point and drain uphill to get the run :wave:
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You might find that an old land drain has been damaged by the building works - it's possibly worth checking that out before doing all the work laying in new drainage.
I only mention it because we've got exactly the same thing here, land used to be fine but one bit is now really wet - I think we've burst the old pipe or caused it to collapse when we've been putting in new fencing :-[ I'm hoping that once it dries up a bit, I'll be able to dig down and find the problem, repair it and all will be fine. If not, we'll be digging for days and days to lay in new drains :(
The most common pipe is the blue ridged stuff with perforations in it - I've been told a depth of 2 - 3 feet it the norm. It should have at least 12 inches of chippings above it to allow the water to drain in and away. On the subject of the chipings silting up - I wondered if it would be worthwhile lining the trench with weed surpressing fabric to try and combat it a bit (but haven't looked into whether it would work or not - another of my 'thinking out loud' moments ;))
HTH & good luck
Karen x
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when the grants were available for drainage they used the wavincoil wrapped with coconut fibre this prevented the slots from clogging up with iron ochre and silt BUT it is expensive and i think has to be made to order there is also wavincoil coated in polystyrene eliminates the gravel cost but is time saving
what happy hippy is referring to is teram or geo textile fiddly to work with and also expensive all food for thought :wave: :wave:
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have you tryed mole plowing it?
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Thanks for the info so far but what is mole ploughing ?.
Digger :dog:
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I do have a suspicion that when our house was built that at least one land drain may have been damaged in some way so I will use the advice given when diverting the drain around the property. Looks like I have a bit of extra digging to occupy myself with.
Digger :dog:
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that is you giving us another clue digger :wave: some times the builder (to save money ) digs a hole to bury waste from the build or a machine (jcb)was bogged at that bit
only when you dig through it will you find out :wave:
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Hi is your land grass and has it had livestock on for a number of years?
Have you tried digging a pit and seeing if you have bad compaction.Sub soiling or slitting may help if you have.
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I have severe drainage problems on my land, it is restored opencast and its restoration was obviously boched as water just sits on the top, apparently the clay sub surface should have been rough ploughed before the topsoil was laid and this was not done. I have tried various drainage systems but the problem is getting the water to actually drain into the ditches it just sits there laughing at me! current thinking is to have a number of small ponds where it can drain into, but given the uneven nature of the terrain its working out where to put them, just grousing aloud, though any suggestions would be gratefully recieved,
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when an opencast site is reinstated the ground has to settle before any drainage can be done very few sites are rienstated
i fail to see the benefit of rough ploughing before topsoiling unless the wet parts were the haul road and the sub soil is panned :wave:
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when an opencast site is reinstated the ground has to settle before any drainage can be done very few sites are rienstated
It is 20 years since it was worked and was really botched, for instance it is supposed to have a gentle valley but as one side had a load of machinery and other discarded rubbish buried under it, that side of the valley has settled in a very uneven fashion
i fail to see the benefit of rough ploughing before topsoiling unless the wet parts were the haul road and the sub soil is panned :wave:
According to people who actually worked on the re-instatement the whole area was very badly panned and compacted but it was a rush job and the top soil was just spread without any real preparation, then it was forested however due to the poor preparation about 60% of the trees had died off before we bought it, this actually worked in our favour as instead of a conifer block we are left with wooded meadows, but we still lose trees due to the poor drainage