The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Land Management => Topic started by: Pundyburn Lynn on January 04, 2015, 02:51:37 pm
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Helloooo folks -and Happy New Year!
Does anyone have any experience of serious land drainage? We're still looking for land and have been offered around 3 acres - this is a piece of abandoned land on heavy clay. My photo will not upload, but generally speaking, you're up to your ankles in water...
We are willing to pay a sensible amount to have the land drained, but is it worth our while? Does anyone know roughly how much we should expect to pay??.
Thanks,
Lynn
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3 acres heavy clay 4" of water = depends on the result you are looking for
To be able to walk on it without getting your feet wet in excess of £100,000
That's why people do not try and alter land, it's nature try working with it.
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Our land is sandy and level but close to the sea, there's a high water table, so it fills up quick and drains quick. We spent £4k on a field drain in 2011 - it's helped a bit but I agree with AndynJ, there's a limit to how much you can change.
TBH, I wish we had built a big pond now.
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First you need to have somewhere to drain it to. If there is nowhere to run the water your stuffed anyway
Then is it going to be excavated or done with a trenching machine? Size of pipe, drain spacing? How much gravel is going on top of the pipe?
My guestimate is around £2000 - £3000 an acre but that could rise depending on soil conditions.
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First you need to have somewhere to drain it to. If there is nowhere to run the water your stuffed anyway
That's our problem - nowhere for it to go ::)
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Hmmmm... Thanks guys - it's always worth posting on this forum to get a quick opinion or two.
The surface water could be directed towards a burn at the bottom (there's a slight slope), but it is very marshy at the moment and full of reeds/rushes. Might not be worth it...
Lynn
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If if was economical to do, then surely the land wouldn't have been abandoned in the first place?
Dig it out and charge people to fish... :D
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In terms of abandonment, the land is a very odd shape with mature trees, and this is why it was useless to the current farmer. It could be very useful though for smallholding, hence the original question.
I suppose I wondered what kind of figure I might be looking at, based on someone else's experience (rather than your 'ooh, it'll cost you' malarkey!). I am also intrigued as to whether there might be alternative solutions to employing a drainage contractor. [size=78%]Having read a bit about permaculture, for instance, I've heard that there's a lot that can be done with channels and ponds. Any wise old owls out there??[/size]
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[/size][size=78%]Lynn[/size]
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we had a field drained as a neighbour was causing a huge fuss as her garden - which was once part of our field long before we moved here- was at the bottom of a very steep hill and it flooded badly . after years of hassle we agreed to build a long drain (£1000+ 10yrs ago), and she had another built at her cost still on my land (probably similar in price) - both running into the burn.
there has only ever been a slight improvement but only immediately above the pipe.
the drain that I paid for which was a good 30 metres in length still lies under 2ft of water, and 30 cm either of the drain is bog. I probably should rod the drain but I never have.
to drain the field properly would have meant an awful lot of metres which wasn't worth it for the area of grazing it could provide - if you are paying someone else. if you had your own labour and digger then that's different.
to pay someone to do it properly would have been £10k plus and it was only 2-3 acres.
this field wasn't that bad when we bought it but I paid a farmer to clear all the burn with his digger and I think this displaced all the pipes and ever since its been really boggy.
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Shy girl, that's been really helpful, thanks!
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If you want to do it on the cheap and there's somewhere for it to go then you could just dig gullies. the only good thing about clay is when it's wet it's waterproof.
This time of year i have soggy fields and quite apart from the cost of drain tubing it'd be the many many loads of gravel needed below and above them. Not economic for a hobby farm.
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our land is also clay. it was a perforated pipe topped with 3inch stones straight to the burn.
our beasts still graze this land freely but they are familiar and sensible with it, and its just a small part of our place.
the investment needs to pay for itself and it wasn't worth it for us to improve it further.
im sure there were subsidies for maintaining wetland/boggy areas under a nature point of view but we didn't go this direction.
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If you are of a permaculture bent why not look at Yeomans style keyline ploughing the area to see if it would help. Alternatively make some ponds and drainage ditches and grow rice like Ben Falk ;D
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our land is also clay. it was a perforated pipe topped with 3inch stones
To be honest 3 inches of stone is nothing. I put at least 12 inches ontop of mine and then a geotextile fabric to stop the soil getting into the stone. Here's me doing mine in the summer (2014)
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We were quoted £10,000 for a main drain and herringbone feeder drains on our main land which is 4.8 acres of heavy clay & some peat. We decided it wasn't cost effective as various locals would only say there would be "some improvement".
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our land is also clay. it was a perforated pipe topped with 3inch stones
To be honest 3 inches of stone is nothing. I put at least 12 inches ontop of mine and then a geotextile fabric to stop the soil getting into the stone. Here's me doing mine in the summer (2014)
oops, i meant the stones were 3inch in size. it would have been at least 2 foot deep if not more at some points as the drain had to run down to the burn but the land had a considerable rise in it mid way along.
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Second attempt at uploading photo...
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Yay, it's worked! Rushes/reeds EVERYWHERE!!
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Yay, it's worked! Rushes/reeds EVERYWHERE!!
Looks like my land! Plant willow... lots of it :)
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Use the money you would have spent on draining to buy some better land to start with.
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Use the money you would have spent on draining to buy some better land to start with.
Awesome reply :thumbsup:
If you want to DIY on the cheap buy or hire a digger, build dutch land drains they work really well, I've put a few in just so we don't get puddles.
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If you want to DIY on the cheap buy or hire a digger, build dutch land drains they work really well, I've put a few in just so we don't get puddles.
Can someone please explain what exactly Dutch drains are and how they work?
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Do a search on you tube loads of videos on them, and different ways of doing them.
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Aaah, I searched google and it didn't come up with anything useful, obviously I should have checked YT directly - didn't think of that. Doh! Thanks for the tip!
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I have been watching this, to see how it developed, before answering. ( and trying to keep a straight face) I am not sure if the policy of not having an argument or debate at Dan and Rosemarys dinner table is the best solution to give genuine advice for questions raised on this forum. For Dutch drains replace with French drains then Google and you have all the information that you need and then sum. However I am not sure this is the way to go and be able to use the land productively. French drains are normally associated with draining motorway embankments where it does not matter if the land is undulating for the drains to be successful. Very little drainage is carried out now mainly because the 100% grants that were available years ago are no longer available. Environmental issues also prevent drainage being done ( one of the reasons that the water ways in summerset was not carried out was due to water voles population the area). If you search wavincoil or wavinflow it should also help and assist with your problem.
Good luck
Casper&smudge