[Pundyburn Lynn]

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

[AndynJ]

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.

[Rosemary]

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.

[henchard]

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.

[Rosemary]

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 

[Pundyburn Lynn]

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

[spandit]

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...

[Pundyburn Lynn]

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]
[/size]
[/size][size=78%]Lynn[/size]

[shygirl]

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.

[Pundyburn Lynn]

Shy girl, that's been really helpful, thanks!

[pgkevet]

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.

[shygirl]

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.

[clydesdaleclopper]

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 

[henchard]

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)

[WhiteHorses]

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".