Tile drainage

[chevyrules]

Sk Farmer3 has mentioned that he is considering tile draining some of his land. Will tile draining from low spot to low spot work as long as you have a natural outlet? Will the tiles eventually plug up? Would like to hear of any experiences and how if farmers are satisfied. What roughly is the cost of a half mile of custom tiling? Thanks for any coments

[furrowtickler]

I know a guy west of here with tile drainage . After the last three day rain you can see exactly where he has done it - no standing water . Tiles were going full bore the last two days after 2-3 in rain.
Don't know much other than that .

[Wheatking]

I would love to buy a tile, or get some put in. I am sure it would help with some springs/side hill seeps, and salinity issues.
Despite what they say at DU, you cannot grow a crop with 0 oxygen in soil with a water table at the soil surface. And I question those that say it would increased water flow for a number of reasons. One being the soil would be able to asorb a large rain, and slowly release the excess, that would be filtered and not take and nutrients and soil from the surface. As you would get with a large rain and it all running off. Another being that if a guy is able to drive the salts back down into the soil and get a crop growing again it would soak up a lot moisture than the salt desert that has been created by the past decade of excess moisture.

As far as I'm concerned tile is a win for everyone. Yet when I talked to officials at Sask watershed, they pretty much laughed and said there is no way tile would ever be approved in most watershed's in the province. Yet another arm of the govt is giving tiling clinics, and doing research at the melfort research farm and espousing the benefits.

I've tried to get custom guys in, but they are so busy in Mb they have no interest in traveling to north east SK. And to buy a tile plow would be a waste, as the time I get to do any work in the fall lately seems to be measured in hours, let alone the weeks needed to tile.

[grassfarmer]

Grew up on tile drained stuff in Scotland - most everything there was drained, most originally in the 1800s. It worked there to lower the general water table in the 50"-100" average rainfall areas on the west coast. Lack of slope was rarely a problem there so getting it to run away was easy. Even small areas of pasture in the hills would have 2" tile drains every 20 yards. In boggy, peaty areas they would sometimes be laid on top of wooden boards. These were clay tiles about a foot long laid by hand one at a time. We laid a semi-load of these during the 80s and also started using plastic pipe. Guys were just patching the old stuff latterly, and many not even doing that. My Dad was a drainage fanatic. Quite happy if I never see a drainage tile again. Not high enough rainfall here to need it the way I farm here.

[sofa.king]

Tile isn't natural so it can't be good for environment unless we tax it.

[farmaholic]

I realize the answer to my question likely depends on several things, but how long does it take the water from spring run off to seep away out of a slough? Obviously area covered(slough size) and depth of water and soil structure (coarse versus fine). Is it feasible to tile a couple of large sloughs and have the water carried away about half a mile in pipe that wouldn't need perforations, just perforated pipe in the sloughs. Can "sumps" be constructed in the deepest part of large "flat" sloughs to empty them? Therefore not relying on a network of perforated pipes collecting the water in the slough.

Desertification?

We have a 30 acre marsh we would dump the tiled water into. May as well use it as a reservoir, not good for much else. Quack quack.

Cost?

Will they plug with silt or dirt? Half mile seems like a long way to pipe water when your not "pumping" and only relying on flow and gravity to move it.....it better be done right or it might be an expensive white elephant.

As is with C&Ds....if you can't let the water go willy nilly....and have to control its release or hold it until the "adequate outlet" and down stream can handle it and you end up not being able to seed the drained areas with the rest of the field, or worse yet, not at all....whats the point of starting? Or the "works constructed"(ditches and control structures)are as onerous as the original water obstacles....why bother?

I bought all my land eyes wide open, no surprises. When there's alot of rain in a season or a winter with lots of snow...I may have to go around potholes! My problem not someone else's a mile, 10 miles, 100 miles or more away.

[Quadtrack]

I would really like to know more about tiling as well. It looks to me we have to get serious about salinity as the wet more than a decade now is ruining some land. Forages and perennials are part of an answer but with enough artisian water pressure salt pockets develop on permanent cover land as well. Strategic tiling to intercept side hill seeps could be very beneficial for the land. I know they did some research around Lethbridge to try and aid salinity and they determined the tile has to be close together to work well but improvements happened after only three years of install.
We have one quarter of pivot irrigation that really needs tile. There's 30 acres of salt on that field and flushing it out would make it able to grow about any crop. I asked Sask water about the possibility and seemed they hardly knew what tile was.
I hope I get that quarter done before I die. Somehow we as farmers have to be enough in charge of development that the Eco freak all natural crowd doesn't dictate all that can be done. The new drainage legislation took us in the wrong direction I think. Maybe not unworkable but we'll see.

[dalek]

Last we had done was just under $1/ft for 4" installed and I think about $1.25 for 6". About 1/3 of our land is tiled, go south of us on flatter heavier ground and it gets near 100%. Lots of guys that had been on 50 or 60' centres going back in and splitting the centres

[dalek]

If they're done well they shouldn't plug for decades, there's lots of pre WWII clay tile still running

[stormnorm]

This is a pic my tile land after a good rainfallmost were laid 1967 to 1982 on 40ft spacing.

[Oliver88]

Last we had done was just under $1/ft for 4" installed and I think about $1.25 for 6". About 1/3 of our land is tiled, go south of us on flatter heavier ground and it gets near 100%. Lots of guys that had been on 50 or 60' centres going back in and splitting the centres

Let's use 50' centres and 6" for cost example.
52 tile runs x 2640 feet x $1.25 = $171,600 per quarter section or $1072/acre.
1500 acres = $1.6 million

Cost is a big reason why tile drainage hasn't been used too much on the prairies yet.
Now there may be too many approval issues and restrictions as well?

For 500 acre corn/soybean farmers in Iowa with flat $8,000 acre land this would be a lot more feasible.

[Klause]

We layed about 900 feet of tile last fall to connect some sloughs. Hate surface ditches that everyone loves around here. Hard on equipment harder on operator.


Just connecting sloughs to the c and d ditch. No more sloughs and the crop came right up in the old pothole.

[Oliver88]

Sounds interesting Klause.

What was the cost to have that project completed?

[Rareearth]

How did you do your inlets Klause?