Tiling---Lots of pics...

big tee

Well-known Member
Neighbors sold the estate farm 2 weeks ago and it is almost all tiled today. It is 240 acres that border me on 2 sides. They split in 2 parcels-a 80 and a 160. The 80 brought $7999/Acre and the 160 brought $7250/ acre. 2 different buyers bought it and hired the same outfit to tile it. It really impressed me the way they put tile in. We had a mom and pop operation but we had junk compared to these people. Most of the machines are about new. The tile plow is a Bron mounted on what started out as a Buhler(Versatile) that was modified to put the plow on. I guess it is still a family operation--Dad runs the excavator--Son runs the plow--Mom or daughter strings tile and grandson closes tile ditches. Hired help makes connections. Really NICE people!!! I rode with the plow guy and watched in awe at the amount of tile they could put in in a short time-the lines were over 2000 ft. in length when I was riding along and the guy in the plow never got out. He would pull the one line in and then back down over where the next one was going and the computer would remember the slope and low spots and control the depth. The plow tractor is rated at 550 hp. and they hit a rock yesterday that stopped it-broke the point of the plow. They were putting them on 50 ft. spacing so it was taking 871 ft. per acre. They ran about 200 ft. of 12 in. tile main down to the creek through me. Lots of $$$ but the old saying is you pay for tile whether you have them or not.---Tee
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Big T,



Great pics. It really is amazing to watch now days... and how much they can get done in a day. I watch for awhile when a crew tiled our farm and two neighboring farms.

Astounding difference from when I was a kid and mom and dad's neighbor had his place tiled... way, way back when they dug the big trenches to set the concrete tile into.
 
How did they put in the 12 inch tile? With the plow? My late father in law did tile installations. Way before lazers and GPS. Good old transit and targets, but he could run grade within a quarter inch. joe
 
What did they used to close the trench? We did some in early spring and left a pretty good trench. Another tiler uses an older disc with gangs throwing all the dirt to the center. That seemed to work very good. I put most of the pattern on 100' and some on 50-75 in the heavy soil.

You are going to pay for the tile whether you put it in or not. An older friend always said that he wished he had a dredge ditch that cut the coroner of the property for the main.
 
They have different size boots-the chute that mounts on the back of the plow-for different size tile. I wasn't there the day they put the 12 in. main in but he said he could pull it himself.---Tee
 
They used a New Holland bi-directional tractor with a closer made with 2 big heavy notched disc blades that threw the dirt back together-sorry didn't take pictures of that.---Tee
 
They said the most they ever put in in one day was 82,000 ft. Yea things have changed-very few mechanical diggers for tile around here. Back in the 40's the guy that owned my farm ran the lumber yard in town and when times were slow he would send his help out with tile spades and all the chipped clay tile and dig them in. They were supposed to be two spades deep but when the boss was gone I think they got shallow. When we pattern tiled it 20 years ago we went right through them and put them at 60 ft. centers.---Tee
 
Ny 986-we have lots of rocks in N.E. Iowa. When you ride in the plow tractor you can feel it shudder every time you hit one. They will stop you dead once in awhile and you either dig them out with the hoe or if they are too big you go around them.---Tee
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Tiling is so easy today with the good machinery and plastic tile. Back in the mid-50's an old Danish immigrant in his 80's hand dug a half mile of tile for dad. Soren Pedersen was his name. Hand digging tile is all he knew. His hands wouldn't straighten out because they had been wrapped around a spade or shovel for so many years. He passed away in 1958 at the age of 88. Today the person doing the tiling sits in a warm cab.

A couple of years ago an entire half section south of me was pattern tiled. I assume the tile was spaced every fifty feet. A half section is 5280 feet by 2640 feet so approximately 100 lines 2500 feet long were laid. The exact figure might not be that much or it might be more but that's the general idea. That half section had a few drown out spots before the tiling was done but this year every acre grew a crop.
 
So ...don't want to sound dumb,but why? What does tiling do. I'm not a farmer ,just grow a big garden, and collect old tractors. Thanks for any info Kevin in Central AL
 
Tiling gets rid of excess water and after awhile it makes the ground like a big sponge. The uninformed and tree huggers think it makes flooding and pollution worse but it is just the opposite. Crops don't like wet feet.---Tee
 
Grandpa Love,
We have a lot of heavy, black soil with clay up here in the Midwest. Tiling helps drain the water away so the land can be 'worked' sooner in the season.

Before we tiled our land... some years there would be a wet spot or two that my husband would have to plant around. If large enough, maybe plant it later - if a small spot, just let 'er buck and not plant that spot.

We went ahead and tiled our land too, when some neighbors were tiling their land - for two reasons:

1. If we did not join them, they'd put a "force" so many feet away from their side of the property line - which would create a wet spot for them; BUT our farm being lower than their land, meant that we'd have had all their water running over the property line and across our field.

2. Tiling makes it so you can do tillage and planting earlier in the season - and if you wish to rent-out your land, it really needs to be tiled. Those who farm larger amounts of land need to get in early and get 'er done... both during spring planting and during fall harvest. (And they don't want to work around wet spots at either time of year.)
 
Tell me about your soil. How is it classified? Clay ? Silt? Sand? Loamy mixture of the three? How deep is the black topsoil? Is it black just from the organic matter of thousands of years of decayed prairie vegetation? Is the light colored subsoil the same kind of stuff , just not colored from organic matter? I assume that the big rock was put there by glaciation, are there small rocks and gravel in the soil in any volume?
 
How does water get into the pipes? And where does it end up ? The things I didn't know,that I didn't know!! Lol
 
A century ago there were two guys in this town that tiled....all hand dug....Spring thru Fall...that was how they made their living for years.
 
Soil needs to be porous, to breathe, to allow maximum crop growth. Excess water does not allow that porosity. Sandy soil generally does not need tile, but heavy clay soil does. Earlier years, only low spots, potholes, were tiled, but research shows the advantage of pattern tiling higher ground as well, to enhance that ability to breathe. Tiling takes only excess water out of the soil.
 
Grandpa Due to all the tile the local BTO put in, he is out pulling sugar beets right now. On un-tiled land he would sink up to the axles.

I could most definitely tell where the tile was when I was out picking corn. Over the tile I was barely leaving a mark beyond the normal treads. No tile, same field, and I buried it and had to leave the wagon until the ground froze.
 
I'm don't know that much about it - but this was my 'take away' from the crew who tiled our farm:

Our plastic tile tubing is perforated so the water can seep into it, then water runs the length of it and joins into other branches of tile - then into the tile of the next farm... and eventually, I think, into some waterway or creek. (EXCEPT where the government says is a 'wetland' - you may run only NON-perforated tile through those areas... just to carry water away from 'regular' tiled land - so as not to dry out the 'wetland'.)

With the old concrete type of tile, I think that the water just seeped into the system where the tile sections abut one another.

Again: A disclaimer that I don't know that much about it. :)
 
Well folks, thanks for the education. For years I have seen tile comments on here and had no idea as to what you were talking about. I have some of those wet spots in my Houston Black Clay but I'm a STO and they just get worked around.

On the rocks, yepper sir you DO have some rocks. Mine will fit in your hand, one hand.
 
Bought 33 acres of land from the neighbor a year ago, got it pattern tiled this spring. Don't know how he could farm it without tile, corn suffered all year last year too wet. Was much wetter this year, but the beans did well. Put about $800 an acre into the he tile, very good investment, should make the money back in 4-5 years. Beuatifuk black dirt, just too wet. It had a bit of tile in it, but only enough to let you farm it not enough to make it good.

Been putting in 10-40 acres of tile every other year or so for 7-8 years now. Dad had put in tile in the 60s and 70s, but only a string into the low spots.

Paul
 
I don't think it's used much in ag purposes, but you can also buy cloth socks for the plastic drain tile. The socks are necessary when the ground has excessive silt or very fine sand, along with a high water table.



Around here, it's not unusual for there to be entire years where the water table never goes lower than about 3' to 4' below the surface, and we've had MONTHS where it just hangs inches below the grass!! Makes any kind of conventional farming virtually impossible in this area.

By the way, to give you an idea of just how much water we're talking about here, just the basement sump pump has pumped upwards of 7,000 gallons of water each day for months on end!! That's a lot of electric used. Unfortunately, with a water table that is normally so extremely high, there is often a need to have a pump rather than just letting the water drain off somewhere. Putting tile in around here is used to lower the water table as well as provide better drainage, so often you're trying to remove water to a river or creek that is actually at a higher level than the drain tile.
 
They tiled a big area S of Baudette MN a few years ago, hit a rock as big as a wheelbarrow, popped it right out of the ground! That land is for sale now, about 3200 acres. 100 years ago my grandfather put tile in by hand, dug as deep as 7 feet with a shovel!
 

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