Tiling thanks for education

Last night there was a post with pictures about tiling.i have seen posts about it before but had no idea what it was. So I asked! Thanks to everyone who answered my questions. And thanks for being nice about it. Lol. Always enjoy learning something new. Kevin in Central AL

My wet soils hold water. The soil types even describe the water table, which is above or below the soil surface by a few inches for some months a year. We can't really do septic systems, need a mound/sand system, our soils don't perk.

Great dirt, deep, 130 feet of clay based stuff. Rolling hills, the water table sort of follows the ground, sidehills bleed out water so they need tile more than the bottoms we found!

A person spends the time, seed, fertilizer, spray, and those wet areas only yield 1/3 to 2/3 of the better parts of the field.

Tile it and everything goes so much better, much more even crops.

Paul

(quoted from post at 06:37:32 11/15/17) My wet soils hold water. The soil types even describe the water table, which is above or below the soil surface by a few inches for some months a year. We can't really do septic systems, need a mound/sand system, our soils don't perk.

Great dirt, deep, 130 feet of clay based stuff. Rolling hills, the water table sort of follows the ground, [color=blue:df6a73d498]sidehills bleed out water so they need tile more than the bottoms we found![/color:df6a73d498]

A person spends the time, seed, fertilizer, spray, and those wet areas only yield 1/3 to 2/3 of the better parts of the field.

Tile it and everything goes so much better, much more even crops.

Paul

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Don't know about ya'll, but I find that fascinating!! Thanks for the info Paul.

After reading the thread, I googled tiling as I didn't understand the term also. Very interesting, us dry land farmers don't have a clue.

I also learned something... because I just assumed everybody tiled (except of course, in really arid areas where they irrigate crops).

I farm part time, and I also work in a public sector position which involves the environment and natural resources. I have had conversations over the more recent years with agricultural producers and I have also talked with various governmental agency staff. There are a variety of opinions out there on the benefits and the detriments to field tile. I could probably write an incredibly lengthy post on the topic itself. I would offer the comment that in our part of the country, with our heavy clay soils, installation of pattern field tile started escalating with the access to yield monitors in harvesting equipment. Following the run up and peak of commodity prices in 2012, tile was installed in our area in terms of miles, rather than thousands of feet. I will add one more comment that has fueled the installation of field tile. Looking at how and when we receive our rainfall, and the intensity of that rainfall, we no longer have most of our rain coming in showers and gentle soaking rains of an inch or less on rather frequent basis. We are in an era where we have torrential thunderstorms dumping inches in hours. This leaves massive pools and ponds on the landscape in need of draining in a timely manner, otherwise productivity will be severely impacted in a negative manner. If I was to think back about 10 years ago, and what my memories are from at least the 30 years I recall best, we had single, isolated events that came once every 15 years or 20 years, resulting in significant negative impacts to productivity. As I think about the most recent 10 years, these events have been more substantial, more frequent, and occurring practically on an annual basis. We have rivers, lakes, streams, marshes, and wetlands, which are all part of natures "storm water" system. These channels have been carved out over time based upon what the what runs off the landscape. We have single events of rainfall which are greater than the system can typically handle, and we have more water that must be artificially removed from the landscape in a rapid timeframe, so we have more and more water moving, creating more difficulty and hardship to those who live and work the land further downstream in the landscape. Margins are tight in agriculture, and by tiling we can help alleviate the variability in production caused by the changing precipitation patterns. Why I bring this up, is I feel we are in a "vicious cycle" of reacting to the changes in weather on the landscape as best we can, as ag producers, however it seems we are also sending some of those problems downstream, too. I raise this point because my family's farm is at the lower reaches of a watershed where water pools and floods due to the local "bottleneck" in the outlet. I feel we are going to have to really re-think where we can send this "storm water" once it drains off the landscape, especially since rainfall and flooding events seem to be more prevalent.

I guess we would simply call it 'draining' in the UK.

The term 'tiling' must presumably originate from where the drain pipes were indeed tubular clay tiles, about 15" long, and available in various diameters (2", 3", 4" and 6" being common) originally laid by hand in a trenches dug by hand, but now superdeded by the kind of continuous lengths of perforated plastic piping as seem in the pictures (widely known as 'wavincoil' in the UK), laid in trenches dug by machine.

The 'trenchless' machines pictured are of limited use in most areas of the UK, simply because of very stoney subsoil in most of the areas that most need drained.

The biggest advantage of the old clay tile was (still is, where they exist!) that if a pipe becomes choked, it's much easier to dig up the offending section, slip out a section of tile, clear with drain rods, and re-insert the tile section!

By the way, I'm an expert, from 30 years of clearing choked drains by hand!!!

Jim

I spent a lot of time in a ditch behind a backhoe in my younger years. About once a year we'd hire the local contractor to come in and dig trenches, and we'd install perforated plastic drainage tile in those trenches.

Sometimes it was like digging for gold. When we'd hit gravel or a spring, we'd follow it as far as it went as long as there was still "fall" to the trench.

This post sounds like something I read in Mother Jones Magazine

Sounds sooooo familiar!

Around here the land is flat and it was known as the black swamp. Tile have always been important here and now most type on 30 foot centers.