tiling fields

So I'm farming this old man's land for free! all the ground is on a slope like up to 45 percent it's pretty steep but I get across it ok! Just no fooling around! Well thier some springs that come out of the hill and I was wondering how I could drain them he has a old excavator and a dozer I can run a excavator I do everyday at my job problem is I don't do dirt work I load semi trailers with it! But could I just dig a ditch and place drainage pipe in it and run it to a gully in the woods below And get the results I want! It's all steep slope so shouldn't be hard to get the water to flow! Or do I need to bury the pipe in gravel! What does it cost roughly per 100ft of filed drainage

In a way its that simple of a concept, but there are some details you need to work out.

That is mighty steep ground, even if you are exaggerating an 11% grade into feeling like 45%, its still steep stuff.

You need a smooth bottom for the tile to be in, not up and down, but a straight line. If the tile weaves up and down, sediment will fill the low spots and not flush through, eventually plugging your tile.

Weeping sidehills are difficult to drain. You are describing my entire farm, so I well understand weeping sidehills....

It is best to go across the hill, or at least diagonal down the slope, not straight up and down the hill. The water will push down the hill faster than over to the tile line going up and down, so you won't drain much more than a 15 foot column where the tile line is. If you go along the hillside you cut off the water coming down the hill.

As you make longer runs and join several pipe together, and/or change the slope of the tile to more shallow at the bottom of the hill, you need to resize the tile bigger.

When you dig the trench, you need to have a spoon on your digger that makes a half-moon clean channel along the bottom of the trench for the tile to sit in. 4 inch, or 6 inch, or 8, or whatever half moon for the plastic tile to sit in so it doesn't crush as you put dirt back in on top of it.

Paul

What paul says....go across the slope...too steep is not good- water drains out but doesn"t carry the silt with it, so it stays in the tile, eventually plugging it. What I install myself with the backhoe, I hand cover with a shovel, breaking down the trench walls til the tile is anchored and covered- then backfill with the skidloader. No crushed tile. Long field runs are plowed in, much more efficient.

We did a lot of tiling like Paul said to do. Try to catch water before wet spots. We usually ran two parallels one a little ways up the hill and one through the wet spots.
Used a Y fitting to join them to run to an outlet. If the ground is not white clay, this will work 100 percent of the time.
I know the feeling of 45% ground, but again it is probably 10 to 12% in reality.