draining a wet spot in field

i have a wet spot in my field i would like to put some drainage tile in its about 200ft x40 and starts at the edge of the field toward the center never done any tiles/black plastic pipe before any ideas on how to correctly lay some of this thanks RICK

First you will need to find a outlet, a place to drain to. Is there any other tile or a ditch in the area? This outlet will need to be lower that the area you want to drain. This can be determined with a transit, or it may be obvious. Do you have a backhoe or access to one? It is back breaking work to do by hand! Keep in mind the tile should be at least 24"- 30" underground. If not it will not drain as big of area if it is to close to the top. Another thing to keep in mind throughout the project is water runs down hill.

If it is a seep go up the hill above the seep far enough to get your tile as deep as you want and lay your tile just barely below the water level where it comes out of the ground. If you go thru the seep you won,t get it all. If it is just a low spot you can go thru the wet spot with the tile.

Call Norvin Brown. I think he is from Lennox IA.

First you need to get the ok from NRCS. Big penalties if they catch you tiling something you shouldn't be. Wetlands are far more important than farmers.

Then, where will you drian the water to? Dump it on your neighbors, or you got a ditch to take it to? The outlet of the tile needs to be lower than the beginning of the tile. Water doesn't run uphill.

Different size tile, 4 inch to 8 inch is common for a lot of things. If you ever will hook up more tile, don't go too small. If this is all that will ever be drained by this, 4 inch should be fine.

It needs at least 24 inches of dirt on top of it, putting it about 3 feet deep is common.

Call for the utilities, so you don't run into a fiber optic or gas line or electric line.

Dig your trench, need a nice groove in the bootm, to support the tile, if it's flat bottom the tille will deform into a D shape & possibly crush. Trencher or plow machines make this; backhoe you need to weld on a blade on a couple teeth or work hard with a shovel.

Hand shovel some dirt on top of the tile, so you don't crush it wilth a loader full, or a rock, or ice chunk. You can use a tractor to fill up the trench; but get a little dirt on top gentley by hand so you don't crush it with the first dump.

You need a very, very shallow drop of the tile from the beginning of it to the outlet. Water doesn't run up hill. Hard to do that with a backhoe, tend to get bumps & waves. With talent or time, it can be done.

Often the wet spot starts a ways away from where you get stuck - be sure to tile enough ground, not _only_ the wetest area. Need to go past it, to collect the water before it gets most saturated.

--->Paul

David Grandfield in Union County Iowa does that too. Lorimor address.

Is it a spring fed wet spot? A low spot with the water table near the surface? Or water ponding ontop of a layer of clay?

A spot this small, why not try subsoiling it or hire a neighbor with a deep v ripper and work it as deep as you can. May just need to break up the hardpan... Gene

You"ve obviously never heard of the "uphill tilers"! Neighborhood joke about a tiling outfit that could tile anything as long as water ran uphill. They "forgot" one pothole when they did mine in "83. Dec "83 was when the Feds put the kabosh on any tile system not yet started- been impossible to get approval for any new ground since then, even difficult in some areas to get repairs approved on existing systems. Pattern tiling gets approved for old established fields that do not involve farmed wetlands, yet I have land with a 50 year crop history, but cannot tile because it is peat ground, and the god found carcasses of aquatic plants.

Yea, I know. 50% of this farm was pasture medow when dad got it, too wet to farm. Some really good black soil for crops, but I need to tread carefully to get anything done. Tiled some this fall, hope to do more this spring. It's going to get much tougher, soon, I believe. Part of what I tiled was a very tiny, 1/2 acre seeping spring - farmed it every year, but you often saw it was planted later, or had crop on it until it froze. I was kinda nervious on that one, but passed.

I was thinking it was a little later 'here' when things got tough, but it might have been 1983. One of the few things dad was progressive about, getting tiling done back in the 50s & 60s.

Bought the neighobring 40 a couple years ago, it has a wetlands of 4 acres or so; it has 7 acres of farmed ground that is kinda damp, and the rest is tiled. Dern fool I bought it from had it checked out for wetlands be4 he sold, and so all 11 acres is now considered confirmed wetlands because it was all grass for someone to feed their horses. If he woulda left it alone, & I coulda farmed it a few years, would have been a lot less 'wetlands' and I mighta been able to do something with it. Heck, tile and an inlet go into the 'confirmed wetlands' area, should be converted farmland, not wetlands. Oh well, I guess that's why I got it for less than prime ag land $$$..... They tell me I can do anything with it for farming or grazing, other than drain it. So, I make hay every year, there was one dead tree about an inch diameter, for sure keeping the trees off it or they will grab it for trees in addition to wetlands! About 2 acres of it I'm cropping.

The average joe has no idea the hoops we are jumping through any more to try to make some food for them.

--->Paul

Add more water,ASC might pay you from a WET Lands?????

As others have said, make darn sure what you want to do is legal, before investing a dime in anything. There have been instances in this area where wetlands have been allowed to be relocated, but more so for things like road construction, than for the benefit of farmers and ranchers. A close neighbor put in a new pivot about fifteen years ago, with an intermittent wetland within the boundaries of the circle, but close to the edge. It would have been a pretty simple and inexpensive project to relocate that intermittent wetland, hauling fill dirt into the area inside the circle, and relocating the wetland to the cut area outside the circle, in the dryland pasture corner immediately adjacent. NRCS would not allow the project, and while the area has stood no water in the dry spell we've gone through in recent years, it will rain again some day. I brought the matter to the attention of a congressman during a local meeting once, when there was a road construction project going on in the area on a state highway. The state was allowed to relocate permanent wetlands in an effort to reroute roadways for the sake of shortening distances from point a to b, instead of winding around between the sandhill lakes as had been done previously. While this was certainly the logical and prudent thing to do, especially with tax payer dollars, I asked the congressman why it was anymore logical and prudent than what my neighbor wanted to do, especially when his project was to be self funded. He said he was glad to hear of the situation, and that it made perfect sense to him, and that he would check into it. You can imagine how far it went. Anyway, good luck with draining your wet spot, but be careful with what you do. :wink:

Most of my hay ground/pasture is on a flood plain. Back in 1973, my dad had the ditches around cleaned out. Did the same in 1992. BIG MISTAKE! Around 1991 is when the Clean Water Act and Minnesota's similar laws passed. He had even asked the Soil and Water Conservation District if it was OK as long as he was maintaining existing ditches. Well, it was NOT OK. Both the Army and the DNR came after him and the hoe operator threatening 3 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollar fines.

They eventually let them both off with nothing because dad saved his receipt from the work done in 1973 AND got the SWCD guys to admit to what they told him. The strange part was the US Army Hydrologist telling him how what he did (cleaning out the ditch and putting cattle crossing culverts every 100ft) was actually beneficial to the wetland, but in the same visit telling him he was going to prison for doing it.

How right you are.


And it's only going to get worse. A LOT worse.

I have a company that does tiling and we do this all the time. I would just call your local contractor and he will take care of all of it. We would charge between 350 to 500 for doing this depending on what it looks like. We do these all the time. It is better to have someone who does this for tile placement. It is amazing how much difference it makes. I have installed tile in 6 inchs of standing water and had the tile run full blast for 2 weeks and you can watch the ground dry out and had guy farming it in 3 weeks

I work for NRCS and have for 26 years. It is in your best interest to not touch it until you check with NRCS and ask if it is considered a wetland. If they say yes, you have a right to ask for a certified wetland determination. Good thing about the certified determination is that it makes them prove that it has the soil, topographic, etc. characteristics that define it as wet. If it does not, they have to change the determination to Non-Wetland. If it does have the characteristics, it becomes a "certified wetland" forever. That is the bad part

Put some trees around it and turn it into a bird sanctuary, until you fancy a meal of Duck.