Got 75ft of drainage trench done in 2 hours yesterday. Mr HH got to do the fun part while I followed with a shovel, cleaning up the sidewalls and base of the trench. Still have lots to do before the project is done–and it’ll have to wait a while due to rain all day today and tomorrow–but it’s just amazing how useful that backhoe is.
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So jealous!
We just set two tanks in and the fellow doing it had a little toy backhoe on tracks that was super, could do practically all with it, hardly needed a shovel.
From digging the lines to leveling the tank base to adding dirt back around the tanks.
I expect it is also the operator, he was a whiz at it.
Looks like so is DH there. 
Looks great! Does any of that drainage trench run through a paddock? A couple of years ago we set up a drainage trench about 2 feet deep. It runs through the paddock and I pictured broken legs so I roped it all off with electric fence, except for a few spots where we put in culverts. The electric fence around it looks messy but I am hesitant to open it up to horses. Any thoughts on this?
It’s in the barnyard. Once we put the drain tile in, the trench will be entirely filled with 3/4" rock and I plan to put 4-6" riprap on the top of the rock, just to make it less inviting for horses to step on.
I’m sure just the gravel would be sufficient, but I really don’t want a wayward hoof to crush the drain tile.
Congrats on your new backhoe! And your new drainage. You will find so many uses for the backhoe around the farm.
We purchased a Landpride DT35 trenching machine this summer. I never knew they made such things! We had to wait until fall to have time to use it. It is amazing! With climate weather changes, we are seeing much heavier rainfall in storms here. The runoff is a lot of water going across the fields and keeps them wet longer. A 4-5-6 inch rain is not the big deal it used to be, except for all that water. Not like when we only got one such storm a year.
We have a backhoe, but it is smaller and we had long runs to dig if we wanted to put drain tile in.
We got some “free” time about 3 weeks ago and just hitched up the machine and went at it. Have to say there was a bit of a learning curve with our clay dirt, but the results made us very happy. The machine has a one-point plow in front, with a frame holding an impeller (looks like a big fan with heavy blades). The impeller moves the dirt aside after the plow breaks it up. It leaves a rounded V trench behind with dirt piled along one side. Trench is about 18 inches deep and 18 wide at the top. I got to wrestle the cold plastic tile, laying it out to warm in the sun, uncurl, then lay in the trench.
We have laid over 500ft so far, in hopes of avoiding the ponding in paddocks in the future. We backblade the dirt to cover the pipe. There is a raised fill line so dirt can settle itself over winter. I will till it up and seed the trenches come spring. The backhoe was handy for going under fences, moving big clots of clay dirt there. Horses seem to enjoy hopping over the trench dirt. We got a lot done in a much shorter time than I thought possible. Still have work to do on the hayfield wet spots, but time is running out this season with weather changes. We had talked about putting in this drainage before, but would have needed professional help without this machine. We are not that good (or as speedy) with a backhoe! Ha ha
75% done. 2" of gravel, then geotextile, and drainage pipe assembled. We included a clean-out riser in this system so we can deal with a blockage without excavating (I can’t imagine what could get in there, but them there’s what you’d call “famous last words”). The pipe drains into a dry well-- a 4ft deep hole filled with rock. Tomorrow we’ll backfill the trench with rock, fold the geotextile over the trench to make a long rocky burrito 
and another layer of rock. And then crack a beer.
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Sounds wonderful to have such a job done before the weather gets wintery! Love the use of layers and fabric, that is doing it right. Congratulatins! We have not had much weather to test our system yet. Dirt is going to be settling for a while over winter, but it should look good after tilling and seeding come spring.
Have you marked your tile runs? I am going to put a couple pavers wherE drain crosses under the fences, at the low end, paint them blue for visibility in the future. I want to know where it is to avoid damaging it in the future or if we ever sell the place. The pro laid and taped a heavy wire on the ones they put in, for metal detector locating. It is quite deep at the upper end, 4ft, but very shallow, 6inches at the lower end where we have not put the driveway culvert above it yet. I also have a Google Earth screenshot printed off, with the drainage lines marked for any future owner. It is interesting how fast any trace of the drain work disappears, so I wanted some visible markers to aid me. I repaint them once a year to stay visible. Blue works best, a water color in universal marking codes and quite visible in all seasons.
I was finally able to view your video. It appears you used solid plastic pipe? Is it to drain a specific location to another location?
We use the flexible black plastic, perforated, sock covered drain tile pipe/tubing. Water can seep in anywhere along it, over it, to drain easier in our clay soil. Sometimes the water is just shooting out of the biggest and longest run, into the road ditch! Other times it is jist a steady trickle over the summer. You know it dry when no water is draining!
It’s perforated pipe, the holes are all along the bottom so you can’t see them. With this design, if/when water rises within the trench more than 2", the water will enter that 4" pipe through the holes where it can shoot down the pipe and into the dry well. So, the thought is that we let the rock trench do most of the work and slow the water down, rather letting it all go into the pipe and then we have a geyser at the outflow.
We went with the PVC (except for one flexible joint where the two trenches connect) for crush resistance since this is in the barnyard with horse and tractor traffic over the ditch. Also easier to ensure a consistent slope–it was obvious where we had to level the high/low spots in our trench (whereas a flexible pipe might’ve just sagged a bit?). If this was a whole-field kind of project then yeah for sure we’d go w/flexible pipe.
I am bizarrely mad that there’s no rain in the forecast for the next 2 weeks (and by then any precip will probably be snow). It was all I could do not to drag the hoses out of winter storage and just run water into it, just to see it work. (I’m like that with trail cameras too. It kills me to just leave it out there for days at a time, I inevitably hike into the timber every day just to see what cool pics are on the SD card. LOL) I’ll let you guys know how it works next spring.
This is such a great idea
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Thanks for explaining your methods and reasoning for using those materials. Quite interesting. Not something I have encountered before!
