We fixed our old drain tile running from the back field to the open ditch thru the pasture and riding arena. We hired it done, thought they did a great job. It was originally for fixing the old pottery tile, but it was broken in too many places to fix. The land freezing and thawing, volumes of water not running off from the tile caused a lot of issues over the many years, down under the surfaces. They had to lay in perforated plastic pipe, covered with a “sock” of knit material to keep dirt out of the pipe itself, worth the extra cost, does not deteriorate with time. I made the choice to upgrade from a 4" pipe to a 6" pipe because of the amount of water we get into the swale hole from the neighbors woods. We are the low area, everything comes our way to that open ditch to run off. The arena is not actually flat except one corner where the water will lay. It rises at one end, which does help it to dry faster! Very large arena, about 300’ by 90’, no tight turns all the time.
We used a couple rolls of pipe, well over 1000 ft to go from the swale hole to the open ditch. Had to splice them together which is easy with a snap together fixture and taping it down. He dug it down deep, almost 4ft, which is where the original tile lay, plus never have to worry if you wanted to actually plow and plant on the land someday. Way deeper than the plow would go. Then they covered it back up, I let it sit piled up over winter with our heavy clay soil. It did a lot of freezing, thawing, got rained on well, so what settling got done was firmly in place. I dragged and scraped the pipeline back level, spread manure, bedding on it with grass seed and got that looking OK again.
It has move a LOT of water this year, certainly glad we got the bigger pipe size to allow that. Neighbors land is draining a lot more water our way, than used to happen. It was just a little swale then, not 15ft across, our side was dry. Not doing anything with the land has made it into a big pond, 100’+ across with dead trees in it, lots of brush. We have added dirt on our side to keep it back, but still had to fence it off to keep horses out, and now to protect that pipe end in the open water we have. Ground around the tube is quite soft, floods up to the top of added dirt, 2ft high, so not horse safe.
I believe all the work, pipe, digging, was a couple thousand dollars, done by an experienced set of workers. Very professional, used an excavator with a narrow bucket, laser leveling to keep it going down hill, no high spots in the long run. No wasted time, no messes tearing up the ground. They refilled all holes neatly as possible, piled the dirt straight onto the pipe so other ground was clean.
We had him out that next spring, felt the water wasn’t “leaving fast enough” with the still full swale hole flooding. He pulled the taped-on cap off the low end, and about fell in the water shooting out! It was like a fire hose!! They had put on a cap drilled full of holes to allow the pipe drainage, but we had SO much water trying to leave and it couldn’t get out fast enough. He advised leaving the cap off, told me about other tube ends that could be used instead of the drilled cap. I changed the ends to a gate, a set of straight bars that barely impedes flow, but won’t let animals get inside the pipe. I did this at both ends, but do have to clean off the top end that has such suction that weeds will lay across the pipe end, slowing flow. Kind of like a giant bathtub drain swirling down! The drilled cap up there in the swale was also not allowing enough water to get in to leave faster. The pipe company sells these gates, just make a hole in the tube end and tighten the bolt. Gate will swing open if water is forceful enough, but swings shut with no water pressure. I figure most tiny animals that might fit thru the bars will not go into the tube with water on the bottom almost all the time.
The new tile run has done an amazing job of improving our runoff, speeding it up, no “fake artesian wells” where the broken tiles allowed water to well up before. The arena is ready to use without much wet dirt in a day and a half after heavy rain. We have had open ditches on the arena sides, raised the surface to work on, which did help get drainage before fixing the drain tile. That is an idea if you can’t get the drain tile any lower, area being the lowest point now. We were not “lowest of the low” so we had more ability to make water move downhill and leave.
It was worth paying for, no experienced diggers here, no laser equipment (not that we ever thought of using THAT!) and they had “done this before” so they knew how to finesse things they encountered. I bet we would have the slippery clay dirt spread all over STILL, doing it ourselves, as well as messing up the arena surfaces and layers.
