Using straw bales for a water/mud run off barrier?

[blue_amp_blond]

Has anyone had any experience using straw bales as a water / mud diverter?

My property is sloped on one side of my pasture. Since horses are on it and I am in Southern California, it’s just dirt.

I have a neighbor below us that unfortunately bought a house with a garden wall, not a retaining wall.

Between the horses knocking out all the vegetation and the wrong type of wall, they will get slammed with mud when we get big rain. (And yes, this year we will get rain so they say. Lots of talk of El Niño winter.) it’s happened before and it was horrendous.

Legally, it’s not my responsibility to protect their property but, they did come to me nicely and have even offered to help pay to do something. So, I want to try something. A straw bale barrier was discussed.

We have a county designated drainage strip that I can divert it to, but just moving dirt and sand bags doesn’t work. We tried that.

Ideas? Suggestions?

[Alagirl]

Well, that’s what they use around here when they do earth work type deals.
Currently they are working on the median of a 4 lane, putting fat rolls of straw down to keep the mud waters from washing in the drain.

I would think that you can pretty much just line up the bales and secure them with maybe rebar.
It takes surprisingly little to slow water down (if it isn’t a torrential flood) and to keep soil from washing out.

A more permanent solution, they can put up those stone filled metal crates, forgot their names.

http://d-crain.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/gabions-1.jpg

[Alpha_Mare]

Dear B&B: On the other side of the country (PA) I recently had reason to try this (excavation on new property for indoor/outdoor ring driveway, etc.). We got all our summer rain in June (10") while the excavated ground was being worked, or rather, waiting for the rain to stop to finish the work and reseed. So I was stacking up straw bales to divert water to acceptable areas and keep mud away from problem areas.

My guess is that your slope is much steeper than mine. In the worst areas I had we put down #4 stone (that is big stone gravel, twice the size of a man’s fist), put in a silt fence (the tough stuff is reinforced on the down side with sturdy wire mesh) downhill from the stone, and put straw bales on each side of the fence. we let the water divert to one side/end of the fence and this pretty much worked. If you put gravel down (I mean, like a 20’ wide pad) it will slow the mud and water, although in a flood just gravel by itself the water will dig channels - but still not as bad as all dirt.

The stone gravel and silt fence is needed if you really get a flood, it will hold better than ground against water, and muddy water will try to find a way around it (you said you had a direction that it could be diverted…

Straw bales themselves will likely change the course of the water but if it’s going fast & hard the water may run under. For holding dirt but letting water flow I found open flakes of straw more helpful in some areas than the bales, arranged in kind of S curves going downhill (this was going down a paved driveway) so you might think of that as well.

I did have straw bales divert water on shallow slopes - the water was going more slowly and the dirt dropped out in the ‘S’ curves. I DID have to give the water a place to go, though, so was digging little trenches in the grass until it had enough drop in it to go down that line.

In the long run if you have any chance of fencing a buffer of vegetation above your neighbor, sloping toward the acceptable drainage location, that would be very helpful. You’d likely need to fence your horses off that buffer to keep the vegetation in good shape. I would suggest a gravel berm against the vegetation buffer to help against the fast floods.

FYI this is an amateur who hopes to never have to do this again (happily grass has grown where needed) and others with more experience in the field may have better ideas.

[walkers]

Extension told me that nothing slows down erosion like thick long grass and bushes. Straw bales will slow the run off but will mold and get nasty after 6 months. Can you put in a small swale, seed it which lucky you is done this time of year then mulch it good ,and hope for light rain .I Just put in a short swale to divert water from my run-in . i used straw bales every 15 feet till the grass get established. sometimes i add some pea gravel but if you use to much it will mess up the swale.

[bathsheba8542]

Some great suggestions here…if you can, you might dig a 6 inch (wide) x 12 inch (deep) ditch that diverts the water where you want it to go, drop in drain tile, fill with #2s. That would help move a lot of water and reduce the movement across the surface. You could also install some silt fence along the back of the ditch.

[wildlifer]

From a watershed biologist: ditches NO. Straw/other materials as check dams are mediocre temporary measures, as are silt fences, even if installed perfectly (I used to have to inspect all these things & then try & teach engineers that biology really does work better & more cheaply than concrete, sigh). Talk to your extension/Soil & Water folks locally. Google “raingardens.”

Native, deep-rooted vegetation is fantastic. You are thinking correctly in that you want to slow water down any way possible. That, along with avoiding any type of channelization of flow are the essentials. If there are roofs creating runoff, gutters & rain barrels also give you free water.

Also from SoCal long ago, so understand the space/vegetation struggle keeping horses there! But there’s been heaps of great research, NC State University’s Extension Unit is also a global leader is land management practices, check out their website – and I work with several of their staff at times, they are happy to answer calls or emails!

I’ll not attempt to type my whole field, but feel free to send a message if you have more questions.

[SonnysMom]

I am assuming you won’t have time to install and get vegetation established before the anticipated rains. One thing I have seen locally is big tubes of mesh fabric that is filled with mulch. It is normally used for when they are building a new house so short term. Once the house is done the mulch can be used in a garden or added to a compost pile depending on how much it has broken down. It is dense but the tubes are flexible so conform to the ground pretty well.

[wildlifer]

^ These are flexible check dams. They can be useful in the short term until vegetation is established. They work best staked down & spaced on the grade so that the elevation of each top is even with the elevation of the bottom of the one upslope, creating a water “shelf,” if that makes sense.