Stone drains?

Any shoring we do in wet spots I would fill stone up to the surface in spots so the water will always soak. And we always put a pipe in. There is a fella hiring out one of those mole ploughs with a gravel hopper on it local enough. I never heard of putting straw or hay on top of the stones before backfilling, I will try it sometime.

Local digger man senior , when back filling a shore in a grass field will put the scraw in first , on top of the stone facing down .
I remember my father opening 1 cwt fertiliser bags lengthways to put over shores . I havent ever bothered . Dunno who is right or wrong .
 
Local digger man senior , when back filling a shore in a grass field will put the scraw in first , on top of the stone facing down .
I remember my father opening 1 cwt fertiliser bags lengthways to put over shores . I havent ever bothered . Dunno who is right or wrong .
I've used the big fert bags too with success..
 
I have a field with a very wet patch in it that will be shored whenever land dries up a bit, I will put hay on one, straw on another and sheep wool on the third shore and see which performs best. It is very marginal land but used to grow good fields of oats in the 70s So it has potential. The old flagstone drains are in a lot of it and are still flowing away all the time, all put in by hand
 
I'm not saying its going to be a success for everyone, I reckon the plastic will prevent soil getting down to block it up.. I've also heard of straw being used. As I said the pipes were always blocking with a red ooze I believe was called red ochre.. Was a nightmare so we decided to go all stone its perfect now anyway..
Terram would do the job wouldn’t it?
 
We’ve used that. Fine job. Came in a long roll and an absolute b@stard to cut into shorter rolls.

Tried chainsaw but it kind of melts together. Hand saw was only solution and it nearly killed me.
Covered beet and put it on a silage pit one year. Talk about hardship.
 
We’ve used that. Fine job. Came in a long roll and an absolute b@stard to cut into shorter rolls.

Tried chainsaw but it kind of melts together. Hand saw was only solution and it nearly killed me.
I could use the bandsaw or the old power hacksaw.
 
Will that stop the soil being brought in from the side aswell do? Was always told treat a stone drain like it’s a filter the smaller the stone the less hole for soil to get washed and dragged in by worms to block it. We converted an subsoiler to a chip mole plough and it made a serious job of the field we did it in with 10mm chip. Walked up the field at the start of December and where the chip mole plough was done u couldn’t mark the ground by Jumping up and down but go 5 steps past it and it was just squeez squeez under foot and dirty coming up and leaving a boot print every step.
 
Seen old fertiliser bags and silage wrap used here before most of the time the stone was just covered when doing the soak away for the house was advised to use straw the theory was it would stop the slit washing down though the stone early on and then by the time it had broken down it would leave a permeable layer made sense to me. We are always too fast to forget tf l what the guys before us have learnt
 
This is where the bales of rushes come into there own.
While I agree with the principle of a filter to stop the soil from going down through the stone , I wouldn't put anything into the ground that isn't biodegradable. Particularly not bale wrap or plastic.
 
This is where the bales of rushes come into there own.
While I agree with the principle of a filter to stop the soil from going down through the stone , I wouldn't put anything into the ground that isn't biodegradable. Particularly not bale wrap or plastic.
The Clay Pipes will be there for thousands of years after the plastic is gone .
 
The Clay Pipes will be there for thousands of years after the plastic is gone .
I rented a farm 15 years ago, good land but neglected, 15 miles from the home farm, didn't know much about the previous farmer (the Owner)
I went about reseeding it, on all the high banks there were tonnes of baler twine,net and plastic where they had fed cattle and little sign of it on the surface.
I'm still traumatised at the memory of trying to pull it out of the ground and gather it up. 😡😓
 
I rented a farm 15 years ago, good land but neglected, 15 miles from the home farm, didn't know much about the previous farmer (the Owner)
I went about reseeding it, on all the high banks there were tonnes of baler twine,net and plastic where they had fed cattle and little sign of it on the surface.
I'm still traumatised at the memory of trying to pull it out of the ground and gather it up. 😡😓
I used a rotospike in a field and it was all going grand until I found where he had stored fifty years of twine .
 
Lad about 6 mile has a hopper on a dozer for shoring.4 inch wide.hear alot of lads saying that it left the fields very rough with hi ridges even after tracking over them again.took 2 to 3 yrs to settle.
Can't beat a lad on a digger and tracked stoneing cart
The one we made for the back of a tractoris smiliar to that but not as wide maybe 2 inches. It does leave a small ridge but nothing too bad that u would wreck the mower on... we did bales in the field about 2 months after doing it and it was fine just a small bit bouncy but the mower could still cut it clean. I would rather it to have a small ridge than be stuck to axle in a bad year and not be able to get the silage in.
 
There's a lad that does be on the Journal in articles about drainage. (Is he Hawk plant hire - I just can't remember exactly). He has been on it a few times and he has made the same point all the time. He says that the first thing that you need to do is dig a test hole to know what type of ground you are draining. Then decide what the best way of draining it is. Many's a lad has tried to find out what their soil type is on internet forums, but few have succeeded.

We have a mix of ground here. Some is bog where the water rises up from the bottom. We spent the last 40 years trying to drain it and only have it right now. We have lost so much stone in it. Stone would work for a few years but after that, it would be as wet as ever. I can only conclude that stone isn't suitable for that type of ground. We are 8 years on from having drained it with teram covered piped and no stone and the old man still takes pleasure in walking along the side drains and watching the water flow from them.

We drained other bog land that had a marl bottom using terram covered pipes with great success.

I posted pictures here in 2014 of drainage that I was doing in shallow soil upland. Track machine opened the shores, stoning cart on tracks put a bit of chip into the bottom of the shore, it got a 4" pipe and then was filled to the top with stone - it has worked great for shallow soil and turned the wettest land that I own into the driest.

In better ground with deeper soil on my wife's place, I hired a self drive digger and put in over 1000m of drains. The pea gravel went in first, then the pipe, then the scraw and then it was topped up to about 4" from the top with stone before being topped of with clay. I had no experience of draining that type of ground, but by chatting to the neighbors, I was able to see what worked well for them over the years.

I have worked on draining football pitches that were built on the worst land in the country and stone drains without a pipe has a place - but in my experience, it is only good enough in short runs and ideally suited between proper piped stone drains.

There's a place for everything - we have sloped ground where we mole drained into the open drain over 10 years ago - if you go alone with a spade, you can still see most of these moles open and flowing.
 
There's a lad that does be on the Journal in articles about drainage. (Is he Hawk plant hire - I just can't remember exactly). He has been on it a few times and he has made the same point all the time. He says that the first thing that you need to do is dig a test hole to know what type of ground you are draining. Then decide what the best way of draining it is. Many's a lad has tried to find out what their soil type is on internet forums, but few have succeeded.

We have a mix of ground here. Some is bog where the water rises up from the bottom. We spent the last 40 years trying to drain it and only have it right now. We have lost so much stone in it. Stone would work for a few years but after that, it would be as wet as ever. I can only conclude that stone isn't suitable for that type of ground. We are 8 years on from having drained it with teram covered piped and no stone and the old man still takes pleasure in walking along the side drains and watching the water flow from them.

We drained other bog land that had a marl bottom using terram covered pipes with great success.

I posted pictures here in 2014 of drainage that I was doing in shallow soil upland. Track machine opened the shores, stoning cart on tracks put a bit of chip into the bottom of the shore, it got a 4" pipe and then was filled to the top with stone - it has worked great for shallow soil and turned the wettest land that I own into the driest.

In better ground with deeper soil on my wife's place, I hired a self drive digger and put in over 1000m of drains. The pea gravel went in first, then the pipe, then the scraw and then it was topped up to about 4" from the top with stone before being topped of with clay. I had no experience of draining that type of ground, but by chatting to the neighbors, I was able to see what worked well for them over the years.

I have worked on draining football pitches that were built on the worst land in the country and stone drains without a pipe has a place - but in my experience, it is only good enough in short runs and ideally suited between proper piped stone drains.

There's a place for everything - we have sloped ground where we mole drained into the open drain over 10 years ago - if you go alone with a spade, you can still see most of these moles open and flowing.
Dessie Taffe or something like that. https://www.farmersjournal.ie/draining-a-wet-hollow-in-co-louth-166098
 
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There's a lad that does be on the Journal in articles about drainage. (Is he Hawk plant hire - I just can't remember exactly). He has been on it a few times and he has made the same point all the time. He says that the first thing that you need to do is dig a test hole to know what type of ground you are draining. Then decide what the best way of draining it is. Many's a lad has tried to find out what their soil type is on internet forums, but few have succeeded.

We have a mix of ground here. Some is bog where the water rises up from the bottom. We spent the last 40 years trying to drain it and only have it right now. We have lost so much stone in it. Stone would work for a few years but after that, it would be as wet as ever. I can only conclude that stone isn't suitable for that type of ground. We are 8 years on from having drained it with teram covered piped and no stone and the old man still takes pleasure in walking along the side drains and watching the water flow from them.

We drained other bog land that had a marl bottom using terram covered pipes with great success.

I posted pictures here in 2014 of drainage that I was doing in shallow soil upland. Track machine opened the shores, stoning cart on tracks put a bit of chip into the bottom of the shore, it got a 4" pipe and then was filled to the top with stone - it has worked great for shallow soil and turned the wettest land that I own into the driest.

In better ground with deeper soil on my wife's place, I hired a self drive digger and put in over 1000m of drains. The pea gravel went in first, then the pipe, then the scraw and then it was topped up to about 4" from the top with stone before being topped of with clay. I had no experience of draining that type of ground, but by chatting to the neighbors, I was able to see what worked well for them over the years.

I have worked on draining football pitches that were built on the worst land in the country and stone drains without a pipe has a place - but in my experience, it is only good enough in short runs and ideally suited between proper piped stone drains.

There's a place for everything - we have sloped ground where we mole drained into the open drain over 10 years ago - if you go alone with a spade, you can still see most of these moles open and flowing.
Did you mole into springs to catch them and bring them to the open drain?
 
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