The Brew Cabin

Posted: **Thu Oct 14, 2010 2:43 pm**

Hi all

Great useful site here.

I am attempting to drain water from land at the back of our house. Behind the house is our back garden then beyond that is a field on a hill where we keep a few horses (ours and neighbours house at the bottom of hill). We have roughly levelled a small patch of land (10m x 6m at the back of our garden for a paddock with shelter for the 2 horses. However with this being the bottom of the hill, in bad weather the area becomes very soggy and waterlogged. We plan to install a simple land drain system which will lead to a manhole, (conveniently already built about 5 metres along from our paddock). Oh and the soil contains clay.

I've dug trenches (one main branch along inside of paddock (closest to manhole) then 3 long 'arm' trenches connecting to the main one. Then one trench to manhole. All are slightly sloped towards the manhole accordingly.

My Q's:

Trenches range from depth of 400 -550mm. Is this sufficient?

Is it necessary to use a membrane/geotextile to line trench? Woven or non-woven?

I plan to use 80mm perforated land drain pipe. Is it necessary to cap end the branches?

I'm going to bed the pipe in gravel 10mm or 20mm? then top up with top soil as well as topsoiling the whole paddock.

Help would be greatly appreciated, hope to order materials tomorrow. Anyone see any holes in my plan?

Cheers a lot

Ant

Posted: **Thu Oct 14, 2010 10:16 pm**

im doing 2000 metres at mo, not at mine tonight or id put some photos up

trenches are deep enough. we do it two ways.

first way dig down till the clay starts showing ground water then lay the pipe in there cover with 100mm 10mm clean stone then back fill

or on these ones we are doing now only 300 mm deep in a v shape from 150mm wide up to about 300mm wide, 80mm pipe then filled to soil level with 10mm clean stone,

you can line with geotextile but we dont, in gardens etc in ok but in all the fields drains we do we never bother, use connectors but dont cut your main drain, can cause it to drop and not run right, we a hole in the pipe where the connector lines up then cut the back of the connector and slip over and bind with cable ties.

try and get some pictures uploaded only got my iphone though

Posted: **Thu Oct 14, 2010 10:19 pm**

here the main run is in 100mm and the side drain is 80mm, stone is 40mm single size on the main run as its a 600 wide trench the side trenched will be filled with the 10mm, they are 80 metres long and every 5 metres

by the way we are based just south of stockport and do a lot of equestrian works, have a look at our website if you need help with it.

Edited By GB_Groundworks on 1287134166

The Brew Cabin

Land drain-just a few q's