Farm drainage / The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining Land with Stones, Wood, Plows, and Open Ditches, and Especially with Tiles

by Henry F. French

In many places in England "tops and bottoms," or horse-shoe tiles, are still preferred by farmers, upon the idea that they admit the water more readily; but their use is continued only by those who have never made trial of pipes. No scientific drainer uses any but pipes in England, and the million of acres well drained with them, is pretty good evidence of their sufficiency. In this country, horse-shoe tiles have been much used in Western New York, and have been found to answer a good purpose; and so it may be said of the sole-pipes. Indeed, it is believed that no instance is to be found on record in America of the failure of tile drains, from the inability of the water to gain admission at the joints.

It may be interesting in this connection to state, that water is 815 times heavier than air. Here is a drain at four feet depth in the ground, filled only with air, and open at the end so that the air can go out. Above this open space is four feet of earth saturated with water. What is the pressure of the water upon the tiles?

Mr. Thomas Arkell, in a communication to the Society of Arts, in England, says—

"The pressure due to a head of water four or five feet, may be imagined from the force with which water will come through the crevices of a hatch with that depth of water above it. Now, there is the same pressure of water to enter the vacuum in the pipe-drain as there is against the hatches, supposing the land to be full of water to the surface."

It is difficult to demonstrate the truth of this theory; but the same opinion has been expressed to the writer by persons of learning and of practical skill, based upon observations as to the entrance of water into gas pipes, from which it is almost, if not quite, impossible to exclude it by the most perfect joints in iron pipes. Whatever be the theory as to pressure, or the difficulties as to the water percolating through compact soils to the tiles, there will be no doubt left on the mind of any one, after one experiment tried in the field, that, in common cases, all the surplus water that reaches the tiles is freely admitted. A gentleman, who has commenced draining his farm, recently, in New Hampshire, expressed to the author his opinion, that tiles in his land admitted the water as freely as a hole of a similar size to the bore of the tile would admit it, if it could be kept open through the soil without the tile.

DURABILITY OF TILE DRAINS.

How long will they last? This is the first and most important question. Men, who have commenced with open ditches, and, having become disgusted with the deformity, the inconvenience, and the inefficiency of them, have then tried bushes, and boards, and turf, and found them, too, perishable; and again have used stones, and after a time seen them fail, through obstructions caused by moles or frost—these men have the right to a well-considered answer to this question.

The foolish fellow in the Greek Reader, who, having heard that a crow would live a hundred years, purchased one to verify the saying, probably did not live long enough to ascertain that it was true. How long a properly laid tile-drain of hard-burnt tiles will endure, has not been definitely ascertained, but it is believed that it will outlast the life of him who lays it.

No tiles have been long enough laid in the United States to test this question by experience, and in England no further result seems to have been arrived at, than that the work is a permanent improvement.

In another part of this treatise, may be found some account of Land Drainage Companies, and of Government loans in aid of improvements by drainage in Great Britain. One of these acts provides for a charge on the land for such improvements, to be paid in full in fifty years. That is to say, the expense of the drainage is an incumbrance like a mortgage on the land, at a certain rate of interest, and the tenant or occupant of the land, each year pays the interest and enough more to discharge the debt in just fifty years. Thus, it is assumed by the Government, that the improvement will last fifty years in its full operation, because the last year of the fifty pays precisely the same as every other year.