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Arable Farming
Cropping
Drainage, Methods, tips, tricks etc
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<blockquote data-quote="KJM" data-source="post: 7289644" data-attributes="member: 1229"><p>We purchased a second hand tracked trencher a couple of years ago and are slowly working round the farm at a rate of a field or two a year. Most machines available are 80’s machines or older as that is when the drainage grants stopped and new sales were much lower after. They are relatively simple machines if a bit heavy to work on. The manufacturers, Barth in our case, built the machines from standard parts so replacement parts aren’t too difficult to find. Be prepared to spend a bit of time in the workshop.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You don’t mention in your post if you have any stones, if you do you want as heavy duty machine as possible. Tractor mounted machines control the depth by holding the chain out the ground on the tractor wheels or skidplates running on the soil surface. The tracked machines control depth by pitching the boot behind the digging chain which gives a better trench bottom. If you are in a lot of soft sand look for a machine with uplift to take some weight of the boot to stop it sinking.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>We use gps to control the depth. It is a very helpful system once you learn it and will calculate the depth needed to maintain the grade you set. It will also create a gps map if you ever need to find drains for Jetting etc. You want the RTK base station as close as possible, we run a mobile base in the field. I think it is a much easier system than a laser when you are starting out.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>We drain at 10m spacing 900mm deep with no gravel which works well for us. I suspect if you have sand in the subsoil you won’t need gravel either.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The other big consideration is pipe sizing. Igrowdrainage.org is a good site with calculators. You can have similar sized fields with very different main sizes because of different grades. The faster you can get the water to flow down the pipe the more likely any silt will move along with it. American work I read suggested if you can keep the water above 1.4ft/s it should keep itself clear.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This has turned into a bit of an essay but hopefully is some use. It is a very satisfying job and definitely can be done in house.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="KJM, post: 7289644, member: 1229"] We purchased a second hand tracked trencher a couple of years ago and are slowly working round the farm at a rate of a field or two a year. Most machines available are 80’s machines or older as that is when the drainage grants stopped and new sales were much lower after. They are relatively simple machines if a bit heavy to work on. The manufacturers, Barth in our case, built the machines from standard parts so replacement parts aren’t too difficult to find. Be prepared to spend a bit of time in the workshop. You don’t mention in your post if you have any stones, if you do you want as heavy duty machine as possible. Tractor mounted machines control the depth by holding the chain out the ground on the tractor wheels or skidplates running on the soil surface. The tracked machines control depth by pitching the boot behind the digging chain which gives a better trench bottom. If you are in a lot of soft sand look for a machine with uplift to take some weight of the boot to stop it sinking. We use gps to control the depth. It is a very helpful system once you learn it and will calculate the depth needed to maintain the grade you set. It will also create a gps map if you ever need to find drains for Jetting etc. You want the RTK base station as close as possible, we run a mobile base in the field. I think it is a much easier system than a laser when you are starting out. We drain at 10m spacing 900mm deep with no gravel which works well for us. I suspect if you have sand in the subsoil you won’t need gravel either. The other big consideration is pipe sizing. Igrowdrainage.org is a good site with calculators. You can have similar sized fields with very different main sizes because of different grades. The faster you can get the water to flow down the pipe the more likely any silt will move along with it. American work I read suggested if you can keep the water above 1.4ft/s it should keep itself clear. This has turned into a bit of an essay but hopefully is some use. It is a very satisfying job and definitely can be done in house. [/QUOTE]
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