It's ipossible to estimate what size pipe will work for you without seeing our place and knowing your conditions. I live in an area that gets heavy rains, with 2 inches in an hour not being uncommon, and 5 inch rains in a few hours happening about every other year. That much water on the ground creats allot of runoff. I have a field that's about 8 acres of grass, and another ten acres fo woods that works it's way to the grass. That all goes through a 15 inch culvert, but on extreme rains, I've seen where it's maxed out for brief periods of time. The water has never gone over the road, but it's filled up that pipe to the point it was pooling up.
My 18 inch culvert, and I only have the one, is down hill from that 15 inch pipe. Even though it's only 3 inches larger, it handles twice the volume, or more, then the smaller pipe. It gets more water from other areas then the pipe above it, plus the water from that pipe, and it's never come close to maxing out.
Hope this helps,
Eddie[/QUOTE
I've been at my place since 1983. I have 3 water crossings. Higher up hill have one 18 inch corrugated aluminum. On down have 2 18 inch plastic culverts in two crossings. Before 2007 I had one 24 concrete culvert for each crossing. No problems with with water, except rare clogging with branches and leaves. In 07 gas well folks remolded driveway tearing up concrete and replacing with 2 18 in plastic. Branches and leaves last 2 years and once 5 yr ago. In my area we had record rain 3 times since 1895. 1895 was 4th highest ever. First I toyed with replacing 18s with 24s. As I think through, MY problems were massive rain causing lot of branches, gravel & rocks fully blocking culverts. Now I think I need to stop the debris from filling pipes. I thought maybe I could put a dam about 30 feet before each culvert. Thus when the big washing out rain comes the rocks branches etc get caught at a catch point. Dam or fence? Then have a hoe empty debris? when convent.
How does that sound??
Cheers to all.......Coffeeman
, or an Ice Road trucker either.
