Most cost effective way to divert water

[rademamj1]

Thanks for the photos...it certainty makes everything more clear. It appears that natural drainage is coming from the road anyway, its quite flat terrain, very gentle slopes, and from the large amount of standing water, your surface soil probably has a high clay content. You won't have to worry about surface erosion, as water movement will be steady...but slow enough to avoid erosion. That means concrete and its associated expense won't be necessary.

I admire your determined efforts to resolve the water drainage issue. Hand digging a trench was certainly effective, and a lot of hard work. Perhaps renting a large trencher with 6" width would speed of the process.

Gravel filled French drains in my opinion will not be needed, and would be less efficient in water movement, than simply keeping the trench open.

 

[airbiscuit]

Lordy, that is what I call sweat equity! Well, it works. It may fill in with vegetation and silt over time however. I think you found a good excuse to buy a tractor At some point you might want to do something like my post #19

 

[airbiscuit]

 

[LouNY]

As has been mentioned a sod waterway would be the least expense way to handle the water flow.
The only issue with sod waterways is that when water is flowing and for several days after they are wet and soft.
An alternative would be field tile going across the same or similar route your hand dug waterways go. They could incorporate a rip raped surface inlet, the rip rap is supposed to clean any debris before it can plug the field tile. The few places I have seen it tried usually ended up having issues.
If you are needing to cross those areas to mow or maintain your property. The ditches or sod waterways could have culverts placed in a couple of locations.

 

[LD1]

Too many trees and tall grasses for field tile to work. Unless things are kept mowed and maintained they will just plug up with roots and you'd be back to square one.

A tractor with an angle blade (or a little dozer) and make some swales.....

They don't have to be deep....but make them wide so it's a smooth transition in the land and not a ditch that you cannot drive over. Make sure grade is good so you don't have any low spots that pond water.

Seed with some rye and fescue and keep it mowed a few times a year.

And yes, a "sodway" is just a swale for drainage that gets seeded with grass.

Drive around farm country.....see the grassy waterways that don't get plowed or planted.....those are "sodways"

 

[LouNY]

After seeing the pictures I'd be tempted to say no to sod waterways and yes to good ditches.
Is there always that much water flowing or just occasionally?
If always or frequently that would be a ditching job and culverts to cross most of the time.

 

[meackerman]

using what I already had to create a 350' drainage ditch along the back of my property....I ran my potato plow to define the ditch, then switched to my back blade to open up one side so it was wider and flatter....because when the horses stepped in the trench that the just potato plow made it just caved in the sides. Just trying to use my back blade, the ditch wandered a bit too much....someone better at operating a tractor proly could a fine job with just the back blade.

There are probably better ways.

 

[Dennis Mohn]

Hey everyone ... I have a property that has a field. The state has about 4 swales which diverts runoff onto my property. Last year i dug trenches with a shovel into the dirt to help contain and direct this water, this was a short term desperate fix.

The flow is relatively constant for most trenches. They range from 4-10" deep and about 5-10" wide. I have a treeline in the middle of the field, and that's naturally where all the water wants to flow, and that tree line ends up flowing into a creek which feeds into a reservoir.

The trenches I created act as "channels" to take this water from the states swales, to my treeline. I just roughly measure on google maps the distance of all my trenches and they are as follows:

trench 1 660 ft
trench 2 340 ft
trench 3 285 ft
trench 4 326 ft

So i'm wondering, what is the most cost effective way to properly build these waterways? I've seen things like french drains, dry creek beds etc but much of that seems mighty expensive. I really don't have too much of an issue just having trenches dug out from the dirt, but I believe that is not good for long term?

I'd love to know what others think about this as I have not much knowledge on landscaping or drainage.

I agree with rademam1j, If the water is being diverted even by accident . Contact first your local Ag. Extention agency, they will likely offer suggestions and possibly tell you who is responsible for the drainage flowing onto your property. They may even assist you in getting the proper people to do the work . Extention has the information and people for this purpose through soil and water conservation. I wont say it will cost you nothing , but it may lead to others picking up the bulk if not all the expense

 

[BeezFun]

The place I worked at was similar to your property with a lot of natural water flow wanting to go into little creeks. They started out doing what eventually became known as the "big ugly white rock thing", which was digging some kind of trench and lining it with fabric and large white rocks to keep it open and flowing. It really clashed with the rest of the natural landscape and was really expensive to install. They finally talked to a botanist/biologist who recommended some plants/grasses that thrive in that intermittent high volume of water environment, so they switched to creating rather wide swails (say 20-30') that were very shallow so you didn't really notice them much, and then they planted all the vegetation this guy recommended. It worked really great, after a few years of maintenance it turned into a green drainage area that could survive the intermittent high volumes of water and didn't ever need any maintenance. It also served to filter the water going into the streams so they didn't get so silted up. You would need someone more skilled than just a backhoe digging a trench, creating these shallow swails takes some skill.

 

[CobyRupert]

There’s a Goldilocks scenario with ditches. When there’s too much water, you might get some erosion; when there’s too little water they might silt up, fill in and get shallow. Or the water flow is just right and you’re good to go....for a few years.
Check them occasionally. Around here, there’s really only a few times a year, or once every few years, after storms combined with snow melt, etc..that ditch capacity, and culverts get “tested”.
Some of your “ditches” look like they could be maintained with a middle buster (subsoiler, ripper, etc..). A back blade would do it too. With these methods, one often must do the maintenance when it is dry enough to not get stuck, when water isn’t flowing. Unfortunately, this is also when it’s not apparent you need to do maintenance. (Sort of like the “why fix the roof when it’s not raining? I can’t fix the roof when it’s raining” conundrum.)
Excavators and backhoes to dig ditches get expensive.