# Installing tile



## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Got the video up on youtube as it came up awhile ago the concept of needing to add tile for drainage was a foreign concept to some.


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## Toyes Hill Angus (Dec 21, 2010)

The old wheel and bucket machines are all but extinct around this area, everybody uses plows on D10s or Wolfe tile plows. But if the ground is real dry, the plows have to pick up to get traction or rip the trench and then tile, and the old wheel and buckets will set tile on grade every day of the week. My grandfather still operates a Speicher, they are a 6 wheeled machine, not on tracks but the same principle.
like this one:Speicher Model 600 Tiling machine / Trencher :: McCormick Equipment


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## Gearclash (Nov 25, 2010)

Interesting! Never saw a bucket ditcher run in my area (and era). We updated a tile two years ago , 8 inch, and hired a chain trencher for it. It was a Steinbergen Hollanddrain if my memory serves. Power was a reman Cat 3208. It had really long tracks, and if it started to slip they bolted two or three cleats to each track.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

The thing that bothers me about plows is if you hit an old tile and it's still working, it won't be for long after hitting it with a plow. With ours all a guy has to do is look for the orange chunks of busted tile in the spoil. Dad has lived on this farm since 1954 and we still find an occasional tile that even he didn't know was there when installing new. We fix em all after cutting one. If it appears to be partially plugged we'll hook the high end of it to the new tile and plug the low end.

As old as it is, since we've owned it it has paid for itself at least twenty times over. Some of what used to be our wettest ground is now the first to be farmed since we've tiled it on 35' centers. Would have cost considerably more if we would have had to pay for installation as well. When we bought this machine we basically paid the guy scrap price and scrap was cheap then. Tiling gets _REAL_ cheap once you can start buying semi loads of tile and get bulk discounts. Around our area at least, no such thing as too much tile.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Gearclash said:


> Interesting! Never saw a bucket ditcher run in my area (and era). We updated a tile two years ago , 8 inch, and hired a chain trencher for it. It was a Steinbergen Hollanddrain if my memory serves. Power was a reman Cat 3208. It had really long tracks, and if it started to slip they bolted two or three cleats to each track.


We bolt four to each track, have found even though the winch is nice if the cleats won't do it, then just park it as if you need the winch to get thru its too f*ckin wet and will just cause more grief than it's worth. Exception is on really wet muck ground, have found on the muck a wise man hooks the cable up _before_ you start to slip.

About 10 years ago we replaced a mile and a half of clay tile the county paid us to do, kept the machine the same depth as the old clay while installing the new 8" plastic. Must have had at least 3 dozen connections to make. Good part was out of the mile and a half we ran, we farmed a mile and a quarter of it.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Toyes Hill Angus said:


> The old wheel and bucket machines are all but extinct around this area, everybody uses plows on D10s or Wolfe tile plows. But if the ground is real dry, the plows have to pick up to get traction or rip the trench and then tile, and the old wheel and buckets will set tile on grade every day of the week. My grandfather still operates a Speicher, they are a 6 wheeled machine, not on tracks but the same principle.
> like this one:Speicher Model 600 Tiling machine / Trencher :: McCormick Equipment


Another strange thing, every once and a great while we'll have somebody that calls us because our machine will still install clay tile. Not sure why and it has never been explained to me to my satisfaction, but certain kinds of muck or swamp ground clay tile has to be installed as it seals plastic tile up in a few years. Can't install clay tile with a plow.


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## Mike120 (May 4, 2009)

Thanks Marty! I understand the concept of tile and have seen it in the past. What I don't understand is how you ultimately drain to a low spot and get rid of the water. Where do you finally put it? Down here, where we get frog-strangling rain between our droughts, the county drainage are ditches on the side of the roads that ultimately drain to the Gulf. These also serve as drunk traps. If you tiled a field more than a couple of feet deep with a 1% grade, you'd have to pump it from the collection point up to the ditch to get rid of it.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

We've had to run at 1/2% grade before and have even run some level the last three or four hundred feet so as not to end up lower than the ditch. We do have some muck ground around here in order to get real good drainage pumps are ran to lower the water table, that water is usually pumped up to an existing drainage ditch.

All our drainage usually ends up in the Kankakee river, which ultimately as well ends up in the gulf. Some areas around the Kankakee the fields can be ten foot (or more) lower than the river thanks to dikes, this is some of the ground that I'm referring to the water having to be pumped out.

In our area we have natural drainage, however it may take until July for some of the real heavy ground to dry on it's own, this is where the tile improves things drastically. Also drastically improves low spots if a tile can be ran to an existing tile on the farm. We have several eight inch tiles that cross our farm and dump in our section of ditch and those tiles drain ground from a mile away.

I've also repaired some tiles that had as little as a foot of cover on them, anymore cover and the tile would have had reverse grade on it. We even installed one for a landlord on some muck ground that we had to haul the spoils from the ditch bank to add more cover to the tile. Landowner wouldn't pay for a pump so the tile could be placed deeper so this was the only solution. Added about a foot of dirt over the tile so it would have enough cover not to crush it the first time over with a combine.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Now that things aer drying up if a person is paying attention you can see where all the tile is installed, just look for the dry streaks running across the fields.


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## Gearclash (Nov 25, 2010)

> Now that things aer drying up if a person is paying attention you can see where all the tile is installed, just look for the dry streaks running across the fields


I have seen the reverse of this after prolonged dry weather in an alfalfa field. There was a nice strip of greener, taller alfalfa right over the tile, one corner of the field to the other.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

I can think of a lot of reasons for that around_ here_. Around here wet ground is hard ground, so if the tile is an older one more than likely the ground around it has mellowed and the alfalfa has deeper roots down.

Or the alfalfa could have some hairs from its roots in the tile and getting it's water that way. Or it could have been getting water that way until the tile ran dry and is now pulling water up from deeper in the ground while the rest of the field has already used its deep reserves up.

Around here, the plants could just generally be healthier over a tile as they might not have been stressed in previous years that might have been wet. Most likely less disease pressure around tiles than in the rest of the field.


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

Gearclash said:


> I have seen the reverse of this after prolonged dry weather in an alfalfa field. There was a nice strip of greener, taller alfalfa right over the tile, one corner of the field to the other.


I've seen that also when dry.It will be 6" taller then the rest about 2' wide.


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