Drain

“ Very often, drains are filled up and ruined by these deposits; and, unless the fall be considerable, and the drain be laid with even descent, if earth of any kind find entrance, it must endanger the permanency of the work. To guard against the admission of everything but water, lay drains deep enough to be beyond the danger of water bursting in, in streamlets. Water should enter the drain at the bottom, by rising to the level of the tiles, and not by sinking from the surface directly to them. If the land is sandy, great care must be used. ”

“ Once or twice each year it was the drainpipe from the sink. The drain, like the pump, was an innovation. Our ancestors had always carried out whatever they couldn’t use or burn, and dumped it on the far edge of the orchard. In a thinly settled community, there is much to be said for this method: you know just where you are. But we had the drain, and occasionally we didn’t know just where we were.
“Coffee grounds,” Jonathan would suggest, with a touch of sternness. ”

“ And here, again, we will remind the beginner, of the necessity of making and preserving accurate plans of the work, so that every drain may be at any time found by measurement. After a single rotation, it is frequently utterly impossible to perceive upon the surface any indication of the line of the drains. ”

“ We have shown, under the head of the "Depth of Drains," that the cost of cutting and filling a four-foot drain is double that of cutting and filling a three-foot drain. There is no doubt, that, after all the good advice we have given on this subject, many, who "grow wiser than their teachers are," will set aside the teachings of the best draining engineers in the world, and insist that three feet deep is enough, and persist in so laying their tiles.
This shallowness will reduce the cost of labor about one half, so that we shall have the cost of labor and tiles equal—one cent a foot, making 33? ”

“ Water goes down, then, by its own weight, unless there is something through which it cannot readily pass, to bring it out at the surface. It will go into the drains, only because they are lower than the land drained. It will never go upward to find a drain, and it will go toward a drain the more readily, in proportion as the descent is more steep toward it. ”

“ Remembering that on the map, the line of steepest descent is exactly perpendicular to the contour lines of the land, it will be profitable to study carefully the system of drains first laid out, erasing and making alterations wherever it is found possible to simplify the arrangement.
Strictly speaking, all angles are, to a certain extent, wasteful, because, if two parallel drains will suffice to drain the land between them, no better drainage will be effected by a third drain running across that land. ”

“ Now it is manifest, that it is impossible to lay out a given field, with proper mains and small drains, dividing the fall as equally as practicable between the different parts of an undulating field, preserving a system throughout, by which, with the aid of a plan, any drain may at any time be traced, without making distances conform somewhat to the system of the whole. ”

“ No sort of clay, particularly when softened by water standing on it or running over it, could fail to rise under such circumstances; and the deeper the drain the greater the pressure and the more certain the rising. ”

“ Fig. 11 - STONE AND TILE BASIN FOR SPRING WITH DRAIN. 5. Where a ledge of shelving rock, of considerable size, occurs on land to be drained, it is best to make some provision for collecting, at its base, the water flowing over its surface, and taking it at once into the drains, so that it may not make the land near it unduly wet. To effect this, a ditch should be dug along the base of the rock, and quite down to it, considerably deeper than the level of the proposed drainage ”

“ Lastly, the use of the auger, which, in many cases, is the sine qua non of the business, is to reach and tap the spring when the depth of the drain does not reach it: where the level of the outlet will not admit of its being cut to a greater depth ”

“ Ditches are opened where there appears to be a descent, and if there is water running, the rise is estimated by its current; and if there is no water rising in the drain, a bucketfull is occasionally poured in to guide the laborer in his work. ”

“ This mode of culture is very ancient, and is probably referred to in the language of the Psalmist, in the Scriptures: "Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly, thou settlest the furrows thereof, thou makest it soft with showers."
The objections to open ditches, as compared with under-drains, may be briefly stated thus:
1. They are expensive. The excavation of a sloping drain is much greater than that of an upright drain. An open drain must have a width of one or two feet at the bottom, to receive the earth that always must, to some extent, wash into it. ”

“ A little practice will enable an ordinary workman to throw out those which are imperfect, and, as a single tile which is so underdone that it will not last, or which, from over-burning, has too small an orifice, may destroy a long drain, or a whole system of drains, the inspection should be thorough. ”

“ No peculiar tool is essential in opening that part of the drain which is more than a foot in width. Shovels and spades, of the forms usually found upon well-furnished farms, and adapted to its soil, will be found sufficient. A Boston agricultural house, a year or two since, sent out an order to London for a complete set of draining tools. ”

“ When parts of a field are flat, and other parts have a considerable acclivity, it is expedient to cut a receiving drain near to the bottom of the slopes, and to give the flat ground an independent set of drains. In laying off receiving drains it is essential to give hedgerows and trees a good offing, lest the conduit be obstructed by the roots. ”

“ These, being supplied by high and distant fountains, run under our deepest drains, and find vent through some fracture of the subsoil. They diffuse their ice-cold water through the soil, and prevent the growth [364] of all valuable vegetation. To these, we must apply Elkington's system, and hit them right in the eye! by running a deep drain from some side or central drain, straight to them, and drawing off the water low enough beneath the surface to prevent injury. A small covered drain with two-inch pipes, will usually be sufficient to afford an outlet to any such spring. ”

“ If we suppose the ground saturated with water, and our drains running up the slope and stopping at 4 feet depth, with no header connecting them, they, in effect, stop against 4 feet head of water, and in order to drain the land as far up as they go, must not only take their fair proportion of water which lies between them, but must draw down this 4 feet head beyond them. This they cannot do, because the water from a higher source, with the aid of capillary attraction, and the friction or resistance met with in percolation, will keep up this head of water far above the drained level. ”

“ The left side, which stretches towards the mountains, is more difficult to be managed. Here, however, cross-drains pass under the raised way into the chief drain; as, however, the surface sinks again towards the mountains, it is impossible by this means to carry off the water entirely. To meet this difficulty it is proposed, I was told, to cut another leading drain along the foot of the mountains. Large patches, especially towards Terracina, are thinly planted with willows and poplars. ”

“ A drain at the bottom of a wet field draws away the water from the free spaces between its particles, and its place is taken by air, while the particles hold, by attraction, the moisture necessary to a healthy condition of the soil.
There are vast areas of land in this country which do not need draining. The whole range of sands, gravels, light loams and moulds allow water to pass freely through them, and are sufficiently drained by nature, provided, they are as open at the bottom as throughout the mass. A sieve filled with gravel will drain perfectly ”

“ A prudent man, intending to execute a work, whether it be "to build a tower," or drain a field, "sitteth down first and counteth the cost, whether he hath sufficient to finish it." There is good sense and discretion in the inquisitiveness which suggests so often the inquiry, "How much does it cost to drain an acre?" or, "How much does it cost a rod to lay drains?" ”

“ Drainage.—Where a house is without a drain sufficient for its effectual drainage the local authority may, by written notice, require the owner or occupier, within a reasonable time, to make a drain in accordance with their requirements and to empty it into a sewer, if there be one within 100 ft. ”

“ Then drive the intermediate stakes, with the projecting arms, which we will call squares, on one side of the drain, carefully sighting from one end of the stake to the other, at the point fixed for the line, and driving the squares till they are exactly even. ”

“ If the outlet must be so situated as to be at times overflowed, great care should be taken to excavate a place at the outlet, into which any deposits brought down by the drain, may fall. If the outlet be level with the ground beyond it, the smallest quantity of earth will operate as a dam to keep back the water. ”

“ Thousands of drains, now existing, have been made of such porous bricks, and these have been placed side by side with such an unadhesive layer of dirt, that instead of acting as an impervious tube through which the soil could pass to its destination, the common sewer, the bottom of the drain acts as a mere filter for its contents. ”

“ These tubular drains are cemented together, so as to form a hollow tube, and are laid at so much per foot under the regulation of the Sewers Office, by workmen who understand what a house-drain should be; and it must be understood that a house-drain and a field-drain are two distinct things; though very many builders have thought what would do for one, would do for the other. ”

“ The security of this drain will depend upon the care with which it is protected by a covering of turf and the like, to prevent the admission of earth, and its permanency will depend much upon its being placed low enough to be constantly wet, as such materials are short-lived when frequently wet and dried, and nearly imperishable if constantly wet. ”

“ It has been argued that surface water will be more readily removed by drains having porous filling. Even if this were true to any important degree,—which it is not,—it would be an argument against the plan, for the remedy would be worse than the disease. If the water flow from the surface down into the drain, it will not fail to carry dirt with it, and instead of the clear water, which alone should rise into the tiles from below, we should have a trickling flow from above, muddy with wasted manure and silty earth. ”

“ Drain opened by hand where pipes enter the ground. a to e. Pipes under ground. e to f. Pipes above ground. g. Windlass or capstan, worked by horses. h. Wire rope attached to plow, and wound round the windlass. i. Pulley round which the rope runs to keep the plow in the line of the ditch. DRAINING-PLOWS AND DITCH-DIGGERS. [247]
The man who can invent and construct a machine that shall be capable of cutting four-foot ditches for pipe-drains, with facility, will deserve well of his country.
It is not essential that the drain be cut to its full depth at one operation. ”

“ So, in the saturated earth in a flower-pot, the earth, merely moist at the surface, is wet mud just above the water-table. So, in drained land, the capillary force which retained the water in the soil to the height of a few inches, is no longer able to sustain it, when the height is increased to feet, and a portion descends into the drain, leaving the surface comparatively dry. ”

“ We confess to some original misgivings that a pipe resting only on an inch at each end, and lying hollow, might prove weak and liable to fracture by weight pressing on it from above; but the fear was illusory. Small particles of soil trickle down the sides of every drain, and the first flow of water will deposit them in the vacant space between the two collars. The bottom, if at all soft, will also swell up into any vacancy. ”

“ The water is to come in at high pressure, and run in iron or lead pipes up every house, scale every wall. There is to be a tap in every room, and under every tap there is to be the entrance to a drain-pipe. Where water supply ends, drainage begins. They are to be the two halves of a single system. Furthermore, there are to be numbers of plugs opening in every street, and streets and courts are to be washed out every morning, or every other morning, as the traffic may require, with hose and jet. ”

“ A four-foot drain may go very near a pit, or a water-course, without attracting water from either, because water-courses almost invariably puddle their beds; and the same effect is produced in pits by the treading of cattle, and even by the motion of the water produced by wind. ”

“ I would anticipate this class of obstruction, if from the nature of the land there was reason to expect it, by increasing the fall in the drains and having traps more frequent, where the main outlets are at a distance to render them necessary. In my opinion, the roots of trees are the great intruders to be guarded against, and more particularly the soft-wooded sorts, such as poplars, willows, alders, &c. The distance of a drain from a tree ought always to be equal to the height of the latter. ”