Drain pipes for horse area

[czechsonofagun]

I need to create a sacrificed area for Bart the horse. He makes so much mud it is not even funny. Now the plan is to scoop out the dirt, put in a drain pipe and cover it with stone dust - thats what people do here and it works fairlky well.

My question is about the pipe, I was going to use the regular black pipe from HD - but now I am thinking with the weight of the horse I should go with white water pipe, since it is stronger and he will not crush it as the black thin walled drain pipe.

Am I on the right track here or do I just need to go deep enough with the pipe?

Thank you

 

[Timber]

I would use the white 4 inch pipe with the drain holes. I would then put crushed stone around and under it. My paddock has about a foot of sand in it but use what ever is local there. Are you draining off anywhere or just hoping the ground will absorb the water

 

[czechsonofagun]

Draining down the hill to a creek. Also it needs to absorb the water running from the roof of the burn.

Thanks

 

[workinallthetime]

here is how it was explained to me by a so called engineer.

you have 2 choices on the soil level above the CLEAN gravel with the pipe in it. either stop 12 inches from the top of the hole and add dirt or fill it to the top with CLEAN gravel. this has to do with soil hydrolics anything less than 12 inches in a heavy soil will not drain itself to the CLEAN gravel. Now i have built hundreds of feet of drains for customers even for the engineer guy. i perfer to use either plastic sewer 4" pipe or flexable 4"-6" black plastic. i would not use stone dust if we are thinking about the same thing here, that seems like it would not drain to the pipe at all. i use 2" clean gravel sometimes called concrete rock or marbel. you dont want alot of small pieces in your trench or it will plug up your pipe and inhibit purosity of the trench.
also another thing to keep in mind is the depth, the deeper you go the more water will be pushed into the trench from the surrounding soil. i was told a 4' deep trench will pull water from 4' each side giving you a 8' wide area that will drain into the pipe. if you decide to use the sewer pipe you might try to find some that is coated with a cloth cover to prevent soil and gravel from plugging it up. there is some of the corrigated balck flexable pipe that has a cloth cover over it, or you can use landscape fabric to cover it up to prevent problems. i have built alot of these and there are so many options out there to customize your drain, are you going to have boxes at the surface to collect the water? how far do you have to go to plum it to daylight if thats your idea? how deep can you go? have you thought about a pit at the end for the water to drain to if you cant go to daylight?

water in dirt and debris out !!

happy diggin

 

[AKfish]

Workin' has some real good advice. When we built our corral area, we needed to have all the snow melt in the spring and the heavy fall rains not create a knee-deep mudhole that would last until July and then in Aug more mud until things froze in September.

Lot's of horse owner's in this part of the country have hoof problem's with their horses and much of that comes from having their feet wet too much of the time.

Long and short --- need to keep the drainage gravel/rock clean. Don't let the top soil material plug off the drainage capacity of the porous material around the drain pipe.

We used tye-par (sp?) fabric that road builders use up here to build secondary (gravel) roads with.

AKfish

 

[czechsonofagun]

Great points guys, thank you.

Yes, I am going to add a box to drain the water collecting in a spot I know off and proly branch off the main line to drain from sides too. Whatever pipe I will use I am going to cover it with a cloth sock to filter the dirt out off the water.

But I got the general idea, I should go deeper than I planned to cover bigger area and make sure it drains ok.

 

[workinallthetime]

ya its pretty easy but not as easy as i thought it was before i got schooled by the guy,lol
if its going to be lower than 24" you should have no problem using the flexable black pipe, i dont think mr ed will hurt it that deep. its pretty cheep by the role and you can buy it at the depot by the 50/100 foot roll. you can also get all the fittings and boxes there also. if you step up to the 6" stuff its a little more forgiving on the grade then the 4 but all your fittings will be higher and i have yet to see the 6" wraped in fiber.

good luck man !!

hey AK,
the very first tractor job i got was fixing a constant mud puddle in front of a corral, she had put rubber mats down to try and keep their feet dry, uggg what a mess!!! i dug it up, layed 41 tons of gravel and dug a drain in front of the barn. i dont think people should have 3 full grown horses on 1 acre that hardly ever sees the sun. poor things at least their feet arent wet anymore

 

[PTO87]

We also have stone dust in our paddock with three horses and it works very well. I do not have drain pipes below, but I think I will do it next time. Above the dirt and below the stone dust, we have a non-woven mat material they call "cattle carpet." This has worked well to keep the horses hooves from exposing the dirt.