By Brian Hefty

  1. Dry years are absolutely the time to put in tile!  I realize that you may not see the immediate need to get this done, but just think back over all the years where the water table in your fields has been too high and how that has negatively affected your crops.  When you tile in a dry year, you can get into almost anywhere you want without getting stuck, you have zero impact on downstream neighbors because there is no “initial flush” like there usually is for the first couple of weeks after you tile, and you usually have some time to do it because in dry years fall harvest typically gets done early.
  2. Plan ahead.  Even though 3 tile lines may fix your problem today, what if your son (or daughter) wants to split those lines or add length on to some of them 15 years from now?  Most tile lines will continue to work well for 50+ years if they are properly sized and installed correctly.
  3. Do the work yourself if you can.  We bought our own tile plow 6 years ago, and it’s the best investment we ever made!  Thanks to RTK GPS and high-tech tile plow control systems like Intellislope, almost anyone can now run a tile plow and accurately install tile at a relatively fast pace.  If you have a couple people helping you install tile, you should be able to put in 3 to 4 miles of tile in a day without much trouble.  You will typically save 50 cents to $1 per foot when you do the work yourself, which then translates to $8000 to $20,000 PER DAY!!  Worst-case scenario, you may need someone else to put in your main lines if you are installing big pipe, but you should at least be able to do the laterals.
  4. Do NOT install risers in your field, unless your water is simply draining into a grass waterway or a wetland.  When you bring a tile line to the soil surface through use of a riser or even a French drain, all the bad things non-farmers say about tile come true.  Flooding increases, erosion increases, and downstream water quality is worse.  When water is forced to percolate slowly through the soil to reach your tile lines 3 or 4 feet deep, tiling is GREAT for the environment.  Flooding is reduced (typically 15 to 30%), erosion decreases (usually 40 to 60%), and downstream water quality is significantly improved.  Get rid of your risers and replace them with a bunch of tile lines in the area you had the risers.  Put those tile lines really close together and relatively shallow in any field depression or other area where you may have put a riser in the past.
  5. Attend one of our free Ag PhD Tiling Clinics!  We will have lots of new information including farmer panels, a drainage law update, lift station how-to’s, and much more.  Click each location below for more information and directions.Tuesday, February 11, 2014 – Brookings, SD – Swiftel Center (9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.)
    Tuesday, February 25, 2014 – Grand Forks, ND – Alerus Center (9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.)

    Click Here to Register for a Tiling Clinic!