Capturing spring water

I made concrete dams bellow the spring outcroppings. Perforated pipe above the dam with gravel then plastic dirt shield over that prior to covering with dirt.

Solid pipe out the bottom of the dam ....

Edited by Macon Rounds - 28 Mar 2024 at 4:29am

Hi Macon Rounds. Great projects. Love your photos of PA greening up in the springtime ~ Thanks for sharing. Imagine your PA soils have enough stone/quartzs aggregates to suffice a perforated field tile be buried into it & allow water movement to tile?? So additional aggregate may not be necessary? If so, then maybe trench in a continuous 4" perforated field tile thru the entire length of each valley? Dry dam a lower large basin area near the base of the valley that your perforated tile exits into. Size basin for total acres of water shed especially for excessively large rains.  That way most surface rain & tile water becomes trapped inside basin. If your cattle need a watering hole, the basin will provide that.  Then add an adjustable height riser drain & solid drain pipe exiting from the riser under the dry dam. Also contour the dam for an emergency overflow on either side of dam. Then get everything (all tiled valley, basin, & dam) seeded to a hay crop, pasture, or fescue/rye grass so any erosion is minimized. As sediments fills in basin, raise the riser drain. Before basin sediment fills to it's dam height, get in there in the dry season with a dirt scraper & earth move sediment to other needed areas. Not a fix it & forget it thing. But very manageable.   


Edited by AC7060IL - 28 Mar 2024 at 1:08pm

Ok. Thanks for your explanation. That would be so frustrating?
So I quickly researched some of your PA Alfisol/Utilsol soils. One note stuck out to me ~ “Their greater proportions of clay-sized particles improves water retention, and their greater alkalinity is a boost to many crops.” Is that what you mean by “corky”? If so, then yes clay’s particle charge binds h2o molecules to it. Thats one of many reasons it’s more challenging to farm crop heavy clay soils.
Now I have a better appreciation as to why you’re using solid drain pipe.

Edited by AC7060IL - 29 Mar 2024 at 11:16am

Some of the areas with springs I am just trying to dry up for farming.... that seems to be an easy task with perforated pipe in gravel.

However

The photos above are of one of the areas I am trying to capture the water....

If I used perforated pipe and gravel for the entire run , some water would migrate into the pipe and some areas it would filter out of the pipe. Leave less water at the pipe exit..

Like I mentioned above.
Some areas I have drained are for farming purposes.

Photos above above are for the purposes of capturing water....

Ray54 wrote: Redwood planks were the way it us to be done. There are springs still functioning with old growth redwood planks over 100 years old. The current redwood is priced out of the market, and the wood is not the quality anymore ether. The last one we improved on the ranch we used concrete block. Other have used concrete culvert pipe. Some used perforated pipe like used for drain tile. The perforated pipe more were there is a large wet area not a real source of where the water comes from. A good size trench and a lot of course rock.