(quoted from post at 12:39:32 11/05/14) 'Here' yes tile helps anything.
I have heard of certain topsoil and subsoil situations that are very tight and just don't drain. In those cases very very close tile spacings, and bedding the tile in small rock might work, but gets very spendy very fast.
Our ground is all rolling hills, which leave dips and depressions - prairie potholes they call it. Each one is a shallow dish, I have a 40 acre field I think we have 12 different depressions between the 20 different small hills. Each one catches different amounts of water and drains slowly, water table is high here.
When dad was a kid 1/2 this farm was a hay meadow, too wet to farm, could grow fuel for the horses.
I live in an area of 120 feet deep yellow and blue clays with a little peat ground thrown in, and tile just works very well.
If it works here, it can be made to work anywhere I would think.
There can be unusual situations, but in general, it should work.
You need an outlet - ditch or creek or ravine to drain into.
You need govt approval.
Typically nice to be about 3 feet deep, at least 2 and up to 4 works.
On the biggest depressions we put open intakes, this pulls sitting water right into the tile and moves it out. Of late it is preferred you put a spiral of tile under ground, fill with pea gravel and use this to somewhat filter out and drain such spots.
For just wet areas small tile spaced 30 to 100 feet apart parrallel in a pattern can lower the water table and allow a field to grow really good crops. The small tile connect to a larger tile main that moves the water away to the ditch or other.
Dad ran a whole lot of 6 to 10 inch main tile through this farm in the 1960s to make it farmable. But that left a lot of wet seepy areas on the sidehils and 60 feet away from the tile lines in the low ground - the water keeps oozing out from the higher ground.
I used dads main lines and added a lot of pattern tile in the past 5 years, we spaced those small 4 inch tile lines 80 feet apart and went 4/5 of the way up the sidehils to get the water out before it comes to the surface.
Has made a world of difference, even on dry years!
You can go cheaper and 'just do the wet spot' but plan a little at least to allow for adding on in a few years. When you fix that low wet spot you will then find out the areas 100 feet around it are also wet, and could use help too.... Its best to cut off water a little higher up the hill so it does t all have to push down into the lowest spot on its own.
Another issue is if you have to run the main tile any distance, make it big enough! Dad wanted to tile together with a neighbor, drain our and his property. No, no, too expensive, so dad just ran an 8 inch tile to drain our field. 2 years later. With or saw how nice that was, and begged to hook on. So dad let him, bit the tile was too small and not deep enough, so it only helped a part of the neighbor, and his water came down the tile and flooded our field again!
So dad put in a 10 inch tile beside just to our wet spot again.
20 years later the neighbor and 2 others hooked on more tile and lines, and so much water was coming down that 8 inch tile, it was bubbling up in our field, and going down into the 10 inch tile, but because of the flatter slope of our land than the neighbors, both the 8 and 10 inch tile were full and our field was flooded out again.
Just in the past few years I bought some of that land, and a newer neighbor and I ran a new 15 inch tile aside the 8 and 10 inch tile to get the water draining from that area. When dad started, his goal was to drain 12 acres with that 8 inch tile. When we look at it now, close to 200 acres was hooked up to that old private tile. Yikes!
The moral is to plan ahead, even of you want to just do a small little bit.
Make the main tile a little big. Set up a pattern even if you don't use the whole pattern, make it easy to expand a little in the future. Because once you see how nice it makes things, you -will- do more.
Paul
