Land drainage

Hi, just took over an acre and a half of at present grass and would like to put drainage in before we get carried away ploughing and cultivating, we will have some grass some small scale field crops and vegetables.
Any ideas on costs and what’s available?
I haven’t asked my neighbours as I thought I would ask on here first plus it’s good to get other ideas.

Are you sure it needs drainage?

or irrigation?
If there are water courses nearby, you might need to consult the Mairie for advice…

Yes needs drainage, only the ditch on the roadside where our Fosse and rainwater goes. Going to dig a pond to run the drainage and divert all the rainwater into it, it will be a large/deep pond so it should handle it, over flow into the roadside ditch if there is any after watering crops/veg garden. Still looking for advice from anyone who has done this sort of thing. In England they call them French drains which we put all around our house cos the water didn’t go anywhere.

Remember things referred to as ‘French’ in England often don’t mean actually French but just different, odd, unusual, weird, risqué cf toast, cricket, leave, windows and letters…

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Or the man who “invented”/popularised the idea. It was an American called French who first described them.

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Our drainage solution has become clear, our builder is going to dig trenches in a herringbone style through our land installing drainage pipe at a depth of 70cms and connect it and all our water from the house and grounds (except domestic waste) into a 10,000 litre tank with pump and filters etc, so hopefully this winter will fill it ready for next year. The excess running into the culvert where it currently goes. The Marie was approached and they are doing a bit of additional pipe work to make sure it’s ok. Happy solution. Any thoughts or ideas?

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Well done… I would say… and if the Mairie are happy… so much the better.

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My only thought is that you’ve found an excellent solution! :+1:

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Update, have given more thought to having the land drainage going into the storage tank, would it be the same water going through the ground into the tank and then us watering it back etc etc? Not sure if that’s good or not! Thinking maybe it would gradually mix with rain from roof but all the stuff the farmer used before us buying it would be gradually washed through.

Although the trenches sound a bit shallow, have you considered adding piping for a ground source heat pump?

Hoping to re construct my pool next year I will be adding a plentiful supply of pipes whilst excavating.

The guy doing it is working on land based things and talked the talk, he tested the land and said he was familiar with our situation.

Ground source heat pump is not for us, we installed a really efficient wood fired heating system with 1,000 litre thermal store plus Solar panels. We have approx 2acres of woods which is plenty for our needs. We have been buying wood for the past 6 years to allow the wood to grow on a bit as it wasn’t touched for 20 years before that. Plus we have super insulated everywhere we could reach to make it a cost efficient and very cosy home.

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Are you going horizontally or vertically?
We are having a pool installed at another house and it has a pompe a chaleur and will have thermo voltaic panels to run it.

Horizontally, a load of coils laid flat.
Hybrid thermo voltaic for hot water and electricity?

As far as I’m aware it’s Electricity.