Farm drainage · pattern tile · lagoons · Lowmeadow & the Trellis County flats
Wet ground is a decision the tile reverses.
Moleboard Farm Drainage lays pattern tile on grade, rebuilds the outlets the freeze took, and digs the lagoons the county asks for — clay liners packed in six-inch lifts, plans drawn to the conservation standard, and a plough that installs four-inch line without opening a trench the whole way. Thirty-one seasons on the flats.
The rate page · 2026
Pattern tile, ploughed in$1.42 / lin ft
4-in perforated line on grade, stone-blinded where the plough cannot run
Pattern tile, trenched$1.86 / lin ft
Trench, bedding, pipe to grade, backfill compacted in lifts
Main & outlet rebuildfrom $2,150 / outlet
Mains re-laid, outlets re-cut and riprapped, headwalls set
Lagoon or containment$2.30 / yd³
Cut to the conservation drawing, clay liner in 6-in lifts at 95% Proctor
Wetland & filter strip earthwork$0.22 / sq ft
Berms, spreaders and shallow water controls to the plan
Mole ploughing, same season relief$0.34 / lin ft
Unlined mole channels at 18–20 in — three good years, one afternoon
Rates
Priced by the foot, because water travels by the foot
A pattern is spacing, depth and grade — thirty to sixty feet between laterals depending on the soil, thirty to thirty-six inches down, a tenth of a foot of fall per hundred. We pull soil cores before we quote, because tile on the wrong spacing is an expense, and tile off grade is a donation. The rate page is the one the last farm was quoted from and the next one will be.
How the spacing is set
A pattern is read from the soil, not the catalogue
The flats put two feet of silt loam over clay till, and every field argues about where the seam sits. We core the wet spots and the dry ones, lay the spacing to what the cores say — tighter through the silt, wider where the till wants to drain — and grade every line to the tenth. The plough installs most of it without opening a trench the whole way; the trencher takes the stone ground and the crossings. Either way the water arrives at the outlet the same season the pipe does.
The sequence
From cores to running outlet
Five passes, the same on forty acres as on four. The county’s conservation office gets the map before the plough does, and you get the as-built after — because tile maps outlive the people who drew them, and the next generation deserves the truth.
Cores & maps
Soil cores across the wet and the dry, the existing tile located by camera where the outlets still breathe, and the field mapped to the tenth.
The pattern drawn
Spacing, depth and grade set by the soil, mains and laterals laid out, and the conservation office filed the plan it wants to see.
Locate the living
The 811 ticket for the crossings, and every private line — gas, well power, the yard light circuit — walked and flagged with you.
Plough & trench
Laterals ploughed in on grade, stone ground trenched and bedded, mains tied and outlets rebuilt with riprap and headwall.
The as-built
Depth, spacing and outlet surveyed onto a map you keep — and the first spring thaw watched on site with coffee.
Containment
A lagoon is a promise with a clay liner in it
The county does not ask for a lagoon that holds — it asks for one that holds forever, on paper, with a liner compacted in six-inch lifts at 95 percent standard Proctor and tested lift by lift. We cut to the conservation drawing, key the berms into native ground, set the inflow and the drawdown, and hand over the density log the inspection is read from. The same lifts, tests and paperwork go under a farm pond, because water cannot tell the difference either.
The liner clause
If a containment we build fails a hold-down test or an inspection names our liner, the repair is ours — re-key, re-lift, re-test. Thirty-one seasons, and the clause has been needed once, on a lagoon the previous owner had half-empty for a decade. We fixed it and kept the log.
2025 — 2026
The pattern wall
Six jobs from the last two seasons, photographed at the outlet or at the spring after. Tile work photographs badly and drains beautifully — the outlet is the portrait.
My father tiled the home quarter in 1968 and the map died with him. Moleboard found the old line with the camera, ploughed the new pattern around it, and handed me an as-built that will outlive us both. The quarter that used to eat a tractor in April now carries the sprayer the same week the ridge farms do. That is the whole review — we plant earlier and nobody gets winched.
The four regulars
Questions from the field gate
The four every drainage call starts with, answered from the rate page rather than a mood. If yours is not here, the yard answers six to five and the person on it has ploughed through your township.
Ploughed tile or trenched tile — which one do I need?
Both, on most farms. The plough installs four-inch laterals on grade without opening a trench the whole way — fast, cheap and gentle on the soil structure — and it covers most of a pattern. Stone ground, mains and road crossings go to the trencher, with bedding and compacted backfill, because some ground insists on being opened to be treated honestly. The cores decide the split before anything rolls.
How long does pattern tile actually last?
Corrugated plastic on a graded bed is a fifty-to-hundred-year material — the failures you hear about are iron gone at the joints, grade lost to heave, or outlets silted and unmaintained. We plough on grade, rod the outlets, and hand you the as-built so the next generation maintains instead of re-lays. There is 1968 tile on these flats still running; that is the standard.
What is mole ploughing — the cheap line on the page?
An unlined channel the mole plough pulls at eighteen to twenty inches: no pipe, no stone, an afternoon per field, and three or four good seasons of relief before it closes. For a wet quarter that is waiting on a full pattern, it is honest bridge work at thirty-four cents a foot — and we say exactly that, because a mole channel is a loan, not a drainage system.
Does the conservation office need to be involved?
On the flats, usually yes — pattern tile over a certain acreage, any lagoon or containment, and anything touching a wetland or a ditch of record. We draw the plan on the forms the office wants, file it, and build to the stamped version. The paperwork is cheaper than the alternative, and the as-built they get is the same one you do.
Tile season runs harvest to freeze-up · lagoons price all winter · (555) 065-1177 · tile@moleboardfarm.example
The gate is answered same-day
Bring the wet acres
The fields, the acres that drown, and the spring you remember losing. The cores are pulled on the first visit, the pattern is drawn from them, and the rate page is the quote. tile@moleboardfarm.example