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The normal way to drain agricultural land was to use a mole plough to dig a subterranean drainage channel. The mole plough has a vertical blade with a cylindrical "mole" attached to the bottom. The mole is pointed at the front end, and as it moves through the soil, it leaves a horizontal channel into which porous drainage pipes can be laid.
It is used to lay buried services of virtually any description, for drainage, water, electricity, telecommunications, gas supply etc.. A coil of the service pipe/cable is mounted on the tractor and is led down a guide behind the blade, and is left buried behind the plough in a single operation, without the need to predig a deep trench and re ...
Mole ploughs are used to create tile drainage, with or without tiles or tile line added. A form of this implement (with a single blade), a pipe-and-cable-laying plough , is used to lay buried cables or pipes, without the need to dig a deep trench and re-fill it.
The mole plough allows under-drainage to be installed without trenches, or breaks up the deep impermeable soil layers that impede it. It is a deep plough with a torpedo or wedge-shaped tip and a narrow blade connecting it to the body.
The earliest type consisted of a "u" shaped trough onto which a flat lid was placed. Later the extruded clay pipe was developed. These are still used. These can be laid in an excavated trench, or a horizontal hole is formed in the ground using a mole plough and the pipes are forced in by means of a hand or mechanical press. By this means, heavy ...
Johnston, the "father of tile drainage in America", [12] continued to advocate for tile drainage throughout his life, attributing his agricultural success to the formula "D, C, and D", i. e., dung, credit, and drainage. [13] The expansion of drainage systems was an important technical aspect of Westward Expansion in the United States in the ...
The subsurface field drainage systems consist of horizontal or slightly sloping channels made in the soil; they can be open ditches, trenches, filled with brushwood and a soil cap, filled with stones and a soil cap, buried pipe drains, tile drains, or mole drains, but they can also consist of a series of wells.
The mole itself is a steel cylinder about 60 cm long and 6 cm in diameter. It works as a pneumatic cylinder with pulsed compressed air causing the head of the mole to repeatedly hammer against the soil in front of the mole. Once the mole has passed through the earth the pipe can be pulled through the long horizontal hole.