Not only have we been chopping silage this past week or so, we’ve had some tiling done in a couple of fields.

The blue tile is for the smaller lateral tile lines and the yellow tile is for the bigger main lines. Each main has multiple laterals draining water into it.

 

Some of the blue tile is four inches and some are six inches in diameter.

The yellow tile for the main lines is 8 inches in diameter.

When the tiling crew first comes, they have to dig to find the old main lines so that they can attach new ones to them. Many of the old lines are made out of clay tile and are easy to break so they have to be very careful digging around.

Many of the old mains were dug in years and years ago by hand. We only have a pencil sketch map of where they are, if we have any map at all, so most of the digging is hunting, pecking and trying to find them without breaking them.

The line of these dirt piles is where the crew found the old clay tile main. The piles go horizontal and the main would go straight out from where you are standing.

Tile lines are usually 2 1/2 to 4 feet deep so they have to dig at least that deep to find them.

Here the crew is getting ready to put a new roll of tile onto the tile machine. It’s kind of like putting a spool of thread on a sewing machine and threading it onto the machine.

Now he’s “threading” more tile through the machine and hooking it onto where they ran out of the other spool.

Here they’ve duct taped the two ends together with a connector between them.

The tile machine driver now starts to plow the tile into the ground. See the yellow bubble on top of the red pole? That’s the GPS/laser to keep the tile “on grade” in the field.

Here’s is the tile plow out of the ground.

These guys are getting ready to connect the new blue tile to the old clay tile main.

He feeds it down through the black tile plow “boot”.

This is the connector that will go on the end of the blue tile and into the clay tile main.

The guy in the white shirt is breaking a hole the size of the connector into the side of the main tile.

Now the other guy is connecting the blue tile after the connector is in the main. [Notice the bare feet on the guy in blue. He actually works that way all over the field. He has for three years and loves it. Not for me! I’d rip my feet open on the corn stalks!]