Too Much Water? How to Drain Swales in Wet Climates

Now here's a question from Samia, and it's in a humid climate with plenty of rainfall, how do you prevent systems from becoming waterlogged rather than simply trying to capture more water? Nice question. Okay, well, our swales, we put in swivel pipes and we drop the swivel pipe so the water releases. It has to go somewhere. And if it comes up against the road like this, we put in a V-drain that directs that water somewhere. That somewhere is usually a crossing pipe. That crossing pipe takes the water under the road. We've got too much water, so we don't need it much. It goes down and it hits the swale. That's that lower swale from the top swale with the swivel pipe to the crossing, to the V-drain, to the crossing pipe, to the next swale, that can have A swivel pipe in it as well. If that's saturated, you just go on with the same procedures. Swivel pipes, V-drains, crossing pipes, swivel pipes, V-drains, crossing pipes, till we get to the bottom and it's all saturated, done. We're all right, we're rehydrated completely. Let me show you how that little sequence works. So here we are in a subtropical swale. We've got lots of coffee being harvested on the upside. Lots of galangal on the mound below and many trees and here is a swivel pipe. So I've just put it on because it's been off, we've been really well and truly wet enough, and that's just a plumbing joint that's not glued on and I can drop it off like that and that'll drain the water. Now I usually put these on a steel post so I know they're off. So I drop this on a post where I can see it. Oh, swivel pipe's off. It's a dry period, I better put it back on. I'll make that obvious that my swivel pipe's off. Now that water then comes out of here. So there's the end of the pipe, just there. That water goes on down here over this well-vegetated bank, I must say, and hits this V-drain. That V-drain is coming all the way along this contour driveway, and you can see where the water's recently been running. In fact, it's still a bit damp. And if you follow this down, it is a little bit damp at the bottom, but it's hardly moving. And it comes on down, and there's gonna be a pit down here, which it drops into, and then a pipe that takes it across the road. Here's the pit, and down there is a pipe. So we've got a pipe here, big one, going under the road. That goes under the road. And on the other side, can be quite a volume here. Now we've got some old bits of concrete And bricks and things to stop the erosion. But that's the pipe, and look, it is dripping. There, it's dripping through, because there's still a little bit of residual moisture. Our landscape is saturated. So that water then, it comes hard, it hits these bricks and things and old bits of concrete, all getting covered up, and rolls down here. And I would like to point out that there's strategically planted clumping bamboo to take the impact. They're almost like gabions when they're this thick. So there's two here in the... the drain exit point and then it turns and hits this swale and that's where it goes around the landscape and there's another swivel pipe. And it repeats that process through those infrastructure components till we get to the bottom and we join the river. But I don't think those drips are gonna get there. They're not even getting here. So the landscape is drinking that water. Now, there is a little bit of... Capacity left, but not much. It won't take much rain to get right back full again. So we don't need the swivel pipe on. We've had enough. Thank you very much. It'll be quite okay if it doesn't rain for another two or three months. We're fine.