Bob Brown

I’m a recently divorced individual who’s top priority is being a good father for my two children and two dogs. My daughter, Jessica, is a college senior majoring in environmental and forest biology at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. My son, Christopher is a high school senior who has completed the PermaEthos PDC and is likely to be a Civil Engineering major at UCONN next year. Tucker and Woodrow are two sweet mutts, with some issues, who had a hard time finding a home.
I work as a Software Engineer (like Paul Wheaton) and have been learning about and experimenting with permaculture for the last five years. Enjoy an active healthy lifestyle that includes some cycling, running, hiking and both kinds of skiing. Recently have added meditation and yoga to the mix. Actively interested in economics, herbalism, alternative technologies and healthy diet. Eat a healthy varied diet but do occasionally have a cheeseburger or pizza and enjoy a chocolate malted milkshake after a long bicycle ride. Used to follow sports closely but not much anymore except for my son’s cross country and track teams. Enjoy the occasional people focused movie (Cinema Paradiso is my all time favorite).
Not a very good writer but did start a blog last year. (With the divorce complete I hope to start writing again – it has been awhile.)
http://www.InvestingWithNature.com
Bob

Some pictures from this morning as the rain storm was tapering down. One is a view from above the mini-swale (180 degrees from the direction of the first picture), you can see that ground is moist but no standing water and the swale is moist but no flowing water. The other picture is in the front yard (about 150 feet away) where a low spot that get fed runoff from our neighbor's driveway forms a puddle - that is about as much water as I've ever seen collect in the 18 years we've lived here.

Bob

Kris,

A standard swale should have a sill that allows overflow down slope into a lower swale yet as I understand they survive erosion when an overflow occurs. Why would this be different?

We have had several very heavy rain events in the two weeks since I put this in place without problems. I think that is just because of our soil which does not seem to collect any surface water even in the heaviest of rains. Of course that also means that we get at most a trickle of water coming into the mini-swale even during heavy rain. If I ran the output from our gutter and downspout into the mini-swale at the high point, I agree with you that the volume of water would cause erosion and wipe out the steps and the system would become a trench that guides the water downhill.

Thanks,

Bob

Kris,

Yes that is it exactly. Maybe a better term would be mini-swales with mini-dams.

Thanks,

Bob

Gani,

I'm actually trying to perform a normal swale function, capture water and allow it to irrigate the fedge. For normal swales, the swales is on contour and you would have a sill that would direct the overflow into another swales at a lower level (also on contour). Since the fedge runs along the property line, I can not do exactly that. So I thought I would try putting the swale along the fedge (the ground does slope slightly down toward the swale, the ground slopes from far to near and from right to left when viewed from the point where the picture was taken). I doubt I'll ever see an overflow from one swale to the next lower swale (the water seems to always soak into the ground here) but if it did it should flow into a lower swale. The swales are level so they would need about 1" of standing water to overflow - on this ground don't think it will happen.

I imagine that someone has tried something similar, maybe with a different name but I have not seen anything like this so far (about a year into learning about permaculture).

Took a picture from a different angle, but it came out lousy so didn't post it.

Glad you gave an explanation of a french drain, was not familiar with it.

Thanks,

Bob

Kris,

I guess my question was not clear. I do understand the concepts behind swales and their use of contour.

In this case circumstances would not allow for a swale on contour, so something different was needed and wanted to see if anyone had done something similar.

Thanks,

Bob

Stepped Mini-Swales

Inspired by Jack Spirko's recent podcasts about food hedges and hearing Paul Wheaton talking about eliminating irrigation. I decided to start creating a food hedge along the edge of our property using as many permaculture techniques as possible while still keeping a somewhat straight run along the property borders.

The use of small wood core beds seemed obvious and since the ground is not flat the use of swales would be nice. However ideal, on contour, swales would wind on and off of our property since the slope varies. In Jack's presentation on permaculture techniques, he talked about slowing water down using swales and about how a sill is used to provide a controlled overflow from a higher to lower swale. That lead to a thought of putting the sill across the width of the swale and having a line of swales at different levels that sort of step down to each other with a sill between them. That would seem to allow me to use swales in a straight line, rather then have them exactly following the contour.

I haven't seen this "technique" before, has anyone used it? Is there a good reason why it wouldn't work?

The picture shows the small swale(s) and woody bed that we built so far. You should be able to see the steps in the swale(s) as it goes down hill. It is probably not very critical in our area (NW CT) most years, as we get a decent amount of moisture (50" rain, 60" snow) and the water problems tend to as much water in the wrong places (basement) as lack of water.

Thought it would be a good idea to get some feedback before trying more of this.

Thanks,

Bob