Some of the major drainage systems are:

Open drains

Humps and Hollows

Levees

Grassed waterways

1. Open Drains

On the basis of dimensions, Open drains can be of three types:

Shallow

These are only up to 300mm deep and can be created with the help of a hand shovel. They help remove
water from shallow depressions and direct them to a larger drain or a stream. These are not suited for
draining a large area of land and are more in the shape of a temporary arrangement.

Medium Depth

Such drains are between 300mm to a meter deep and are created with the help of an excavator. These
are typically V-shaped and flat at the bottom and a gradient that is steep enough to help water flow
through quickly without damaging the drain walls or bottom. They are best suited for flat areas.

Large

Large open drains can be several meters deep and wide and are created with the help of dragline
excavators, bulldozers, or scrapers and are capable of evacuating large volumes of water.

2. Humps and Hollows

This is a system where a surface is shaped into parallel humps separated by hollows. This allows the
humped shapes to shed excess moisture into the hollows which double up as shallow surface drains.
This type of surface drainage is ideal for areas where tile or mole drainage is not possible on account of
inadequate depth or fall of the soil.

The humps and hollows system creates a series of lateral surface drains that help discharge water into
headland drains. One can use formulae to calculate the size of the drain taking into account the amount
of water required to be removed.
The spacing between the humps may vary between 10 to 20 meters depending upon the speed with
which the water needs to be removed. The greater the space between the humps, the slower will be the
rate of discharge of water.

3. Levees

Levees are surface channels usually created on land with a gradient in such a manner that the soil
removed to create these forms a levee on the downslope of these channels.

This helps the surface runoff not build so much velocity while flowing down a slope that it starts eroding
the land. The banks or levees have to follow the lay of the slope and make the water flow down gently
and not create make the lane below susceptible to landslips.

Ideally, such levees should have a spacing of 30 to 50 meters for slopes that possess a gradient of five to
twelve degrees. Every levee can cater to an area of about 3 hectares with a total length that is less than
400 meters. Care must be taken to establish a grass cover immediately after creating a levee, or the
channel could quickly erode.

4. Grassed Waterways

A grassed waterway is typically quite shallow and maybe narrow to a few meters in width. These can be
used to regulate drain outflows going down slopes, so as to cheaply prevent erosion.

The ratio between the vertical and horizontal sections of the waterway needs to be in 1:4 proportion. A
necessary prerequisite of such a waterway is a dense expanse of grass. The quantity of water to be
evacuated, as well as the steepness of the slope, will have a bearing on both the size and the shape of
the waterway.

The steeper the slope, the wider should be the waterway. The bottom of the waterway should be
horizontal to enable the water to spread out evenly. It is important that such waterways not be
constructed in areas prone to erosion, or they will fail.
 Size and diameter of the drain pipe and surface
per drain
Drainage pipes can have various sizes and diameters. Drains with a larger diameter are of course more
expensive. The use of unnecessarily large drains, therefore, means unnecessary costs. Small drains,
however, transport less water at the same time, which means that it takes longer for the water to drain.
This creates high groundwater levels over a longer period. The choice of the right diameter is,
therefore, an important choice. Several factors play a role in this choice. The size of the drain is closely
related to the amount of water that a pipe has to drain in a given time. The more water, the larger the
diameter must be to prevent the groundwater from rising unnecessarily over a long period. Many drain
pipes also contain a certain amount of dirt. This dirt impedes the drainage of water. When calculating
the required size of the drain, we assume that there may be ten to twelve millimetres of dirt in the
drain. Something that also occurs quite often with well-maintained drains. It is also assumed that a
low-pressure head is required for the water to flow through the pipe. Together with the amount of
water that a drain pipe must drain in a certain time (for example, 7 millimetres per day for grassland),
we can calculate the connection between the drain diameter and the maximum surface area to be
drained per drain.

Slope

Important information for calculating the diameter and the area per drain is the
slope of the drain. With a horizontal drain, the water discharge stops when the
groundwater level falls below the drain depth. The groundwater level will then be
the same depth over the entire length of the drain. If the groundwater level rises
as a result of precipitation, flow is created in the drain, and water is drained
away. The groundwater level hardly rises near the end pipe, because the water
can easily flow away. The greater the distance to this power tube, the higher the
water will be because it encounters more resistance. This creates a difference in
pressure height between the start and the end of the drainpipe . pressure height
is also called ‘the hydraulic slope’. The slope increases if;
 There is more precipitation
 The drain distance is bigger because more water has to go through the
same linear meters of drainage pipe
 The length of the drain increases
 The drains are more narrow
 
In practice, drains are often installed under a specific slope. This slope is derived
from the hydraulic slope. The drain will be placed under the slope of the
groundwater, this is created by horizontal drainage. A horizontal drain also stops
the discharge of water when the groundwater level falls below the drain depth.
Figure 17c shows that the groundwater level is not the same depth over the
entire length of the drain. On a large part of the plot, the groundwater level is
higher than intended. For example, if the drain has a slope of 10 cm per 100
meters, the groundwater level after 100 meters is 10 cm higher than at the
location of the end pipe. If it is 300 meters long, the groundwater level will be 30
cm higher at the end. This means that a worse dewatering condition is accepted
as the drains get longer. Due to the bulging of the groundwater between the
drains, the groundwater here will reach ground level. In periods with precipitation
and therefore drainage, the situation becomes worse, because even now there is
a difference in pressure height between the beginning and the end of the drain,
which creates a hydraulic slope .