What is a culvert pipe?

If you’re thinking of installing a culvert pipe across a watercourse to enable a vehicle to safely drive across it, here are some useful tips on the things you should consider.

 

What is a culvert pipe?

A culvert is an economical and effective way of passing a running watercourse under a physical obstacle such as a roadway, railway, hill or even a canal. Often culverts are created in existing watercourses to allow passage over it. A typical example of a culvert is where a section of a farm ditch is piped and filled over to allow passage of farm machinery from one field to the next without having to fold up and use the public highway.

 

Culvert pipes are made of concrete, HDPE or steel. HDPE (Plastic) offers significant benefits over concrete and steel as it is much lighter and easier to transport and install than concrete and more corrosion resistant than steel. We supply culvert piping from 450mm to 3000mm diameters in any length.

 

Main uses of a Culvert Pipe

Their main use is to transfer water and materials as a drain pipe under roads or earth. They also can be used as bridges, when the pipe is placed side by side with earth or rock covering them.

 

Lots of times when roads are built it disrupts the flow of streams or ponds, a culvert can be used to connect wildlife together allowing them to move around freely with no barriers or disruptions.

 

Culverts are able to have a variety of uses due to their durability. As they are strong they can be used for bridges as they can withstand the weight of cars – allowing for their safe passage.

 

Culvert pipe can also come in a variety of shapes – round and smooth or corrugated and can even be made to order into rectangles or squares, increasing their versatility. They can come in concrete, high-density polyethylene HDPE or steel. You will need to decide what the best shape and material is for you and your requirements.

 

In our experience, we tend to recommend galvanized steel pipes and HDPE plastic as these are the most versatile and durable and suits most requirements.

 

Top tips on installing a culvert

Once you have chosen the position for your culvert construction, firstly clean out the watercourse with an excavator to a suitable depth and shape to receive a suitably large culvert pipe that will cope with maximum winter flows without causing a backup and flooding issue upstream. In some instances, it is beneficial to divert the watercourse by way of a temporary ditch so that you are able to work in dry conditions and allow the use of concrete if necessary.

 

Next, you need to create a suitable foundation for the culvert. Once this is completed, you then need to lay the pipe central to the watercourse, in true line with it and at roughly the same fall as the watercourse itself.

 

Once happy with the height, position and line of the culvert, stabilize the pipe with timber props whilst you backfill around it with suitably selected material or concrete. You will need to construct a headwall on either end of the pipe either by shuttering and pouring concrete, building concrete blocks or brickwork or using traditional methods such as ballast and cement-filled hessian sacks stacked around the pipe.

 

Once you have completed the backfill and cover and allowed enough time for cementitious materials to cure your culvert is ready for the water to flow through and your equipment to pass over the top.

 

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