Construction and performance of a simplified tension table for the determination of soil physicohydric attributes

Abstract

For determining the soil attributes of water retention up to –10 kPa, including macroporosity and microporosity, the sand tension table has been proposed as a low-cost and high-performance alternative to Büchner funnels. This study demonstrates procedures for the installation, calibration and validation of a tension table built with inexpensive, easily purchased materials. We collected 14 oxisol samples with preserved structure to evaluate the efficiency of the constructed tension table as compared to Büchner funnels for determining the water content at potentials of –2, –4 and –6 kPa. No significant differences were observed for the porosity obtained using the tension table compared to that observed using the suction unit.