I found an artesian spring on a place I once owned. It had an outlet about 1.5 inches in diameter. folowing the hole with a backhoe about 12 feet led to a large reserve/cavern that held about 30,000 gallons of water and an outlet around 2' in diameter. I was able to get to solid rock and clean away all the clay, then placed 4" pvc and capped the "cavern" wth concrete, then installed a water pump to supply my home. If you dig out your "spring" holes to find the SINGLE source pathway, you can dig a deep enough hole to place PVC with an anti-seep collar (farm discs are good for small pipe) and compact at least 4' X 4' area of clay around the pipe. Extend the pvc above your water line and determine the "Height " it will push the water to. For low pressure areas try to pump water from the pipes until the pond level rises higher than spring pressure to eliminate a blow out. If it is above the ponds waterline, support the pipe and trim it to stay just above the water's surface. If it does NOT raise above the waterline, determine the height it will rise and again, trim it to be above the waterline. Once the pond has filled, the pressure of your pond's water will not overcome the compacted clay in the low pressure areas and drain, plus you will always have a clean water source from the higher pressure springs.
You'll need to dig out and find the main spring feeds if possible. Vent all the springs you can find when there is good ground moisture to make them appear. Vent them ALL. Some low pressure ones will become HIHG pressure during/after a rain and the goal here is to make the PIPE the path os least resistance and NOT a new hole.
Make sense?
Last edited by Rainman; 01/19/09 11:29 AM.
