My wife and I recently purchased 16 acres here in central Oklahoma. The idea is to build a pond, plant some trees, and make a nice place to build a house in the coming years. The land is pretty flat overall as it has been used for farmland for several years. Part of the land, as you'll see below is located in a floodplain.
I had the local NRCS out already to do some looking around. My original thought was that I wanted to build something pretty large, maybe around 3 acres. I thought a running windmill could help to keep it full. After talking to the NRCS, and doing some research online, Im not so sure. The NRCS recommended something around 1/2 acre. To me, that just doesn't seem like much or enough. I have an understanding of how much 3 acres is, as my house lot now is 1.5 acres, and my neighbors is also 1.5 acres. Thats where I came up with the 3 acre idea...
I started doing a little research yesterday, and according to one of the Oklahoma College's websites, we experience about 60" of evaporation per year. So for a 1 acre pond, that's about 1,629,250 gallons of evaporation per year...? Does that sound right? So for a 2 or 3 acre pond, that number could just be multiplied by the 2 or 3?
We do average around 30" of rain per year. Per 1 acre, that would be about 814,620 gallons. So I would still have a deficit of 814,620 not including any runoff that I might catch. On Aermotor's windmill website, they say their 8' model can pump approximately 190 gph in 15-20 mph winds. Our average wind speed is 12.3 mph. So multiplying the 190 gmp x 24 hours x 365 days x .5 the mph = 832,200. So that would seem to make up for the difference.
Am I looking way to deep into this? I'm probably like most people, and want the best/most, but I definitely dont want to end up with an empty hole or a mud pit...I figured it might be good to start construction in October or so to catch all the winter and spring precipitation before the summer.
Here are the pictures of the land and the layout.
This first one shows the outline of the land. The east/southeast border is a running creek, but the creek bed is about 30 below the rest of the land, else it could be a great source to fill with...
This is where to floodplain extends..
This is the topography map...
Sorry this is so long, but I wanted to include as many details as possible to get the best answers and ideas...
