Have a small pond in the backyard, about 30 ft across. It appears to be spring fed, our best guess is that someone dug out a spring years ago to make the pond. Nothing flows in, but about 10 to 30 gpm range flows out, and the pond does not freeze over in winter. This is in Northern Utah, all other water in the area does freeze.

Problem is it’s not very deep, mostly less than 2 ft with a small area up to 4 feet and only a foot or so in the middle. It may have originally been dug with a backhoe that couldn't reach the center very well. The bottom is mostly sand with some organic sedimentation on top.

We’d like to get the sediment out and deepen the pond to 4 or 5 feet in the center. We have asked some local backhoe guys for estimates but no one has gotten back to us.

It occurs to me some kind of dredge pump could be used to suck the sediment and sand out. Does anyone have any experience with this? What kind and size pump would you use?

It looks to me that something like what I have seen on Bering Sea Gold would be sufficient. If a smaller trash pump would work we could probably buy one for no more than hiring a backhoe. If it was our own pump we could do it slowly over time. We would have to lift the water and sediment about 5 feet above pond surface and then pipe it 30 feet or so to discharge.