Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Soil questions Building a new Pond on my own, need a little help.

I am building a small pond, about 1/4 acre. I am doing it myself little at a time with an old JD 450 Dozer. I plan to fill the pond with well water and to keep it from being too murky I am building it in an area that does not have runoff into it. I am going to use the dirt from the hold to build a dam around the whole area so in the end the water will be above the original ground level. ( the ground has a slight grade to it so it has to be that way to keep from being well below ground level on one side. I am going to dig average of around 4 ft deep with a 3 - 4 ft dam all the way around, making the water level around 6 -7 ft all the way around. Anyway, after I push the dirt to the edges with the dozer, other than driving over the dam with the dozer is there some other thing I should be doing to compact the sides so they don't fall back into the pond? I was trying to decide if I needed to rent or hire some sort of packer or roller, but I'm not sure. My soil is about 30% clay and my understanding is that should hold the water fairly well.

Thanks for any advice and input.

I just built a shallow pond/wetland with only a small watershed. It is filling nicely because it is sealed very well. If you are going to fill from a well, then preventing leaks now will pay off big later. I keyed my dam and packed the clay core with a sheep's foot roller in 6-8" lifts. I would think you would benefit from this same procedure all around your pond. Otherwise, you may not be able to add enough water to keep it full. I used a 550G dozer for digging the pond and a backhoe to core and pack a keyway 4' into existing clay (after removing topsoil) before using the dozer and sheep's-foot to elevate the clay berm.

30% clay is compactable as long as it's thoroughly processed with the 70% which isn't clay and then properly compacted all over. Remember this: What holds water better than anything on the planet...a bathtub, right? ....Except for that little bitty hole down on one end. If you miss proper compaction anywhere along the way, that's the potential for your little bitty hole in my analogy. Your bulldozer isn't good for compaction. You need heavy weight, compacting in 6" lifts, all over the site, with proper moisture in those processed soils.
One other important item is your well. Use this number. One acre, one inch deep, is 27,000 gallons. So, a quarter acre pond, 7 feet deep, if the sides were straight (which they aren't) has about 600,000 gallons of water, give or take based on slopes and actual depth. A 30 gallon per minute well will fill your pond in two weeks and be more than enough to keep up with evaporation.