Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Building a dam Enhancing my ponds for dog training.

Been a while since I posted here, been busy with retiring, moving building a house etc. Got settled on our property and wanted to share what I've been doing on the ponds. First I bought this. Our 55 acres is reclaimed strip mine land so I needed something with a little horsepower. This old dozer does the job.

I had a nice lake, about 2 acres but I wanted to add some technical structures for training my labrador retrievers. Last summer and fall drought gave me an opportunity to do some work on the main pond. First project was to take an old mudhole below the dam and turn it into a "swim-by" pond for training young dogs to handle in the water. Here's that pond.


The water on the left is the strip pit, a result of mining the area. My 2acre lake is on the right. I dug out the mudhole till it was about 6 feet deep and about 30 yards by 15 yards. Built a dam up on the left there.

Next, I built my technical training structures, i.e. points and levees. I used the dozer to take dirt from the surrounding hills and extend points well out into the lake.

After building the points up I raised the dam on the lake about 3 -1/2 feet. That flooded a lot of new ground and gave me "swimming water" around the points I had built. Increased the size of the lake to about 2.5 acres.



Here's a shot of the dam. The spillways show up with snow on them. I had them covered with straw held in place by old hay bale wrap.

I had to add a small dam on the long neck of my lake that goes toward the main strip pit. My lake is higher elevation than the pit and at the new water level would have overflowed at the end of the neck so I had to dam that up too.

Here's a shot of the lake from the hill to the southeast. After raising the dam I decided to add a small island and another point. Before I was quite finished we got 9 inches of rain in 4 days and my pond was almost full so I did not get them dressed up like I wanted them but they still work for training. Maybe next fall I will pump down the lake and finish what I started there.

Looks good! My son wants to do something similar at our place. We have two Golden's were training now. Most Lab guys are not Golden guys, lol and I have had more labs than Golden's but the best retriever I have ever had was a Golden lab mix. These litter mates, one Female and one male come from Tenn and have National Field trial Champion bloodline. At 6 months of age I have the male that forced his way into my lap as I type this.

This is my other pond which leaks badly. Both my ponds were just products of the reclamation process and the dams were not properly designed or compacted. No core in the dams I am sure. They both leak some - or the basin leaks. Who knows with the soil and rock all mixed together in the mining process. The upper lake has some shale pockets in the bottom and is so acidic nothing lives in it. It's pretty though - crystal clear and no weed problems in that one!

I just started a new project building another technical training lake in a draw on the south end of my property. On this one I am building up all the technical structures - points, islands etc before I complete the dam. That way I can smooth and compact them properly. Once that is in place I will close the dam and cross my fingers. Hope it holds water! No guarantees in this reclaimed mine land. I'll take pictures as the project progresses and post.

I would like to have a dozer like yours but been hard to pull the trigger. No telling how much water I could hold for training and for hunting, not to mention growing fish Any ideas on buying one, doing the work and then selling it? How hard is it to sell one after use?

I shopped around for two years before pulling the trigger. I decided to stick with CAT because of the quality and resale value. I did have a little bit of experience with heavy equipment working in the coal mining industry for 6 years in the mid 70's. Other brands are cheaper but I have never regretted paying more for CAT. Their machines are heavy duty and overbuilt. Mine is a 74 model and it was being used daily on small jobs. I did a LOT of reading and lurking in heavy equipment forums. I looked a lot of different machines on dealer lots, online, and used Craigslist to find local machines I could check out. I am not a mechanic so once I found one I thought met all my criteria I paid a heavy equipment mechanic to go with me to check it out. He gave it his blessing and I bought it. All these older used machines have issues so you will have to deal with things but just make as sure as you can that there is nothing wrong with the engine and transmission and that is has a good undercarriage. There are some good online sites to help with evaluating a dozer so you know what to look for. You have to be diligent in your research and evaluation but in the end it is still a roll of the dice when you plunk down the cash. So far it looks like I got a good one. There is a demand for good older dozers that can work so I am not concerned about selling it. Shoot, with 55 acres of reclaimed mine land I may keep it till I'm too old to run it anymore. Sure are enough projects to keep me busy. Told my wife that at least I know how I am going to die - I'll work myself to death on this property :-)