I am at the very early stages of building a 1.5 acre pond on 10 acres that is fairly flat and was used as farmland. It is extremely sandy with clay being found at 15' The plan is to dig down 23-25' to bring up enough clay to pack the sides and bottom to have 5'thick clay walls. It is also extremely wet. They were stuck on multiple occasions just stripping off the top soil. Currently they have trenched 3 drainage pipe 5' down and have them dumping into a catch basin. It has been pumping constantly for 2.5 weeks. They plan on digging in 5' increments. As we get more into this the more nervous I get. Any thoughts on if this sounds like a reasonable plan?

hopefully mike or scott will jump in. moving that much dirt that deep , than pushing the sand back into the hole , about 10' of sand , then covering it with clay , they better pack the heck out of that base , i would be afraid of the water weight pushing the bottom down and separating from the sides ,causing cracks , with only 5" of clay, again i'm no expert. why not truck some clay in or dig it and seal with that benonite stuff. not best time year to be putting pond in north ohio , why not wait till summer when it drys up. i can't even take my tractor out of the barn , without screwing up the property with ruts , been very wet spring.