I have been reading a lot but first post. Lots of information to take in here. One thing that I find interesting is all the questions on the water table and a pond being built that will fill then empty again due to this, I might actually be in this situation myself, time will tell. I am curious, if you had water break through the bottom of a pond and it filled from the water table, or an aquafier, has anyone tried putting a pipe with a flapper or check valve in the hole the water makes it's entry into the pond through, something along the lines of like a toilet tank sort of idea? Merry Christmas to all!

Can't answer your question as my area is all watershed type ponds, but welcome to the forum.

Medic828,

Interesting idea. I don't have much experience with water table ponds, but I thought the water percolated through a large area and into the pond rather than through one hole that could be adapted to a pipe? If you are correct, what a great idea!
CMM

We have a water table pond and it is as CMM describes. The water comes in from everywhere. We used trash pumps to remove the huge influx of water to keep the level down while digging. When we shut the pumps off, the pond filled in less than 48 hours to the level of the water table (about two feet below grade at that time).

When I saw the pond around here dug they hit no water during the construction and no wet areas ever showed in the pond. It was right after the construction we received two rains of an inch each in a weeks time. When the rain finished you could see ripples on the pond surface from water filling from below. The pond continued to fill and rose around 4 feet before it leveled off. Then no rain for appx 6 weeks and pond dropped probably 3 feet, my guess would be through this same hole, could be wrong. I just wondered if any of those ideas would be useful to keep letting the water in after a rain but stop it from going out once it leveled off. Can a pond bottom be compacted enough to keep this from occurring in the first place?

Water can follow a "shelf" of rock or different consistancy soil types.

As a pond is initially filling, a certain amount of water saturates the surrounding soil in the pond bowl. So the level may initially drop more than normal on a brand new pond that has never filled fully before.

Some folks have springs in their ponds where the water enters and leaves locally. I wonder if the idea would work for them?

Here is an example of springs in a ground water aquifer fed pond, this is one of several old sand/gravel pits fed by 2.5 million gallons per day of flow from the island aquifer in Muscatine, Iowa



The flow of water is predictable on some bodies of water but changes from time to time on others. This pond is just 20 acres of over 750 total in the area. Picture is from the 26th



The only place where I can think of that may have a tappable ground water feed might be something like Ha-Ha Tanka state park in Lake of the Ozarks or similar. Water seeps to the surface through limestone caves/crevices