Hello Everyone, new member here. We purchased my current home 6 years ago. There was an old pond on the property that was empty due to a broken pipe that controlled the depth. The owner had not repaired it since he was selling the house. The water comes in through a small stream that formed from several different mountain springs. The pond has been empty now for over 6 years so theres lots of grass and cattails growing. The pond ised to have a healthy population of brook trout and thrived. I would like to repair and refill and restock with brook trout. I have access to a small excavator and would be able to scrape the grass and other vegetation from it and start over. Some locals are telling me to just cut the vegetation and clean itup and refill. What do you guys recommend? I have attached some puctures so you can have an idea what Situation I have. The grass is tall so the pucs make it look more shallow than it is. Its about 8-10ft on one end and stays that way a little over the halfway point and then gets shallower near the inlet. Appreciate any advice. Thanks in advance.

In my opinion, I would just leave the plant material in there and wait for it to rot after it refills (but I am pretty patient with such things). The concern I would have are the cattails and future invasion of this plant along the new waterline. The seedbank is probably pretty high, so being vigilant at pulling volunteers from the edges will be needed for a few years to get rid of these while new emergent species fill in (hopefully the ones you plant and want). If the pond has a broken standpipe, you might want to consider if a repair or replacement will be most durable. A lot of folks here favor siphon systems that draw water from the pond bottom. It would be a shame to make a repair only to have the pipe fail somewhere else.

You have the opportunity to completely renovate the pond if funds allow. I would certainly consider scraping all the plant life and the soils that they are currently growing in out of the bottoms. This soil is likely all the sediments that washed into the pond over the years of it's full life and these sediments will have a lot of nutrients in them that could cause problems once it's filled again. Excess nutrients tend to aid in the production of nuisance algae. Do a little reading on FA (filamentous algae) and you will understand very quickly how important it is to avoid making conditions favorable for it's growth. If you choose to de-muck the pond, make sure you do not dig into the original clay bottom very much as you could compromise the seal and create a leak.

It looks like you may have some water left standing in the pond in places and I would try to get that to drain out first so that your excavator will not have trouble dealing with the soup. That pond muck is some slippery stuff. Make sure that the water does not have fish in it now or they will be there once you fill it back up and that can be troublesome if they might be GSF (green sun fish)or BHC (bullhead Cats).

Like RAH says, do the drain system right the first time so that it does not cause problems and expense down the road. It's much harder and costly to correct a failed drain when the pond is full of water.

Welcome to the club, you have come to the right place!

Thanks guys! There is very little water in there right now, just from the inlet stream and flows through the pond bottom and out the other side. The original outlet was a pipe Laid horizontal at bottom of pond with a 90degree elbow with a vertical pipe to control depth. I have seen some local ponds set up this way and a few others had a horizontal pipe on the pond edge to control depth. Is one method better than the other. If I did a horizontal drain at the top esge of pond to control depth, I would leave the pipe at the bottom and just cap it off where it exits to the stream that way if I needed to drain the pond in the future I would have the ability. And yes you are correct, there is a thin layer of soil at the bottom but just under the grass I can get the original clay bottom. To be honest we were debating burying the pond for a while but it would actually cost me more to bury then repair. I have no access to fill on my property and I would need to pipe the water entering the pond below the fill because there is no way to divert or stop the water from entering the pond long term. Thanks again!!

Anyone have any opinions on overflow pipe for pond depth control? The old setup was a vertical pipe that fed down to a horizontal pipe at pond bottom which spilled overflow into a nearby brook. Ive seen many ponds just have a horizontal pipe along the top edge to control depth. Is one method better than the other?

I have a horizontal drain pipe, but I don't have a dam. Just a hole in the ground. If your overflowing at a dam I think a siphon drain, drawing excess water from the bottom would be a better setup.

Repairing the original stand pipe setup will be the most cost effective solution and wouldn't be as likely to washout or leak around. Does the pond have an emergency overflow?

I updated my outflow pipe just last fall. I went from this:


To this (the slats are removable as needed to adjust water depth):



I posted about it here.

I like that!