Earth or Cement? - 06/29/07 01:22 AM
Hello Everyone,
I've been lurking here for a while and reading up on the posts here. I've really enjoyed what I've been reading and have learned a lot. My situation is that I have just purchased some land with some geography that sounds like a dream setup for a small pond. I have a small (very small) creek flowing over a limestone bed that flows over a five foot water fall (ok five foot drizzle). The water falls into a sunken circular area with natural rock walls that is about 50 feet across. At the far end of the sunken area is an outlet stream.
I've been thinking about turning the circular area into a pond by damming the outlet stream. The dam would need to be about 5 feet high and about 10 feet wide at the top. Given everything I've read I don't anticipate any big problems like algae or cloudy water. I believe I will be able to install one of those pipes with a grate at the top that lets the water flow out and everything should be fine …. with the exception of a big rain. If we get a heavy rain (let's say five inches) the dam will certainly overflow.
So my question to the group is should I construct the dam out of cement, or is it possible to construct a earth dam with a strong enough spill way to prevent the entire dam from being washed away in the spring? The variation in flow (purely a guess) will go from something like 10 gallons a minute to 1,000 gallons a minute.
I think an earth dam would look much nicer, but I'd really like my dam building experience to be a one time event.
Thanks in advance for you help.
I've been lurking here for a while and reading up on the posts here. I've really enjoyed what I've been reading and have learned a lot. My situation is that I have just purchased some land with some geography that sounds like a dream setup for a small pond. I have a small (very small) creek flowing over a limestone bed that flows over a five foot water fall (ok five foot drizzle). The water falls into a sunken circular area with natural rock walls that is about 50 feet across. At the far end of the sunken area is an outlet stream.
I've been thinking about turning the circular area into a pond by damming the outlet stream. The dam would need to be about 5 feet high and about 10 feet wide at the top. Given everything I've read I don't anticipate any big problems like algae or cloudy water. I believe I will be able to install one of those pipes with a grate at the top that lets the water flow out and everything should be fine …. with the exception of a big rain. If we get a heavy rain (let's say five inches) the dam will certainly overflow.
So my question to the group is should I construct the dam out of cement, or is it possible to construct a earth dam with a strong enough spill way to prevent the entire dam from being washed away in the spring? The variation in flow (purely a guess) will go from something like 10 gallons a minute to 1,000 gallons a minute.
I think an earth dam would look much nicer, but I'd really like my dam building experience to be a one time event.
Thanks in advance for you help.