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Hi Gang,

Just found the site a few weeks back and been reading, very cool sight and lots of nice looking ponds that give me all sorts of ideas.

We built a new house recently in South East Michigan and quickly dug a 1/4 acre pond (see pictures below). Last summer I used a bulldozer to create a shallow version of the pond (maybe a foot deep) that held water nicely through late summer and the fall, although it was a very wet fall/winter.

The swamp next door makes it easy to see where the water table was/is. All things look good so we had a friend of a friend start digging the pond in late April.

The ground is mostly clay and gravel/sand although the back side has a nice vein of sand that I wish was around the front side where I envision the beach.

We intended this primarily as a swimming pond but it would be nice to house some BG or other easy catch fish for the kids. Unfortunately the depth currently is only 5.5 ft in the front swimming hole area and 3-4 ft in the back area. We were expecting this to rise 2-3 ft (total of 8-9ft in the swimming area) more but the drought and lack of springs topped the water level as you see it pictured. You can see by the bank on the right side where the water levels may be at full load.

This depth has me thinking of digging deeper for both the swimming and fish reasons. The guy who dug the pond said the back side as very difficult to dig deeper due to the hard ground he was encountering, but walking the bottom it feels very sandy.

Would you preach patience and wait for next year after a full winter/spring runoff before deciding on increasing the depth? Or at these depths should I just go forward and get it deeper assuming I’ll lose 1-2 ft (may more?) in a dry summer such as this.

Regarding digging this was done with long excavator but the bulldozer is my fathers so I’ve considered pumping this sucker dry and bulldozing the pond down to desired depth but not sure this is feasible if the bottom stays wet due to the water table. I (we) don’t have any experience with using a bulldozer to dig a pond but other than the diesel fuel the cost would be just our time.


Front view of Pond

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With the water in the pond, or even a wet bottom, there's a chance that you'll stick the bulldozer in there and THAT would be a pretty big tow bill!

If the arm on the excavator was shorter, or had teeth, it'd be easier to dig. Long reach excavators usually have a smooth face bucket on it for cleaning ditches.

It looks like it will be a groundwater pond. With the sand you will have a hard time sealing it unless you can find lots of good clay. I would dig it down to 12' (from the water level in the swamp next door), becaues with that type of soil you could lose 5'-6' of water from full pool. 5'-6' of water during winter might be enough, but I wouldn't bet against a winterkill.