Hey all! been trying to figure out how to fix my pond/dam and all my google searches seem to come here,so I figured i'd join and ask.
I bought a piece of property in 2014 that had an acre and a half pond on it of which 90% (including the dam) is on my property. It was an old shallow pond that was build in the early 1900's with a mule and slip, and then the previous owner built up the levee/dam with a trackhoe. Unfortunately beavers and the poor initial levee construction the levee couldn't hold up and breached. When he built it he didn't pack it and had almost no slope to it being about 6ft wide at the top, around 20ft at the bottom and around 12ft tall (Both sides) and was mostly sand with a bit of topsoil. I intend on taking the levee out completely and starting over, essentially pushing it all over to the swampy area on the back of the levee and building up on top. It has an active spring(~1000gph) feeding it and it is in a natural valley. When it "dried" I attempted to walk across the pond bed and found that it has about 4ft of quicksand like smelly nasty muck. If I can't walk across it without sinking, I know I can't get my D5 (narrow gauge 93J) in there to push it for a while, although it has been 90-100+ for the last month. I've pumped it down and am keeping it pumped to allow the upper areas to dry. I think if I can ever find a clay bottom I can push it out,but how do I find bottom? due to the geography, I really can't enlarge it to speak of, but plan on deepening it since it only had 2-4ft of water and tons of lily pads.The soil is a Sacul Sandy Loam according to the USGS Web soil survey
I say all that to ask this" How do I get started on this project without getting my dozer stuck and how do I do it right so I don't have to worry a bout it? I figure I'll have to wait until september to go in there but am itching to get to work on it
Pushing muck with a dozer is tough. If you can start on one side and keep the tracks on solid bottom it can be done, but you need a place for the spoils and if you are pushing muck into a swamp that is going to be doubly hard.
It might pay you to get a long arm excavator to do the digging and use your dozer to keep the material away from the excavator so he does not have to move it multiple times.
Here is a thread with some pictures of me moving muck out of an old pond. It is an inefficient process. And excavator with long reach and a bucket that will shed mud would be soooooo much better.
That stuff has the consistency of pudding. The top dries before the bottom and it can take a lot of time. Somehow, it needs to be kept dry. Dozers can get pretty useless with no bottom to work on. The long arm excavator is about the only thing I can think of to get a start.
It's not about the fish. It's about the pond. Take care of the pond and the fish will be fine. PB subscriber since before it was in color.
Without a sense of urgency, Nothing ever gets done.
Boy, if I say "sic em", you'd better look for something to bite. Sam Shelley Rancher and Farmer Muleshoe Texas 1892-1985 RIP
Welcome to Pond Boss. Is there anyway to temporarily re route the water from the spring?
been using pumps in the lowest part I can get to to pump over the levee. That's the only way I can reroute. Most of the sides where I'd have to push over is too steep to safely work side slope on. I thought about using my tractor with a box blade or disk to back in as far as it'll go and use my truck or dozer to pull it out. Just concerned that I may end up putting a low spot where I can't pump from if I do that.
My 1/4 acre pond was renovated last August. We cut the dam to let out most of the water, then I pumped it down to the top of the sludge. First, all the trees and brush were dozed from the dam, roots and all, and piled away from the pond. Then, a portion of the top of the dam was lowered a couple feet by the dozer on the side where we put the sludge. A backhoe set up there and dug a huge hole on the inside portion of the dam. The dozer began pushing sludge in small swaths from the shallow side of the pond until he hit the solid clay underneath. The sludge was pushed into the hole, then dipped out by the backhoe and piled outside the dam. When the backhoe had piled a good bit of sludge, the dozer would repeatedly come out and push the sludge away into my field. The sludge had the consistency of wet concrete. The dozer continued pushing sludge into the hole and the backhoe dipping it out until the whole pond was covered. After the sludge was out, it was a matter of somewhat deepening and enlarging the pond, and repairing the dam. In the end, the clay taken out of the pond and reused in the new part of the dam and in the cut had dried too much and wasn't sufficiently compacted, so I have had a leak and part of the dam is soft. We didn't have access to a roller, but I wish we had used the backhoe to compact rather than the dozer. (I wasn't on Pond Boss then.) Hopefully it will get better with settlement. I ended up with something like 300 to 400 cu yards of sludge in my field with an average depth of about 30 inches.
The sludge is still too wet underneath to doze away, even after 11 months. A friend came with his tracked Bobcat about a month ago and moved some off the top in the thickest part, but too wet a foot down to get any traction.
I fixed the leak where the cut was by pounding clay into the soft spots, and using some Soilfloc at about triple the recommended amount. I am not sure about Soilfloc being effective on soft spots in clay at the recommended dosages. I wish I had some more to try but it's too expensive. I bought two 5 gallon buckets of it (half unit).
Be prepared to have a lot of sludge sitting around for at least a year or more. In retrospect, it would have been better to fill in the old pond and dig a new one, or just leave it to become woods and dig a new one. I was trying to limit the amount of ground disturbed, and clear away the brush around the pond, but with the sludge field and burn pile of brush and trees, it was actually more disturbance. If only hindsight was foresight.
with the pond (and swamp behind it) being fed by a pretty good spring I think the muck will wash on down stream once I get it pushed out. The area where it'll be pushed to is pretty much unusable any ways so if it sits there for a while I don't really care how long as it takes to dry, might give me a good area to shoot snakes
Comes in from the right. A spring feeds one or two ponds above me then my pond. Goes out on the left, the previous owner did a pretty good job of digging a drainage ditch in the corner that both feeds it and acts as a spillway from that side. I plan on using that with a (eventually)concrete spillway,and possibly a bridge so I can walk and or drive all around the pond
As Dave mentioned, what I am starting to wonder is why can't you divert the spring while working on it. It's hard to tell the grade along the side of your pond (looks pretty flat), but it's worth considering dozing a trench along that bank. I did this when I reworked my pond, and the renovation would have been impossible with out it. Put in a temporary dam where it comes in, perhaps even raising the water level to get it to flow into a ditch you create. Of course you can't dam water up onto a neighbor (but you can ask).
1000 GPH will keep it awful wet to ever work in it, and pumping constantly gets to be a real bugger. Even with diverting it, you will still have to pump a lot.
As Dave mentioned, what I am starting to wonder is why can't you divert the spring while working on it. It's hard to tell the grade along the side of your pond (looks pretty flat), but it's worth considering dozing a trench along that bank. I did this when I reworked my pond, and the renovation would have been impossible with out it. Put in a temporary dam where it comes in, perhaps even raising the water level to get it to flow into a ditch you create. Of course you can't dam water up onto a neighbor (but you can ask).
1000 GPH will keep it awful wet to ever work in it, and pumping constantly gets to be a real bugger. Even with diverting it, you will still have to pump a lot.
Distance is about 450ft between. The pond is in a natural valley that's much steeper than it appears in the pictures, and my driveway goes over a culvert right after the spring flows from the pond above me so I cant even flood back that way if I wanted to due to the road. Can't see a way to divert it because I think I have a second spring that also flows in from the point where the tall grasses are.
I could/would divert from the culvert around but the neighbor has been a dick about everything from my mowing/trimming limbs within the right of way to helping his wife keep his mother in law's yard when she asked me to help, so I know that he won't help in any way or let me do anything that may help.
I can;t see a way to divert around without getting into the pond/muck, and am afraid to get stuck trying to divert to keep from getting stuck, but I could be missing the how.
Well doesn't look like the weather will cooperate this year since even though we've had mid 90s to 100's most days we've had 3 inches of rain in the last few weeks and we got 1.3 inches last nighth. Right now the plan is to completely push the levee into a pile and hope all the rain will wash enough of the muck down stream that I can work on it next year. I have the levee to where it's 40-50 ft wide and about 4 ft tall but I am hitting a lot of mud/water to the point where I can barely get enough traction with the dozer to drive across, much less push anything. I pushed a good bit of dirt into the swampy area behind the levee that seems to have dried and solid enough that I can drive across parts of that. I pushed some dirt into the pond to try to mix it with the muck and as expected, as soon as the first few inches moved the front of the dozer sunk. Luckily I was able to lift the front enough with the blade to back out and go for another spot
