Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Building a pond, found the site.

Alright. My family, and I, have decided to build a pond. We decided to use the field that is at the bottom of our hill to the left. I'm guessing it used to be farmland, could be wrong. People have been haying it but not for the last 1-2 years. On my hill it's nothing but clay, for the formost after the first couple of inches. I'm hoping it is like that down here. There is also a natural spring, very close to it. We haven't really done alot yet.
We are still deciding on how big we want it. The person that we are getting to do this wants to be paid $50/hour or a flat rate, we are thinking about going with flat rate. What do guys, think about those prices?
Also, should we start thinking about if the water gets over to much and starts to overflow? Where would be a good place to run it off to? There is a river very close. But, to get to it, I think we may have to go thru the property that is right next to ours. So we may have to end up buying the rest of that field. Anywho here is some pictures, they are big so i'll just leave up a link.

Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3

EDIT: I forgot to ask this question also. The clay on our hill is red clay. So it sometimes turns our water redish a little, is there anything we can do if the clay does end up being like that?

Also, this pond will be in West Virginia. on Upper MudRiver, Lincoln County.

GvJordan:

Howdy and welcome to the forum!

Also welcome to the process of planning and building a pond. There is no better place in the world to get information on that process than right here. There is a lot of information, questions, and answers involved, and the more of this you can get figured out ahead of time, the better, bigger, and/or more cost effective your pond can be.

Cost estimates are very hard to make with little input as far as topography, intended pond size and depth, and excavator experience. For example, $50/hour is less than I pay my excavator for the smallest piece of equipment I pay him to use. So that $50/hour might be for a really small, inadequate piece of excavation gear - which doesn't save you any money if it takes 10 times as long to do the pond compared to a big $100/hour dozer that is sized to handle the job.

Probably one good place to start is by examining the lay of your land, how much pond could be efficiently built on your intended site, and how big a pond you would like to have. Some of the helpful PB Forum members will give soem directions on where to get a topographical map of your palce and how to psot it here so we can look at it with you.

They will also have lots of other questions and advice on topics like what your prioroties for the pond are - fishing, swimming, attracting wildlife, etc. Your intended uses of the pond have a lot of influence on how it should be built (and hence cost).

Got to go to a meeting now. Back later.

P.S. Nice crop of iron weed - it looks just like my place!

GvJordan, Welcome to Pond Boss. I took the liberty of posting your pictures, however, this is where my skills end. I'd like to resize them so the appear within one screen (any help?)

Also, the Picture 2 link seemed to be dead.

Hi GV and welcome to Pond Boss. If you haven't already, the I would HIGHLY recommend that you read all that you can regarding Pond Construction. Bob Lusk has written a book "Perfect Pond, Want One" and there are several publications that you can download that discuss pond construction. Read through all the pond construction threads here on Pond Boss. IMHO, prior to starting a project such as this you really need to know about, dam construction, water shed, spill way and/or siphon methods to control pond level, etc, etc.

In my neck of the woods $50 per hour is very cheap for a skilled operator and equipment. Make sure you determine how much experience this person has with building ponds. Just because a person can operate equipment doesn't mean that they can build a good pond. A lot goes into pond construction and a well designed pond will give you years of enjoyment, a poorly designed pond will give you years of grief. If you can then find out what ponds this operator has worked on. Go and look at the ponds and talk to the owner of the pond.

Anyhoo that's my two cents.

Thanks for jumping in and participating, we're glad you found us.

Alright thanks. I fixed the link to the 2nd picture. I'm not so good at resizing them.

I'll be mowing down all the weeds within the next 2 weeks so, shall be fun.

Edit: Thanks for the posts. I will look into all this. I'll ask the person who is going to do it, about which ones he has done before.

We had iron weed 14 feet tall when we bought our place 22 years ago. It doesn't get quite that high anymore.

SOMEONE PLEASE RESIZE THESE PICTURES!

To determine cost you will need to calculate the amount of soil that needs to be excavated to produce the given pond you want. If you can post a topo of the pond site with a given scale I can assist in giving you a rough idea on the amount of soil. You will have to get the site shot with a grade level to get an accurate measurement but I can get a ball park figure from a topo if I can scale it. This is one of many sites that have the info
http://terraserver-usa.com/image.aspx?T=...ALat=32.1987207

Just find your place and post the link or a pic of the link and it will be a lot easier to determine what you will be looking at in terms of soil moving vs pond size.

Sunil, I resized the photos and emailed the small version to Jordan. You might tell the young gentleman where to find info on how to resize.

Alright, I did put up the resized pics, thanks to Theo Gallus.

I found my property on that site, http://terraserver-usa.com/image.aspx?T=2&S=11&Z=17&X=1003&Y=10579&W=1&qs=%7chamlin%7cwv%7c

It's east of the Port Cem, you could probley go to aerial view,
such as http://terraserver-usa.com/image.aspx?T=1&S=10&Z=17&X=2009&Y=21159&W=1&qs=%7chamlin%7cwv%7c the place with 2 black spots to that white line is hour property, if you go to the west you'll find 3 ponds on the hill above the

Theos wrote: "You might tell the young gentleman where to find info on how to resize."

If I knew, Mabro, if I knew.

Alright after observing the pictures from terraserver. I have decided those black things in the fields are when the water is up. And the water does generally stay there for along time after a rain. So I'm going to go ahead and guess that it's good soil. But I just can't remember if those was sink holes, or trees that. Or natural.

Save those round hay bales to put in the pond as it fills. The dacay process will probably keep your clay from remaining suspended in the water and staying muddy.

Nice place to work with!

AND WECOME!!!

I'm going on a roadtrip today. If we don't have something in the archives on resizing I will add it tonight or over the weekend.

I found your place on google planimeter

http://www.acme.com/planimeter/

It appears the area of the 2 black dots is about 5.5 to 6 acres in size. Is this correct? From the topo it also appears to be very flat. That means your pond will be an excavated pond and not an embankment pond. Calculating soil required for an excavated pond is just a matter of figuring the hole size you want dug and how deep you want it. Here are some examples. A 1 acre pond square or round 10 ft deep with 3/1 slopes is approximately 12,000 yards of dirt. You should get some quotes in your area of what excavating cost is by the yard to determine if the flat rate price you get is fair. You also need in writing the size and depth of pond you are paying for so in the end you don’t get shorted. One other note, being in that river bottom you may hit the water table. That can be good or bad depends on the water table and how it fluctuates in your area. Also sense you will be digging a hole with no need for a dam you will need to figure on what to do with all that dirt. Good luck.

Alright, today instead of mowing the field down, we had some people come and cut it down for hay. So just waiting for them to get the hay out of there, then we will make more movement forward. Well hopefully it will be good if we hit a water table, + if not we got the natural spring that will run pretty good. Or atleast alright maybe. We went and talked to the guy today. He said he wanted to come down and see the type of soil, before he gave us a price. We are thinking 200x250x10 for the pond. Which is about surface 1.14 sq acres. The black spots are no 1-2 acres, I seriously doubt it. I'll post some pics of the field cleaned up

Always a good idea to dig some test holes in the intended dam & basin locations and see exactly what soils you have.

Hi Gv

Welcome to the forum..
You have stated in the right place, getting info, and planning.

Theo said get some test holes dug to see what kind of material you have and where the water is. That is the next step.

Otto

I was refering to the field size being about 5 to 6 acres not the black spots. They don't show up on planimeter anyway. Good luck. If you hit water you better plan on having a track hoe on sight cause that dozer or track loader will be basically useless.

Gv...

I was in the process of getting a pond done around here that was told that for a 1 - 1.5 acre pond would cost around $12,000 if they had to haul the excavated material away or around $8,000 if I could find somebody who wanted it. They were talking of using a track hoe, dump truck, and a D5 to shape it. Cost for EACH piece of equipment was around $100/hr.

Well as of right now. The pond is on hold. For a few reasons. I got to pay tution for some online schooling. And we don't really want to make alot of advancement till the land gets deeded over to us. (The land is in my step-dad's mom's name. And if anything happened to her, the land would be divided between him and his sister. And she could sell it without our approval.) Or something like that, thats what they told me.