Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site most recent pond progress and pictures

Here are additional pictures of the progress as of last weekend.. I hit a water pocket at 10 1/2 feet which is slowly adding water to the deep end of the pond. I have completed one spawning area on the north side of the island, and I will have another finished on the upper south shore this next weekend if weather permits..The rocks on the island will be placed around the shelf area, below the water's surface, to help prevent erosion. The bigger boulders will be stacked to provide some structure for the pond bottom..My aeration system arrived today and I'm anxious to get it installed along with my homemade structure pieces.. Sue Cruz at Vertex Water Features was most helpful in providing information for the aeration package.. I am making good progress each weekend, and continuing to enjoy every minute of my time spent, knowing that the completed project will provide a lifetime of enjoyment for me, my family, and my friends..

Nice project!

This is a potential problem that you should take care of before the pond fills. The water seeping into your pond can also become a way for water to leave your pond. When the pressure equalizes with the seep that is as full as your pond will ever get. This could be only 1' above the seep. That would be 9 1/2' lower than you had planned and would be a tragedy. The best thing you could do in my opinion is to pack the seep with clay until you don't see anymore water coming from the leak.

Hugh, good luck with your project. You may want to edit your photos, and remove the one of the young man. Believe it or not, on a site as innocent as this one, we have had trolls attempting to crash our great site, with gay pornography. You never know who's in this place, and you have given enough information for someone to be at your place within hours if not minutes.

Good luck, and it's just a friendly reminder, to be careful. If your little boy is like mine, your kid probably has access to plenty of deadly firearms, but who wants to take any chances?

There is no harm done, at this point, but I'd lose the pictures of the kid, ASAP, even though the the chance someone would become obsessed is probably minimal.

Hi hugh, sounds like your plan is coming together and it looks great, but i will ECHO PFF's concern for your seeping area......it would be wise to pack that off. if you have good clay soils there, the seep should not be so pronounced, as such you may be close to breaching (or have breached into) coarser grained (leaky) soil and your water table level.

keep us posted.

hugh- We have had some other real nice pictures of kids at the pond fishing. I have yet to see any evidence of roving mad pedophile trolls on Pond Boss. They can go to "google photo" and find all the photos they want. Nice looking future pond meister you have there by the way.

Thanks folks for all the kind words.. My son Will is serving as my helper, as you can see by his shovel and dump cart.. He loves to see pictures of himself, and with all of his hard work, I felt that he deserved the recognition.. As for the seeping, I am most concerned.. What course of action should I be considering?? I have spent a tremendous amount of time and dollars toward this project, and I don't want to mess it up..Please help me with your ideas..

Like Ponds For Fun and D.I.E.D. said, pack it with clay. I would put about 2 ft. of good clay in/on it. Then maybe rent a compactor to get a really good seal.

Otherwise, you might need to change sites.

hugh- It is really acording to how big is the spot where the water is seeping. Maybe you could post some pictures here for us to look at. It is also depending on what kind of clay soil mixture you have in your area. Talk over your concerns with your contractor. From the first picture it looks like he has some nice equipment. Maybe he has had some experience dealing with seeps in your area. Keep us informed of your progress and we will give you all the online help possible.

...tie me up to the tether; I'm leavin' the box again.
First of all, congrat's to Hugh on his exciting foray. It's an excellent buzz, eh?
While digging our project this last summer, we had to dig two very deep holes next to the building site to get thru 6' of topsoil to get to the thick blue clay layer hiding below. When the job was completed, I had a couple of monster holes (which we left as extreme bottomscaping). A few days later, the bottom of the holes had seepage at the bottom. Uh-oh! My contractor assured me that it was what he called "lateral water". It was the moisture trapped within the 6' layer of topsoil that he had just cut thru, dribbling down to the bottom of the hole. He was confident that it was not a bottom breach. A more thorough discussion is on the Groundwater compromise? thread.
I just want Hugh to make sure he can eliminate this from his list as he formulates his plan.

Let me see if I can translate ski-speak for you:

"tie me up to the tether; I'm leavin' the box again." I think this means he is going outside his area of expertise. I am not sure though because I thought pond building was his area. He certainly has more experience than me.

"It's an excellent buzz, eh?" This means it is a lot of fun building a pond.

Good points Brettski. It would sure be nice if it was lateral water. That is why the size of the flow and the layers of soil above and below are very important.

Hey folks, I really appreciate the feedback.. Before we started the excavation in the middle of August, we dug a 14' test hole within 15' of where it is seeping now and found a good layer of clay at aprox 7 1/2'.. There was no seepage at that time.. My contractor says that this is nothing to worry about, but the forum replies have me concerned.. I will take pictures today of the specific area as best I can (the water as of yesterday was clear) and I will post them this evening.. I need to rectify this issue ASAP as we are rapidly approaching our rainy season here in SE Texas..Obviously I don't want to damage my project...

The water being clear suggests to me that it is definitely from a spring. You won't be able to keep the pond any higher than the lowest level of this spring. Pack clay in it just to be sure.

The water being clear could be caused by the material it is flowing through. A good silica sand will act like a filter and remove any suspended solids. some springs have good pressure on them. When I was a kid I swam in a small pond that was always cool and stayed bank full all the time. You could swim to the bottom and feel cool water coming in. That is the exception though, not the rule. I will keep my fingers crossed for you. There is some big rains coming to Texas this weekend.

I did some work on my pond this weekend and ran into something similar. I already have deeper areas in the pond, so I don't think I ran into groundwater. The area of my pond is heavy with hard shale, my contractor basicall told me the same thing. Covered it with clay anyway and ran back and forth with the dozer.

Hugh- I imagine your pond is full by now if you live in SE Texas. How much rain did you get?

Yep, you're correct... We received just shy of 12"of rain..I would have never believed it, but the pond is full to within 3" of the top of the island..All 1.8 acres.. I got lucky as the spillway is not done yet, but the water didn't flood over the island..We shot the right grade thank goodness.. I sure didn't plan for this event because I still have a weekend of digging to complete on the waterside..I guess that I'll rent a pump to attach to my PTO and start pumping..If this could have waited just one more weekend..I'm sure though that others in our state are glad it came.. Now I'll have the opportunity to look at my seepage area up close..Incidently, I took some pictures from long distance, as the entrance is all fresh dirt, and too soft to drive on.. When I download them I'll post..My wife didn't believe me without the pictures!! I couldn't believe it myself !!

After the rain came..

Hugh,

Had the same thing happen to me four years ago...got caught in an unfinished pond, by a fall rainstorm. Had to wait 'till the following May to be able to work equipment in there and finish it...hopefully you won't have to wait that long.

Hugh, is this going to be the best method of draining the water? I don't recall the details of the impoundment design, but Meadowlark and others have had success with cutting a slot thru the dam to release the water, then methodically re-packing it. Personally, I am a drain-pipe kinda guy, but for your project, that's water under the...oh, forget it. Also, what about a siphon?

Hugh- Brettski is right, it would take weeks to empty that much water with a PTO pump. What did you have left to do to complete the pond? Could you just fix the spillway, stock it and wait for a drought? Probably dumb questions but when you are left with lemons make lemonade!

My plans are to have the average depth at 8'.. I have completed the two deepest areas at 9 1/2 and 10 1/2'.. but the rest of the pond is at a 6' depth now(my "shelf")for structure..I had planned to dig the additional 2' this weekend..My design is shoreline, then down 3' with a 3' shelf, down another 3' with a 4' shelf for structure areas, and then down another 2' to my average depth of 8'.. during our light rains we were able to continue work in the bottom, as the whole pond has a gradual slope towards the 10 1/2' area.. the spillway, although not finished, did its job by not completely submerging my island..I will need to find a way to evacuate the water to complete my plan.. Regardless of my problems,I have to admit that I'm excited to see it full of water...

Flexible 4-inch plastic pipe works well as a siphon. It takes more than one person to get it started. In time you can take out as much water as you want.

Dick, What typically is used to cap the ends of a 4" dia flex pipe while getting the siphon started OR is the pipe filled with a pump?. The hardest part that I have with starting a 2" siphon is removing the air locks or air chambers in the pipe. The weight of a 4" dia pipe full of water seems way to heavy to move around, so is it filled in place?.

Hey Bill, I start mine with both ends of the pipe under water. No capping needed that way. I pump from a 1.5" pipe tee'd into the main pipe, and when the main pipe is full, I close a valve in the smaller pipe.

bobad- can you go into more detail about how that works? If you have both ends in the same body of water, how do you get the flow started? It seems you would need the lowest end to be capped?