Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Drag line vs Vaccuum vs. track hoe

FINALLY managed to a get a couple guys in to give me some quotes. I've been thinking of just going the route of dropping in an aeration system, bacteria and dye but am considering a mechanical fix that will get it done quicker.

This year, getting it done may allow me to claim it on my taxes as I am still a working farm. Next year it may not as I will likely have my cattle gone.

I about fell off my chair when I got the first quote today from a guy who specializes in cleaning out and digging ponds. Seemed like a very straight up guy. Said he expected my 1/2 acre pond to be a $20-30k job rather than a $10k job!

Said he could do something for $10k but would not at it won't get the job done right. He would be using a drag line after draining it out and will rebuild all the sides to the appropriate grade in addition with getting the muck out.

I have two other guys going to quote me. One is a new fangled vaccuum type 'eco friendly' system which does not require pond drainage. Said they will 'rake' out the weeds and then suck out the muck with their big pump and deposit it in the woods and then filter the pond water.

Third guy is the guy who dug this pond out. Knows the area really well. Impossible to get a hold of but stellar reputation once he comes and gets to the job. Never over charges; so I hear. He's a traditional guy with a dozer and a track hoe.

Any suggestions on one vs other method and the size of the quote (wow - still in shock!)?

Really appreciate any advice.

Seems pretty high for my area. Had my just under 1/2 acre pond cleaned out 2 years ago for $2500 and he just used a trackhoe with an extended reach arm, but my pond was dried up and he could drive the hoe on part of it. I let the muck and extra dirt set a year to dry out and he came last year and leveled it all out with a dozer, building me a berm for a shooting range with part of it, for $800 more. I think the trackhoe and operator were $140 an hour and he was there less than 2 full days. Someone good on those can move a lot of dirt in a day.

In my experience, be sitting down when you get the quote from the vaccum guy.........

BUT, for areas where disrupting the shoreline and bringing in a dump truck to haul off the muck is not an option, that's the ONLY opttion.

Gulp! That is ~10x less than what I'm looking at. Did you drain your pond out? How long did you let it dry after it was drained?

Part of my problem here is that the water table is so high, it will be impossible to keep the darn thing dry. My pond doesn't freeze up in the winter and it gets darn cold here. Tells me there is a lot of water coming in.

They make some pretty big pumps. If you really wanted to keep it 95% dry for the excavation, you can. You just have to dig a hole for the water to accumulate into, and pump the water out just as fast as it comes in. Been there, done that, in areas that have high water tables and the pond needed cleaning out, so I know it's possible to do it.

The pump may have to be moved during the clean-out, to keep it in the lowest point of the pond. Put the end of the suction hose inside an innertube and float it 18" or so below the water surface. Low enough to prevent from sucking air, high enough to prevent from sucking up a lot of dirt.

Has anyone evaluated these mini dredges?

Would be nice if they listed prices. I've asked for them.

http://www.piranhapumps.com/mini_dredges.html

That pond dried up about 90% on its own in the drought 3 years ago. I had no idea it had silted in that much in 20 years. I should have guessed since water Primrose completely covered it when it started drying up. All that was left was a narrow strip of water near the dam. The southern half dried up in late June and it was dry enough to hold the trackhoe up in the fall.

I don't expect to have any such luck. My area is wet wet wet. I'm going to be pumping out for 3 months I'm told and not sure it will be dry enough then to fee equipment in.

I'm trying to get the contractor who dug this out many moons ago but the guy is way busy. Figured he'd be able to tell me if we could get it to the point where he can get equipment in it. He knows the area real well.

Right now I'm leaving towards coming up with the money for drag line guy. He seems to know exactly what he is doing as all he does is ponds. I don't think they need to drain it down all the way for a drag line to operate right.

Part of me wonders if I couldn't work at this with a smaller excavator. Once you start taking muck out, while parked at the shore, I expect I will reach gravel which ought to provide traction to let the small track hoe go in righ?

I don't know the darnedest about sealing a pond and packing the banks and time isn't exactly a luxury.

I used an electric submersible sump pump to pump out my small < 1/4 acre pond and it took less than 2 weeks, I don't remember the exact number of days it took as it's been a few years now ( I think maybe 10 days?) but my pond was about 11' deep.

I put the pump in a 5 gallon bucket with holes drilled all around it and screwed a larger piece of plywood to the bottom of the bucket to reduce sediment getting sucked in. There was a float switch on the pump and I shortened it up by securing it to the bucket so it would pump a little deeper. The electric cord is long on the pump and I rigged it so the plug and extension cord was well above the water. If you have a drainage ditch, pump the water there. When the pond was 1/2 full we moved the pump to the deepest part of the pond. When almost all of the water was gone we left the pump in there and ran it after a rain.

Once the pond was empty and drying I called in contractors for estimates. I picked my contractor and I had to wait a several weeks to get worked into his schedule giving the pond even more time to dry.

When they started, an excavator was used to remove material from the top and a bulldozer got in there to push the lower stuff within reach. All material was put in a dump truck and moved to low spots on my land and spread out with the dozer when the digging was completed.

Pumping out the pond yourself will save you money and help you get a more accurate estimate as they can see what's there. If the contractor has to pump it they use gas pumps and have to come back daily to gas up and move the pump. Time is money. Once it's pumped down they take the pump and any rainwater you get before they start will sit there and get pumped right before they start. If you pump it yourself you can keep the water out and help it dry faster. The dryer it is the less mess you and the contractor will have.

I have a backhoe/front end loader myself but I would never attempt to clean out my pond with it. My contractor measured and checked the slope as he was building it and the end result looked very consistent. There was 3 people, 1 excavator, 1 bulldozer and a small dump truck. Very efficient and they got the job done quickly. I've seen people clean out their own pond with their own equipment or rented equipment and the shore line wasn't stable and changed over the years.

I would start pumping while you decide what route you'll take, it can only make the working conditions better. I believe the muck will dry better while it's in the pond as the slope helps it drain out. That's my guess anyway because my muck was pretty solid after about 2 months of drying and only sloppy at the very bottom where there was some water. Soil conditions here could be different from what you have too.

ETA: The summer before my re-dig I got a couple of estimates while the pond was still full, they were all over the place and higher than what I ended up paying.

canoetrpr- Esshup is dead on about the process of cleaning out a wet pond. Loretta also brings up very good points about getting started in drying it up to save time, money, and doing it better. Combining both of their ideas into one is the way to go. find the deepest point near shore and start pumping. and keep it pumped. Once the majority of water is gone, dig another spot to be lower than where you are pumping(near shore) and set up pump there. Keep repeating process till you are as deep as you want to go with the whole pond.

If you have gravel(or sand) the water flows thru that the easiest. It is a big factor as to how water is able to travel in underground rivers/springs. If you have gravel like that, most likely the water will be forced up thru that because its the path of least resistance for the water and thus will be the wettest spot. I would guess(some from experience) that even if it is gravel, you may find it acts much like quicksand because of all the water. I almost lost my 15 ton excavator in a spot like this. Expensive fish habitat!!!

Pumping is a big pain, but draglines have problems too. Do your research and choose your best options(cost and time you want to spend helping). Both options are viable and each have their place.

I suppose a gas powered trash pump with a bigger discharge is probably the correct way to go, quicker but.....sump pumps are relatively cheap, you don't have to gas them up and you can't hear them running!

The discharge on mine is 1.5" and used the flat blue hose you can get at farm stores. You buy it in bulk or by the foot and put your own ends on it. I had enough hose to get me out of the pond and then shoved it in 4" flexible, corrugated black tubing that's used for drainage (cheaper and I had it on hand). At the junction of the hose and tubing I set it on top of a cinder block and tied it down to the block to keep water from running back out of the tubing. The larger tubing also helped reduce the velocity of the discharge water.

I placed the pump in the pond via a small Jon boat to get it as deep as the cord would allow. The cord on sump pumps are rather long, I think mine is 15' and I added an extension cord to that. If you have a dock this would be easier. I only had to move the pump once and this is important because it is a major PAIN getting out on the muck. We put down sheets of plywood over the muck (end over end) to push the Jon boat in and move the pump. Once the pond was pumped as low as it could go we used the plywood to get to the pump and dug a depression under it with a shovel, shoveling muck isn't easy either, to further decrease the water that was left. The pump stayed there until the job started.

There's more than one way to skin a cat and this is how I did it and I would do it again this way, it wasn't that bad. My pump still works great and I got it at a yard sale really cheap. If your going the trash pump route you could rent one if you don't want to buy but when you have a pond there always seems to be a need for a pump.

When pumping, keep in mind that the water level drops slowly at first and goes much faster the lower it gets.

Great thoughts. Thank you. Finally had the local excavator who has worked on this pond before and extensively on my property over the years make time to come up.

Super nice guy; just tremendously busy on commercial jobs. Had a landscaper friend of mine kick his butt a bit to get up here.

This guy has a stellar reputation for the job he gets done and the price he charges.

His view was that we really wont' be able to get this pumped down to the point we can get equipment in it. He said it is all gravel and there is water around everywhere. I will spend a lot of money pumping.

His suggestion was to use the excavator from shore to clean all the way around the pond. Something we came up with on his suggestion was for me to rent a long reach excavator ($5k for one week) and he would operate it for $30 per hour which I think is quite fair and that gives us a 60' boom to work with rather than the normal 20' or so. That will put me in $10k for a week with fuel, machine and his time and this guy is a great operator. He says it won't take a week to clean it out so we can extend the pond in whatever time we have left.

So that is what we are going to do. I trust his judgement as he knows this area very well. That said, I'm going to try to get this sucker pumped out at least to the point where I can keep up with the water coming in before he gets here which will at least be another month. He would really prefer to do it in the winter when the ground is harder. Easier to work on he says.

Hell he gave me a total quote of $10k if we used his normal excavator to do both my pond, regrade my driveway and get recycled asphalt on with a steam roller - only $3500-4k was the pond. I will get the long boom excavator though. I'm only going to do this once in 20 years so might as well go all in. Still $10 k cheaper than the other quite although I'm confident that their work would really be stellar.

I don't have electric there but I am planning to put it out for my aeration system. Maybe I should get that done first so that I can put a sump pump in it. Renting a 3" pump is like $1k per month!!