Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Building a dam How wide should my core be

Got my 2 acres cleared and shot grade.Dam will be 3/4 around the pond. A large area about 500 ft will be 15 ft. tall. Freeboard will be 20 ft wide all the way around. My question is how WIDE does my core trench need to be?? Also I am still confused when to put my pipe in the dam. Do I need to lay it down on top the core and then start building the dam or do I build the dam and then go back and cut a trench to lay the pipe?? Can you tell I am a novice? Thanks for any help

Flame, I'd call the Pond Boss Office on Monday and order a subscription to the magazine, and get the latest issue coming to your door ASAP. In there Mike Otto talks about pipes in dams. If you aren't going with a siphon system, then the pipe should be placed in the dam as it's being built, not cut into the dam after the fact.

If you look in this on-line publication, it'll tell you how wide the core has to be, and how wide the whole dam should be. It'll also tell you what the distance should be between the primary and secondary spillway, and how much distance from the secondary spillway to the top of the dam.

Pond Builders Bible

Will the pond generate enough good dirt to make a dam that size?

http://www.sccdistrict.com/pond.htm

or

Interesting diagram. I've been incorrectly calling freeboard the distance from the top of the dam to the full pool level. According to the diagram it is the area from the top of the dam to the design flow level of the emergency spillway (not even just the level of the emergency spillway).

So the freeboard would the the amount of dam still exposed when the pond was running full bore over the emergency spillway.