Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Dam Rip Rap

We've got some errosion along the face of the dam of our neighborhood lake, from wave action. It's not to bad, as the prevailing wind goes the other way.

We figure we need to add some rip rap along the dam to prevent any more. Is there a standard for how far above and below the waterline to put it, and how thick it should be?

We are lucky that our water level is very stable, it very seldom moves more than about a foot up, or a couple of inches down. We have a great watershed for the lake, even when we had a really bad drought 6-7 years ago, we always had water flowing over the dam.

Thanks

When I built my larger pond I lined the whole levee with riprap from around 18" below the waterline to around 2 feet above it. 5 years later that's seemed to have worked well. It's held everything really well, even with our north winds we get here.

I wish I'd have gone a little lower as based on what I've read you can reduce your chance of muskrats in your levee if you rock down around 3-4 feet below the water line.

Curious what the best way to spread this would be on an existing pond. I would like to do mine for a foot above and 2 foot below across my dam but I dont even know who to contact about something like that because I dont know what equipment would work and I really dont want to hand place them!

I don't have a good answer for you here man...because I did all 300+ feet of my levee one rock at a time.

Agree on the placement to keep muskrats and beaver from tunneling. Dumptruck and excavator is the easiest way. Excavator picks rocks from bed of dumptruck, and spreads them a couple stones thick in the areas that you want covered.

They work very well for FHM spawning habitat and for crayfish habitat too.

The guy we've been talking to will be using an excavator. I guess you need that long arm fo reach down the face of the dam.

We just contacted a general contractor that had drainage culvert work for us.