Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Our little slice of the world...

Ok, I've been on the site for a little over a year. The amount of knowledge here at times is almost overwhelming but has been HUGELY helpful.

We purchased almost 13 acres in North Florida about 18 months ago, when we bought the land we actually had no idea what it looked like as only 2 acres were cleared (where the house sat.. video link will provide all the needed "color" there)

https://youtu.be/7kOrRBwULoI

So over the course of the last 15 months we have been steady working at selectively clearing a little over 6.5 acres that will be cross fenced into 3 pastures.

I initially was going to have someone come in a dig the 3 small ponds we want (which primarily will be for livestock and controlling the water level), but every quote I got was ridiculously priced when coupled with the remaining clearing work I needed to have done.

I have run my fair share of heavy equipment over the years, and have access to a fairly decent size backhoe, but I knew that wasn't going to be all I needed for this project. So I made a few phone calls and as it turns out renting equipment wasn't as bad as I expected. So, in two weeks I will have a Bobcat e85 Excavator (basically a 9 ton machine) with a 24" and 36" bucket and a JD 450 dozer with a pin-on root rake delivered for me to go to work for a month.

So I thought I would share the endeavor with a few pics along the way.

Here is where we started...

September 2015


Taken a few months ago, but this is pretty much where it sits today:

September 2016






I still have some small trees to remove and stumps to dig (hence the first two weeks of the rental equipment)... but here is the overall plan:



The three red "X's" are low spots that the dirt has to get pushed too, I plan to dig the ponds as deep as I can with the excavator, so here is the question... Is this to ambitious to expect to do in basically two weeks with the excavator, dozer and backhoe?

We did one pond that holds about 1 million gallons in two weeks with a old 590 high hoe and one dozer and one man.

Biggest thing is plan as much as you can that your not moving the same dirt twice. Have a good laser for your grade level and do a test hole to see if you will need to pump water as you dig.

Thats a deep hole we dug in heavy clay.

Cheers Don.

I will have three operators running most of the time and at times will have a 4th running my FEL with a box blade for some of the tight work areas.

The land is has a slight grade to it and I looked at renting a laser grade level, but I think I can just use the builders level I have.

I have two 3" trash pumps already on standby.. my biggest fear is hitting an underground spring (which I think is almost a certainty) given that of the 5 ponds that surround my property 3 of them are spring fed.

Four assumptions...

1.) Pond areas, low spots, and paths to low spots are cleared (with no root wads)?
2.) The weather cooperates?
3.) You don't hit big boulders or alot of rock or water.
4.) You're going with plain jane overflow pipes or just emergency overflow on dam.

If these are good assumptions, two weeks is a good possibility. I would expect to work all the daylight hours possible and it would help to have a second operator where the dirt work would allow.

Disclaimer - I am basing this opinion on viewing your picture and colorful sketching of your pond sizes and locations with my highly calibrated eyecrometers. AND I am no pond builder, just a man with an opinion.

It looks exciting at the least, Very Good Luck to you.

EDIT: Your last post beat my above response. It sounds like your throwing plenty of man power at the project which sweetens your success.

Will you spend time trying to compact the bottom to 'hold water' or will you assume that these are water table or ground water ponds that you will have to fill yourself from another water source?

Is there any compactable clay nearby?

Will you have some type of a compactor? Any wheeled or tracked equipment likely will not give you the compaction you are really looking for.

In the area I am at, ground water is not hard to find, meaning I will likely (even assuming I don't hit a spring) have to run at least one trash pump while I am digging. So its unlikely I will be able to compact the bottom, but no one has done it on any of the ponds surrounding me because the water table is so shallow.

Some areas around me do have hard pan at certain depths (which technically can be compacted to use as a liner), but two of the neighbors ponds were dug to almost 30' and they never hit any so I think its safe to not expect to hit any on my property either but I won't know until I start digging.

When I started clearing we discovered that the neighbors pond was actually running off onto my property, that pond is spring fed and runs constantly. We diverted the runoff last year, but did it in a way that we can easily switch it back to mine, but I intend to bury an 8" pipe from that run-off into my pond. I really feel like between that and the naturally shallow water table that I shouldn't need to.

Is that an inaccurate thought?

I think your thoughts sound accurate. You just have to think about whether or not you want your neighbors fish in your pond or vice versa when you tie the two together like that.

Actually at this point trading fish is something I haven't even considered or concerned myself with... the total area of the three ponds I am digging is barely going to be 1/2 acre.

These are for livestock watering (horses and cattle), pasture irrigation and water control first, if it turns out well and everything looks like it will do those without a problem, stocking it would then be planned.

I hope I don't hit any buttons with anyone for saying this.. But I know that's no where big enough for LMB (so there would never be that type on intention) and if I do decided to stock anything in it down the road it would probably be exactly what he has in his pond which is Bluegill, Shellcracker and catfish.

I grew up and spent the first half of my life in eastern Iowa on a large farm, we had three ponds there (all my dad and grandpa built), Dad is coming down for a month during this process to run some of the equipment and help and make sure I get it right. But those were all very large ponds that we did stock for fishing as well as the above. I wish I could build these ponds bigger but the layout of the land and my long term plan values the grazing land first.

Bass will do fine in your ponds. But if catfish are the apex predator then you may go in a little different path.

REALLY??? I always thought you needed at least 1 acre to develop and support a healthy population.

So I gotta ask.. is it then possible to have both catfish and bass along with the panfish I listed? That would be really cool if its the case. I love bass fishing and the wife loves to catch catfish.

DANG IT... then I need to rethink a few things... like aeration tactics as well as considering adding some structure and bed locations.

Maybe someone that runs equipment for a living will jump in, but I'm not sure your equipment is comparable in size. I don't think that E85 will move enough dirt to keep up with a D4. If you went up at a little larger excavator, I think you would be able to really increase your productivity.

Someone hopefully will chime in. Catfish and bass competing for forage in the same smallish pond is a dynamic I can't speak to. I know that those who use small numbers of catfish do things to try to prevent reproduction and try to remove by catching them to control numbers, but they get hook shy very quickly.

If you have more than one pond you could set different ponds up different ways?

It unfortunately isn't, I really don't need a D4, but its the smallest they rent. As to the excavator, the e85 is the biggest "mini" excavator that Bobcat builds, its basically between a Cat 308 and a 311. It is likely the dozer could possibly stay ahead of the excavator and given the distance I have to move some of the dirt that may not be a bad thing.

I looked into the next size up excavator (which in my area) available for rental was a John Deere 120 (30k lb machine) and the cost for a month doubled and they required a $20k commercial credit line (kinda weird to me as the purchase costs of the two machines weren't enough to necessitate that IMO).

I don't run them everyday so I may get in trouble for saying this, and granted, the bucket is twice the size and nearly double the HP between those two machines so it stands to reason I could dig a hole faster and a little deeper, but I have been told that it is very likely that because of that distance I still should be OK with the smaller excavator. And given the specs of the machine and my skill level I am not sure that a bigger machine would make double -vs- the increased cost overall.

I do hope someone who runs them more can add more color to that specific point though.