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Joined: Nov 2005
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Last year I started clearing the trees and brush to outline where I wanted my fishing lake to go. Here in East Texas, the vegitation is extremely thick!!! Many places are impossible to walk through, and those that you can get through, will cut you up from the vines and thorns. My goal was to outline where I would build the lake by driving my dozer through the trees until I got close to the standing water. Then I'd stay on the high ground and work my way around it. Eddie
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After I had a basic outline of where the shoreline would be, I took out the bigger trees with my backhoe. Eddie
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I used my lazer level to determine the shorline through the trees and marked it with orange paint and flags. This was to let me know how to adjust the trail I'd created and give me some idea of where the dam would start and end. Eddie
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Joined: Mar 2004
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Eddie, I know exactly of what you speak! I'm in the process of clearing 70 acres myself that was clear-cut 5 years ago. Talk about thick. In some places, it is so thick with youpon and brush that you actually get lost/disoriented on a dozer and just have to keep pushing until you find out where you are. You have an interesting project and it will be fun for me to follow your progress. Keep us posted. Thanks. p.s. what type of laser/level do you have and do you recommend it?
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That's about as far as I got until this fall. I'd just finished building my new house when my parents came to visit. My dad loves to run the dozer, but he's terrible at moving dirt. He can dig and make piles, but no finish work at all. To keep him busy and take advantage of his free labor, I put him to work clearing the lake site. Eddie
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My Dozer is a Case 1550 with a 12 foot, 8 way blade, 160 hp and weighs 40,000 pounds. It's pretty good at clearing brush and small trees. Eddie
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It's slow process taking out every single tree. Especially burning the junk ones, cutting and storing the good ones. Eddie
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The bigger trees come out faster with the backhoe than the dozer. Here's a pretty good sized one that I took out. Eddie
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Here it is just about cleaned up. Eddie
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My neighbor was taking pictures of his place from his plane and got this one for me. The darker line across the clearing is me on the dozer scraping off the top soil. Eddie
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Meadowlark,
Your exactly right about getting lost. For the life of me, over the last year, I thought the lake was going to be long and thin. It's just what the trail felt like to me. I was totally blown away when I started clearing it and realized how wide and round it was!!!
My lazer is a Spectra L220 I think. Might be a L200. Anyway, I bought it used on Ebay for $100 after about six months of losing out on higher bidders. It's a kit that came with the lazer, tripod, detector and case. I had to buy a rod at Lowes for another $40.
The thing I liked about this is it's all in one case and very portable. Others I've used require several trips to get everything out and set up. I just grab it and go for a walk. Real easy.
To set it up, you have to align the bubble manually, but that's really easy and only takes a few seconds.
Range is around 500 feet in any direction and I believe it's within half a degree of accuracy at the extreme distances. With the detector, it daylight and brightness dont matter. On some cheap lazers that's a big deal.
I use it for foundations and pads mostly, but it's been great for determining the shorline and my dam height.
Eddie
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When it's done, I'm hoping to fill it from rain water. There is a huge amount of land above me here that I can direct the runoff to the lake. Something in the range of seveeral hundred acres, but what I can catch is still a mystery. My property line is this creek. Half is mine. It runs year round and even with the drought we're having, it's never slowed down. I'm thinking of building a Ram Pump to take advantage of it without having to run powere down there. Eddie
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Joined: May 2003
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I'm familiar with the terrain conditions that you're experiencing. I had a pond built on a land tract north of Tyler near Hawkins. The pond was built in a heavy wooded low area that always some water on it. Water started to accumulate in the escavation and a dozer got stuck. The upper few feet of soil was all sand, and the pond had no watershed. It was basically a 1 acre escavation, but it was full of water when I sold it a year later. Curious thing about the pond was the all the small bass in a pond that was never stocked.
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This is the same area as the very fist picture here. After clearing the brush, I took out a large tree with the backhoe. After moving the tree to the burn pile with the dozer, this hole filled up with water. It was fairly fast, but I didn't see it happen. The water level has been at this height for several months until the rains the other day, now it's flowing over very slowly. The water level is two feet below my shoreline and I'm thinking this is a keeper spring to help fill and maintain the lake. I really don't want to plug this one!!! My thinking is that the drought has lowered the water level and amount of water for the sping to this level. But when the rains get back to normal, the water level will rise, and at the very worse, it should provide water to fill the lake up to it's current level. Eddie
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This is the other spring. It's at the bottom of the lake further along the same shoreline. This is the one that's got me worried. I dug down to a point the ground was squishy like jello and water started appearing in my tracks. I came back with the backhoe and dug it out about 4 feet, but in one corner I went down as far as I could. About 12 feet. The deep hole filled up really fast, but the rest of it has been rising steadily. The sticks were put in at the edge every monring for three days. Before the rains, they were covered up, and today it's up to the edge. I'm not sure if it's rain water or the spring right now that caused it to totally fill up. Eddie
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This is the shoreline along my peninsula. I'd spent months trying to decide on how I wanted to build a fishing peir before ever considering the peninsula. Now I'm totally agains the peir altogether and really looking forward to building a gazebo at the end of the peninsula. Eddie
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That picture didn't show up for some reason, so I'll try again.
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I do allot of posting on tractorbynet website and have an open offer to some of the guys there to come by and work for free if they want to run the dozer. One guy from Wisconsin stoped by for a few days in his RV to take me up on my offer. Here he is building a dirt pile for my keyway in the dozer. I'm running the backhoe and dumptruck back and forth. Eddie
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I forgot to mention, the peninsula is jsut behind and to the right of the dozer.
The scary spring is in the dirt pile further to the right.
The good spring is on the other side of the peninusula, but not visable.
The bottom of the lake where the backhoe is sitting is 12 feet below the surface when it's full.
Eddie
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I left an opening in the dam with a trench down to the creek to drain it until I'm ready for it to fill up. That is what the big dirt pile is for. It's all really good clay!!! The flat area off to the right with the red clay on top is a submerged island. It will be 4 1/2 feet deep. The sides are another 4 feet deep. I'm building several of these all over. They are undesterbed, so it's less work for me and hopefull good for the fish. My plan is to put water lilies on them along with a few logs and stumps. The drop off should stop the lilies from spreading and add to the cover for the fish. When the burn ban is lifted, I'll start burning again. What is left, I plan to use as cover too. Eddie
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Joined: Apr 2003
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Eddie: Pretty cool project. I'll be in Shreveport (maybe) end of March. If I knew how to run a dozer, I'd sure take you up on your offer...but I'd just be wastin' fuel for ya. Sure is a beautiful project. I really envy those folks with the ability (and equipment, obviously) to tackle projects like this themselves. I just end up paying someone to do this stuff for me. Drives me nuts, because I've build houses and pole buildings and the like from the ground up. Irks me when I can't do something myself and need to hire a project out. Oh well...
In a lifetime, the average driver will honk 15,250 times. My wife figures I'm due to die any day now...
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That's it for now, I'll add more pictures as I take them, or if somebody asks for something specific.
The reason I'm posting this is to get help, ideas, and suggestions to minimize mistakes on my end. I'm learning as much as I can and really appreciate all the advice I've received so far. Thank you.
Eddie
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Eddie, Looks to me like you are doing just fine, just fine indeed...and you should be giving advice. People like you who have actually done this themselves can offer unique insight that goes well beyond the books and articles. My hat's off to you. May get to Tyler this spring and I'd love to come see your project and talk dozer stuff if okay.
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Meadowlark,
I've enjoyed and learned allot from your posts and would love to have you stop by to take a look. Maybe even give me some suggestions and advice.
Eddie
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Matt,
We're the same. I've built a few homes and barns, but mostly do remodels and repairs on homes. I needed a bunch of work done on my land and figured it was cheaper to buy the equipment and do it myself. Granted, it takes an awful lot longer!!!
Taking out trees and brush is the hardest thing to do on a dozer. Too many booby traps out there trying to take out a hose or bust something. I've had tiny little pines snake there way through my bottom plates and bust an oil line on the side of my engine block!!! Every time it's something new, and everytime it's one of those one in a million situations.
Digging dirt is easy, leveling it is allot harder, but like anything, it takes patenience and attention to detail. My Dad just doesn't get it. He focusses on one side of the blade and forgets the other end. 12 feet doesn't sound like a big distance, but for him it's huge.
The friend who was out here visiting had problems keeping his trenches level. He'd dig down too far, then over compensate and build a hill. In just a few passes he had a roller coaster!!! hahaha
Fortunately it was the bottom of the lake and there is no right or wrong way to dig it out, so I let him have fun. Afterwords when he was on the backhoe moving dirt, he said that was the first time he actually was able to see the land because he was focussing so hard on the blade!!!
Eddie
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