Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat pond size/ drain tile??

I`m a newbie having my first pond started this week. 150' x 150'x 12' deep Thats around 1/2 acre?? I have an old drain tile in the area of the pond around 3' deep. Anyone have do`s and dont`s on how to handle drain tiles?? Thanx for any help!!

Ozzy, welcome to Pond Boss!

This forum has a number of experts so hang on and one should be along shortly to answer your question.

They hit a drain tile when digging my pond. It also drained the neighbors field. They ran a solid plastic pipe around the pond so it would on longer drain my field and tided in the two ends. My overflow also goes into it.

A drainage tile ran through the field my pond went into (6" at the upper end, 8" at the bottom). Of prime consideration in my mind was being absolutely, 100% certain to interdict the tile where it went through the area the dam went into. We removed that sucker with extreme prejuduce and cored the dam well below the level of the ex-tile.

At the upper end, the tile was renovated for the continued flow of water into the pond. About 150' of the original, damaged ceramic tile was replaced with corrugated plastic that we then ran into a length of rigid PVC where it enters the pond. A hinged "critter gate" was put in the last piece, which prevents anything bigger than a small rat from leaving the pond and going up into the tile to possibly block it. Limestone riprap was placed where the tile enters the pond (below the water line) to prevent any washing of the bottom from water flow.

Post-PB improvement I would have at least considered, had I known at the time:

Field tiles do carry sediment; you can help prevent this from entering your pond by running the tile into a small, easy-to-clean-the-dirt-out-of settling pond, instead of directly into the pond. In my case there really isn't enough real estate available for a settling pond, and I try to manage to pasture (and tile in it) above the pond to hold the sediment load to an absolute minimum.

Brettski and IIRC Eddie Walker have good posts on settling ponds; Brettski's is connected to a drainage tile.

Yo, Oz-man... check this out
That little mini-pond we dug is barely one season old and picked up about 1/2 yard of silt from the drain. When that drain is running, it is one good feeling to see all that water moving into the pond.