Originally posted by Mark Brown:
that may be it! ........
well it may be....one of the great enigmas in the world of leaky ponds.......whar's it leakin?
its like everything else, you have to operate w/ the philosophy of "multiple working hypotheses", and start to cull them out one by one. i would still survey your sides as suggested by bobad, inquire w/ you contractor as suggested by Brettski et.al., review your pics and post them here or provide a link (at a slightly reduced file size please for those dinosaurs like me still on dial-up). that would be really cool if the problem was isolated to say just the creek channel, but it could be endemic to your entire pond bottom.
in my case, waiting only made the problem worse as each year the hydraulic conductivity increased. the silt and muck accumulation did nothing to slow the seepage....so for me it was a complete overhaul when the pond was dry. if i had an additional 10k i could have completely covered the bottom in clay, but i chose to give it a shot only partially covered since the pond did hold year round water when we first moved up here (~11 yrs ago). by 1998, the pond could no longer hold out, and it got worse every year until last year when i finally pulled the trigger on one of the biggest projects of my life.
of course the longer you wait ( and i know its hard to do!!!) the more money you can save to fix it right if that is your goal. wish i could provide more specific help but as stated earlier in the thread, you'll have to develop the most logical theory, and weigh the scope/schedule/cost benefits of multiple solutions. if you had a local source of clay and were reasonably sure you had bedrock seepage, the best solution would be drain, clay, compact, re-fill. keep us posted.
