OK, I finally have what I believe to be as close to a scientific analysis of what SoilFloc did to my pond as I think I'm going to get. Instead of an entire application to my pond, I simply tried spot treating with one unit (a bag of Product A and a bag of Product B). When rehabbing my pond, I had bentonite available and was worked into the soil up to about 3 ft. from full pool. Upon filling my pond it came up 8" per day until I got over the part of my pond that had not had bentonite applied. At that point I began going from 8" of water level increase to 1.5" of increase overnight. I knew I was in trouble immediately. As I kept the pond full this became it appeared I was losing less yet I knew I was still losing a significant amount of water. At ice out this spring I finally shut off my well and let the only influx of water be rain water and water from my geothermal system. To my estimation, my geothermal should be able to keep up with evaporation when its running hard. But it wasn't. In fact, when my geothermal was running non stop I was losing 1/2" or slightly more per day. So with TJ's help I decided to apply SoilFloc. At first I wanted to treat the entire .6 acre pond, but out of curiosity I decided to try spot treating the dam first. My dam is roughly 300 ft. long and the width of untreated pond down to the bentonite treated area I estimated at 10ft. So assuming this was the worst of my water loss I decided to treat this roughly 3000 sq. ft. of dam with SoilFloc.
Upon treatment I became concerned that I had wasted my time. My dam runs from southeast to northwest. The day I applied I had a NE wind of less than 5mph. There wasn't a ripple on the lake. But with this slight NE breeze I was hoping it would push it up against my dam rather than toward areas of the lake that I didn't feel were of concern. When applied the polymer kinda floats on the surface therefore wind, even a slight drift, is a concern. Just as I had finished my treatment the wind switched more to an easterly direction and there was a noticeable movement of the polymer up against my west shore. I began to assume the treatment was going to hit a part of my lake I wasn't as concerned about.
For 3 weeks post treatment I tried keeping my water level 6" or so above full pool to increase hydrostatic pressure on the polymer. Quickly I felt some difference had been made as usually when I try to go above what I call 'full pool' my well can barely raise the water at all. And I was gaining substantially after the treatment. Probably close to an inch a day I was now raising the water level. But I wasn't certain as the water levels were now different. So I waited and waited for the water level to get down to 'full pool' so I could compare apples to apples.
Prior to treatment when my pond was at 'full pool' and the geothermal was running 24/7 I was losing 1/2" per day. Well over the last 4 days combined under those same conditions (there could be evaporative differences I suppose) I lost 3/4" or slightly less in total. So over a 4 day period I lost 1-1/4" less water than what I would have lost prior to treatment. My best calculations come out that one single unit of SoilFloc has saved me roughly 20,362 gallon of water over the last 4 days. That's the equivalent of having a 10 gpm well running for 1.4 of those 4 days (don't check my math!!).
My plan moving forward is to apply another 2 units of SoilFloc along the rest of my pond that did not have bentonite worked into it. I hope to seal the pond up even tighter and have the water in this pond continually spill over into my big pond just from the water added from my geothermal unit. I am very pleased with my perceived results at this time. I will keep this thread updated as I gather further info.
