For anyone who has not seen my other post under site selection, Long story short, some helpful members here have told me it may be viable for me to try to renovate and enlarge a very small pond that is in a naturally low lying area with a small stream flowing thru it. I had to remove 4 hollow barrels that were laid end to end thru the dam that were acting as a culvert pipe for crossing the stream.
I've read the other posts on here about plugging a breached dam, but I'd be gracious for any advice or suggestions here. Especially how to knit the new and old soils together with equipment...pounding/pressing with bucket on backhoe? Or does someone have a totally different solution to plug it? Since it's so small, dig it all out and start over?...concrete?
In the end, I will be impounding (I'm totally guessing here) somewhere around 1/8 of an acre of water. I do not plan to put a drain pipe of any kind thru this particular area. It already has an emergency spillway. I guess the good news is to both the left and especially the right of the hole in the dam it is all naturally flowing land. I plan to use the siphon bottom drain system...once I'm able to fully wrap my mind around the concept of that.
Things to note...The rocks and cement board you may see in the hole don't really serve any purpose, I was just messing around. I know the small trees have to go regardless.
I'd greatly appreciate any input and advice.
Here's some pics
TDUBYA,
I'm no dirt pro, but I've learned a couple of things owning a pond and learning from this forum. I just enlarged a small livestock watering hole into a little over a 1/2 surface acre pond the summer of 2014. Your soil around your pond seems to be topsoil. When enlarging your pond, you better have access to some clay formation to form your barrier seal. I've read so many horror stories about leaking ponds...I was fortunate enough, out at my place that below 1' of topsoil the water well drilling records indicate that we had 90' of clay. We used clay from the expansion dig to line the pond and build up the levee's and dam area. It was brought to my attention that a "sheep's foot roller" is the correct implement to pack down clay. If you don't know what it is, look it up online. In my case, because it was an expansion and we had an over abundance of clay in the formation, we compacted with the D4 Cat dozer that was used to expand the pond. Good luck with your project. Keep posting photo's and asking a lot of questions.
Charlie
