Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction Never been much for fishing, but maybe someday....

After three years and considerable thought, the decision was made to raise the pond level another 8". I had already raised it 4 additional inches over design right after construction was finished. I'm not afraid of doing this because when we originally built the pond the "bench" which was designed to prevent bank erosion which was designed to be 5' wide. Well I had trouble figuring out how to make a 5' wide bench with the dozer and get it done properly so instead it ended up being about 12' wide. That made the entire dam structure at full pool water level about 7' thicker than originally designed. So the dam has plenty of "meat" to handle the additional water. It also was designed to have 3' of dam above water level at full pool and we still have that even after adding this additional 8". So we kind of over did the dam, which turned out to be a good thing for this project of raising the water a full 12" over what was originally designed.

Actually when the NRCS did the original elevation shots it was determined that the absolute maximum size of the pond could be 3.5 acres. But at that height the water would be to the top of the hill and would actually be running into the SW corner of one of our machine sheds. Which was an undesirable feature. So we scaled the pond back to 3.1 acres where it is now. But in the mean time we also built a forage pond and sediment pond near the shed mentioned. We used some of the dirt removed to raise the floor in the shed and the sediment pond was between the main pond and the shed. All this having been done, it now allows us to raise the pond the additional foot (which was close to the water level in the 3.5 acre design) but still have about 3.1 acres.

Luckily when I built the dock, not knowing exactly how close I wanted the bottom of the structure, it ended up being a little higher than needed. The floating dock portion always had the ramp sloped down to it. This was sheer dumb luck, because had I not got it a little high to begin with I would not have been able to raise the water level. With the additional 8" now the floating dock sits nearly level with the main dock.

Well if anyone is actually still reading this long winded description, the actual raising of the water was supposed to be the easy part. I ordered a 8" "pipe extender" (made to go inside and extend a plastic pipe) and an 8" plastic elbow to go in the 8" overflow pipe. Stick the pipe extender in the overflow pipe, cut the plastic 90 degree elbow to the right height for the correct water level, glue it, and done. Sure thing. Easy peasy. Well the pipe I had used in the original raising of 4" that was used to cross the "bench" area was a scrap. I had encased it in concrete and it had worked fine for 3 years. Problem was the "scrap" was somewhat oblong in shape and not quite to proper size. The pipe extender would not fit inside. Was not going to fit and seal. So after much consternation I took what was supposed to be an easy installation, modified it with jig saw so the lower part would fit in, wrapped it with rubber tape to form a seal, formed up the whole thing and poured concrete around it. So the pictures below show the finished product of what was supposed to take an hour that turned out ten times the project originally intended.

The good news is it worked out pretty well. Original concrete overflow end was just beyond the steel posts in the pictures.