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

I chickened out on putting in an overflow pipe.

Considering there was rain in the forecast, the rest of the crew are out actually making a living working getting harvest in so I would have no help, and my concern I could not get the pipe installed and compacted correctly by myself in the weather window available, I just raised the dam height and stayed with an earthen spillway.

But I did get to run the Tonka Toys!

Some pics of the mid stage level of dirt work below. It is all roughed in and compacted. The finish work can come later. The soil and clay works better after it is weathered a little anyway.

I ended up raising the water in this pond 16". It entailed raising the dam height some, raising the water level in relation to the dam height some, and extending the dam quite a ways further around the BOW.

The full pool water level is now within 5" of running over the top of the hill, and in fact that is now my emergency spillway. If the water is running over 5" deep in the spillway on the SE corner of the pond, it will start spilling over the top of the hill on the north side of the pond which is a very wide grassed area. I have basically raised the water level to the max available for where the pond sits.

Raising the water this far was going to cause a lot of shallow water on the south side of the pond. I did not want the weed problems that would cause so with the scraper and tractor filled in that area out to within a couple foot of the existing water line to where it would be about 5" above the new full pool level. In other words, the additional water height will not add much to the overall size of the pond because of adding this fill. The north side was not a problem as that side needed a short dam where none existed before. The west side was going to add some area of only 12-16" deep water, so in that area I just dug it out with the dozer another 4' so the water there will now be 5' deep or so.

So the pond is only slightly bigger by maybe 3' wide on the N,S and E sides and by 25' on the west side. But the overall depth increase on the whole pond is 16".

And the island in the middle (formerly named Turtle Island - the turtles loved it) will now be an underwater hump.

Any red flags you see. at the base of those flags is the new full pool water level.

Descriptions are with each picture.

Edit: did get an 8" overflow tube installed. After building my new RES only pond next to this one, and after installing the overflow tube in it, I came back to thks old pond, put a tube in, and finished extending the dam around further where the earthen overflow had been. Finished!