Thanks fellas for your insightful replies. Quarter Acre, the recent progress included putting the drain stand pipe back in place to allow the broken pipe locations downstream to dry out enough to replace them more easily and cleanly. So, for now It's filling back up in the meantime. I can drain it anytime very easily once I come up with a better plan. It REALLY helps to know the top of the drain pipe with the stand pipe removed is NOT on the absolute bottom of the pond.
As for the "muddy trips" to move the pump intake, I'd put a rope on it same as I have on the diffuser at the bottom. This makes it easy to move it, allowing me to stay safely on dry land.
The pond is about 95' x 76' x 8' deep. The depth obviously depends on just how thick the muck really is. As you can see in the photos, it is all very steep (vertical, actually) all around except a little slope at the south end where the smaller tree is. These dimensions calculate to approximately .17 surface acres total.
You're right, not very big at all, but still a GREAT opportunity to provide high quality habitat for all kinds of critters here, e.g., fish, wildlife, farm animals, PEOPLE who want to swim, etc. Right now we have goats as our livestock, and when it's drained drink from a spring I dug out to provide a drinking pool for them.
Ideally, I would be able to dig down where the drain pipe is already, and shorten the height to as low as I can to install something like what you described. Somehow I'd have to keep it clear enough of debris falling into it while doing that.
I just looked up the maximum reach on large CAT excavators and it looks like they max out at just shy of 40' reach. This means they would have to be able to go along the hill side of the pond, not the driveway side where, as the photos show is way too narrow for anything but a mini excavator. Of course, another critical deciding factor of ALL Of this project is good 'ole cost.
Again, thanks for any and all input here. I REALLY appreciate every bit of it.
