I always enjoy reading others pond journeys so i thought i would share ours. We have a good draw(ravine) with plenty of run-off but not so good soil, lots of rock pea size to beach ball size. My wife and I would talk about building a pond and then decide not to. But i have been reading PB for awhile and read Mike Otto's book so armed with all that good knowledge after 14 years we decided to go ahead with it. Keep in mind that we had built a little dam across the draw already to keep from getting stuck and when it rained it would back up water but be gone the next day so its not a good site, but we thought even a seasonal pond would be better than what we had. My friend has a track loader so cost would be diesel and parts.We followed the guidelines pushed any topsoil to the back, dug keyway deep and wide,dug out the old creek channel,worked for 3 months to get enough clay for the keyway. We had to build a separator to separate the rock out of the clay and build a towable sheepsfoot. We started the pond oct.2017 and finished Mar.2018.The pond filled in oct.2018 but dropped about 3 inches a day. It filled about 3 times but still dropped.I talked to TJ about soilfloc but decided to hold off on the 1/4 acre and try it on a .10 acre caliche pit that never held water thru the summer and it worked pretty good. (see soilfloc thread).Before trying soilfloc on the 1/4 acre pond i wanted to fix a few suspect areas so we drained the pond,hauled in about 400 yards of clay, spread and packed and almost finished before the rain hit. So the deepest part did not get done. The daily water loss is now 2 inches per day. May seem funny to some of you but I never thought it would be that good, this quick, I was thinking of it as a 5 year project. After all its been 15 years already! Now with soilfloc on the way we might just have a permanent pond!
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Last edited by Tony K; 07/03/19 04:31 PM. Reason: Changed dates, I had the years wrong