70 acre dam build - 12/01/23 12:34 PM
Good day everyone,
I am a new member here. I am from Namibia in Africa, I own 15,000 hectare farm and I am a farmer. I have a smallish river that runs through my farm, it is a non perennial river and I estimate it floods about 5-10 times on average each year if the rainfall is good. I don't have any idea on the flow rate but I have a video of it in flood if that may help. It is a tributary to a larger river. I was wondering the other day why can't I dam this river, nobody uses this water except it feeds my boreholes. The neighbour's farm which the river also flows through doesn't have any boreholes close to it as far as I know. The location I am thinking of for the dam is downstream of all of my boreholes so the river will still feed them, the location of the proposed dam is in a valley about 400m wide I estimate and the river is about 200m wide here. That may be a bit wide, but the other location where the valley is narrower like 200m and river 30m is upstream of my boreholes and on the lower location there is also 3 other smaller rivers which flows into the main one. Earth filled would probably be the best option I guess as concrete would be expensive and difficult to build. I don't yet have a idea on what capacity I am looking for as I don't want too small or too big of a dam, that's why I am looking for advice from you guys. I played around with Google Earth a bit using elevation, if I build the dam wall 10m high I will have a surface area of 30 hectares or 74 acres roughly. I don't know how to calculate the capacity as the ground is irregularly shaped. Depending on the capacity I will be using the dam as a recreational area and probably put in a few fish but if it's large enough I will maybe irrigate a few hectares from it. If I can take a guess I would say the capacity of the 74 acres surface area would be 1,000,000 cubic metres. I also need to mention that I will most likely be buying earthmoving machines to do the job myself and do training somewhere. If I must pay someone to do it it will get quite expensive. I know there is a lot to consider when building a dam of this size and if it feasible. This is still in the planning or considering stages. Thank you.
I am a new member here. I am from Namibia in Africa, I own 15,000 hectare farm and I am a farmer. I have a smallish river that runs through my farm, it is a non perennial river and I estimate it floods about 5-10 times on average each year if the rainfall is good. I don't have any idea on the flow rate but I have a video of it in flood if that may help. It is a tributary to a larger river. I was wondering the other day why can't I dam this river, nobody uses this water except it feeds my boreholes. The neighbour's farm which the river also flows through doesn't have any boreholes close to it as far as I know. The location I am thinking of for the dam is downstream of all of my boreholes so the river will still feed them, the location of the proposed dam is in a valley about 400m wide I estimate and the river is about 200m wide here. That may be a bit wide, but the other location where the valley is narrower like 200m and river 30m is upstream of my boreholes and on the lower location there is also 3 other smaller rivers which flows into the main one. Earth filled would probably be the best option I guess as concrete would be expensive and difficult to build. I don't yet have a idea on what capacity I am looking for as I don't want too small or too big of a dam, that's why I am looking for advice from you guys. I played around with Google Earth a bit using elevation, if I build the dam wall 10m high I will have a surface area of 30 hectares or 74 acres roughly. I don't know how to calculate the capacity as the ground is irregularly shaped. Depending on the capacity I will be using the dam as a recreational area and probably put in a few fish but if it's large enough I will maybe irrigate a few hectares from it. If I can take a guess I would say the capacity of the 74 acres surface area would be 1,000,000 cubic metres. I also need to mention that I will most likely be buying earthmoving machines to do the job myself and do training somewhere. If I must pay someone to do it it will get quite expensive. I know there is a lot to consider when building a dam of this size and if it feasible. This is still in the planning or considering stages. Thank you.