Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? 2 ponds, 1 damn need renovating.

Hello all. New member from TX.

I have 40 acres in between BCS and Austin, and I have 2 small ponds. 1 of them is in pretty good shape, but I'd like to make it a little bigger and just dig it out a bit so it'll hold more water. The other is basically a mud pit now. It's elevated above the other pond and the damn that used to hold it washed away, and the entire pond just sort of slowly but surely flowed out into the lower one.

Illustrations:

1. Aerial view (before upper pond filled in)

Dark blue pond is totally filled in. Purple is where damn used to be. Orange is spillway where water flows from pond 1 to pond 2. Arrows show runoff direction.

2. Upper pond (totally filled in)

Lower right of picture used to be damn. Entire pond used to be much more defined and much deeper.

3. Spillway where water runs down to 2nd pond. This area used to be totally underwater. Also needs to be dug out completely under that tree and further up. Slope is very, very gradual.


4. Lower pond view 1. Tires are where damn is (this damn is fine). Behind damn is big dropoff down to wet-weather creek. Spillway from pond 1 would be from the right of picture.


5. Opposite bank of lower pond. I'd like to just dig this back a few yards and dig pond deeper.


My main question revolves around what you think would be the best tool for the job. Would a mini-excavator be able to move enough dirt to re-establish pond 1 and slightly enlarge pond 2? I'd probably also need to dig the spillway between pond 1 and 2 about 3 feet deeper. It's not very big - maybe 10 feet by 15 feet.

I can rent a full-blow 45,000 lb excavator if I need to, but is that overkill?

Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated. Dirt transportation isn't much of an issue as the dirt I clear from pond 1 will just rebuild the damn and bluffs around the pond, and the dirt from pond 2 is a very short transport 20 yards from a pit that I'm going to fill.

Thanks, and glad to be a member of this forum. Some interesting stuff.

Welcome to the forum! It looks like a pretty good sized project.

I'd do some reading on how to properly build a dam, core trench and all. My fear is that if you just use the dirt from pond #2 to rebuild the dam for pond #1, you might have it fail again. Do you know why it failed?

Proper compaction and proper soil moisture are some of the ingredients to building a pond the proper way (read that as in minimizing problems down the road).

If it was mine, I'd do a lot of digging for information as to what type of soils I had, and read up on pond construction. From my experience digging my own pond, the mini-excavator isn't near big enough.

With that said, I'm not a dirt guy, and I don't know the soils down your way.

Thanks for the response.

The damn under the first pond failed slowly but surely over about 20 years. It just gradually eroded away. You can look at timelined aerial photographs and see the pond gradually shrinking, and then all the sudden in 2009, it just disappears.

The job might sound big, but the 2 ponds are pretty tiny. Pond 1 is probably 1/8 acre and I would guess the combined spillway dig and enlargement of pond 2 would be another 1/8 acre.

That said, if I rent a full-sized excavator, I could probably do a lot more. They're just really, really expensive. 50% more to rent for a week than a mini is to rent for a month.

The damn for pond 1 isn't very big. Probably about 2 feet of depth and 10 feet of length that's washed away. If I dug the pond out about 5 feet, I wouldn't even need to reinforce the damn much at all, even though I know you can't tell that from the picture. The pond filling in has been as much or more of an issue than the damn washing down.

I will need to read up or take suggestions on how to keep the dirt from just filling back in once I dig the spillway back out. Although I'm guessing that's something that will just happen over 20 years of a non-maintained pond.

I should mention that I just bought this place in November of 2009, so all information I have is gathered from piecemail research like historical aerials, etc.

Howdy! From what I have read here and a little bit of my own intuition, I would say spring for the big excavator. I worked on digging out part of a pond with a backhoe attachment on the back of a tractor and it was VERY ineffective. Those buckets on the mini-excavators can carry maybe one or two cubic feet of dirt. Full sized excavators are usually around 20-30 times larger depending on what you get. The big one might cost 4 times as much, but you will be working 20 times faster in essence.

As far as the DIY aspect goes, call Paul Dorsett (979) 279-2946. He is in the Pond Boss Resource Guide. I have met him, know people who have used him, and everything is positive. It will be more expensive than doing it yourself, but his experience will be invaluable. If it was me, I would at least bring him in to consult with you.

Definitely take a peek at the soil survey for your area. I know a few guys around Caldwell that have leaky ponds due to not having enough clay.

Cameron00, I admire your DIY enthusiasm!

Unless you have a lot of experience operating an excavator, you will likely spend considerably more on rental charges that hiring a Pro would cost due to your inefficiency. Another thing I would SERIOUSLY consider is why the original pond got filled in or the dam failed. Failing to fix the cause permanently will only lead to future repair bills.

There is a LOT more to a pond than just digging a hole! If you dig your current pond out and the original dam was faulty, you'll just be digging a bigger hole for a bigger problem/repair in the future.


Edit: Other things to consider are where to put/spread the excaveted material. Also, if the pond simply filled in over time, the muck that fills a pond rarely if ever dries out much more than 18 inches deep. If muck was the problem, you could easily bury an excavator in several feet of nasty stuff or tip over. Heavy equipment is a blast to operate and can be equally as deadly. Any damage done to rental equipment is the renters responsibility to repair...