Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Soil questions more leaking

At a recent wedding reception I got to talking with an uncle with a 3/4 acre farm pond.I told him about this site but he is frightened of computers and it may be too late anyway.
He had a excavator dig out a shallow vally and build a small berm with the thick band of clay they discovered. He used the same clay to line the pond in lifts to about a foot and a half.
The problem is that he could not locate a sheepsfoot roller or could not afford or somthing.
So they used just the weight of the bulldozer for the clay. Now his pond leaks as fast as he can pump 30 gallons a min. into it from a well.
Is there any chance the pond will seal up over time?
I guess he is willing to run the pump for an extended period.
Should he wait and see what happens or drain and compact the correct way?

no expert but 30 gpm is a lot of water to me...sounds like more than just seepage or anything that will fix itself...just an opinion though..did they hit any sand or gravel, anything like that?

The well filled the pond but it goes down fast if he shuts it off. I asked about the sand/ gravel and he did not think they exposed any.
Yeah 40 some thousand gallons a 24 hour period seems like a lot to me too.

well from everything ive read on here it may take a few fills before everything settles in.. so if this a really new pond i might run that pump for a few months to keep it full and watch the water level to see if the water loss slows

Yeah, you could do that. If it doesn't stop leaking by mid August it still leaves a month or two of drier weather to work on it and get it right before the wet autumn weather sets in.

i know this is probably dumb question. but here goes, if you use clay to line pond. other than using the correct compactor. can you line with clay, and fill over it with gravel or sand ? to help with clay compaction , and leaking pond

If you just loosely lay clay in the bottom of a pond it will leak through the cracks among the clay. This is why packing correctly and doing a good job is essential. The water would just run through the sand and gravel on its way to the bottom cracks.