Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking bill cody or mike otto

bill, had a half acre pond built this summer. it is about half full. i noticed the other day there was a crack on the top of the dam running parralel with the dam for about 30 feet. the crack is in the center. the top of dam is abuot 10 feet wide the crack was 2inch wide and went down a foot. it was in a spot my grass has not grown well yet. i was wandering how concerned i should be and how to repair it.there have been no leaks from where the water level is now about half way up the dam.

The crack is probably due to shifting soils, or because of too much clay becoming dry. Water the area, see if the crack closes. If wet and the crack doesn't close, fill the crack with soil. Get grass growing on loose dirt as soon as you can.
If wetted, the crack doesn't close, take a look at the slopes. Your slopes may be too steep. See if dirt is sloughing off as it becomes wet. If so, you need heavy equipment.

Follow Bob's advice. Our summer in Ohio has been fairly wet so your clay should not have cracked very much assuming you also had quite a bit of rain. I would put a call in to the pond builder/contractor and see what he says. He may want to do a site visit if he is in the area to check it. Ask him if it is worthwhile to add some damp clay-soil mix to the cracked & dampened area. He may want to come back to pack it all together with the backhoe bucket. As Bob said be sure the sides of the dam are not shoughing. Real heavy, pure, clay soils can crack fairly easily when they dry out. Maybe add some topsoil in the areas adjacent and on top the dampened crack and spread some grass seed. Not much will sprout/grow anymore this year. But as fall winter progresses the moisture should stay in the crack zone so it doesn't enlarge over winter. Hopefully the grass will sprout and grow next spring. Make it a point to keep it damp next spring-summer to get the grass established.

Hosty, my pond dam top did something similar. when a dam is built, the front of the dam is where they pack all the good clay. the back is where they put the secondary stuff to make the back slope. packs ok, but not as good as clay. clay will stick together, stay put. the back fill soil, after getting moist will then pack together, fill in the gaps. when it does that it settles. so it sinks/settles. mine did that. which is good, it packs the dam in tight. it can be a 2 year process sometimes. i had the dozer come back over, then used "gumbo" grade clay to relevel the top of the dam, and reroll over the back slope to further pack it. it's an expected process, unless you could afford to use a rolling vibrator heavy duty equipment during the dam building. hope this helps. mark

bill cody is right..not a whole lot of grass will grow right now during winter..however, something i have found to work great and is cheap...winter wheat....beautiful green during winter, and a great deer attractant. then throw out bermuda in the spring. mark