Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations DeermanJ Pond Pics

With any luck I will finally be posting pics of a my 3 year long pond project. This project has been quite a ride, and I'm so glad to be at the more enjoyable end of the project. Over 3 years, I have gone from knowing nothing about ponds and hiring all the work done initially to learning quite a bit about ponds, learning how to run heavy equipment, and doing 90% of the re-do work myself. Unfortunately my original contractor didn't know much about building ponds either... I am now in the middle of adding a mini forage pond to the site, so more pics will be on the way later in the week...

The larger project that I referred to in my last post was transforming a 9 acre combine/tractor salvage yard into a property that we and our boys could call home. 1500 tons of scrap, a few sore backs, and 5 years later.... here we are. I have attached a picture of what the property looked like 5 years ago when we moved out to the house. The pond location is the top left quarter of the picture. The only remnants of the machinery ever being there are the occasional shards of metal that puncture the tires on my riding mower.

What an incredible transformation!! Congratulations!!

On a side note, I've heard that when you use tires as structure, it helps to drill some holes in the top most areas so no gases become trapped. Not sure if that's important or not.

I guess we know where you got all those old tractor tires for structure!

+1 to what Sunil said. FWIW I have seen several posts about making sure the tires have holes.

Looks like my kind of place...both before and after!

What a Herculean effort, very nice!

I drilled 3, 1 inch holes in the top sidewall of each tire about 3 inches below the treads. I created a tire pyramid last fall using the biggest tires I had. It stands about 7 feet tall using 4 tires as the base, 3 tires in the middle, and 1 on top. Drilled holes in all of them and the entire structure is now underwater.

A local recycling center picked up the remaining 150 tons of tires I had laying around. Ten years ago I would have had to pay a small fortune to have them taken away. This outfit must be recycling them in some way. Either way I'll take it...

Sparkplug,

Thanks for the kind words. It was called Waynes Used Parts and I am guessing that a few on this forum have been there, maybe often. We still have farmers showing up with stunned looks on their faces wondering where all the machinery has gone. I must admit some level of mixed feelings about the junkyard being gone. One the one hand it paid for the pond and our home renovation. On the other had it served as a me and my brother's playground for years growing up. My boys have told me that they are bummed out about it being gone. Oh well, they'll just have to take a 2 acre pond complete with beach and ropeswing as a compromise...

Wow where are you located? I have never seen land so flat and not trees. I bet there is a pile of wind every day.

Looks great. Good to hear you got your excavator license.

Dono,

North Central Illinois, about 25 miles north of Bloomington Normal. There are currently 4 large scale wind farms within 40 miles of our house. The most recent one is only 5 miles north. As you correctly guessed, the wind never stops out here...

I bet I have been by your place hundreds of times. I always take 39 from Rockford to East of Indy cause I hate the Chicago perpetual road construction and traffic. 30 miles further but way less stress!

We live just south of the bank of windmills east of Minonk. I've actually thought about putting a smaller windmill up myself, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. Pretty pricey initially...

That is exactly how I built mine also about 20 years ago. 4/3/2 stacked and tied together in a pyramid, except I didn't drill holes in the top two tires but did in the rest so the air in the top two would keep the structure upright as it sunk from the melted ice I built mine on. I also had rocks in the bottom 4 tires to help keep it upright as it sunk.

Wind turbines were were built in our area last year and I can see maybe 30 from my property. I like them and could have had a couple on my property but I am in a glide area to the small airport in the area. It looks like the future is coming fast.

I was going to build a wind turbine for the pond and bought plans from a guy in Scotland. It was two bladed, 12 volts and the generator is made from a truck brake drum and rear earth magnets. Just a dream setting in my computer room drawer.