Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations pond renovation

Hello to all i have been lurking on this forum for about a month and trying to learn as much as i can about ponds. i have finally decided to bite the bullet and have my pond renovated. today i started pumping down the pond, i have drawn about 18" down on the quarter acre pond. i plan to have an excavator in within the next 2 weeks to clean out the muck, steepen the edges and place large rock arround the shore line. the goal is to get a deep enough edge to discurage weeds arround the shore line which from what i have learned is to shallow. the rock is more for looks and to keep the soil from sluffing off into the pond. i also plan to add a waterfall along with my airator and redo the overflow. i dont tink i am getting enough circulation with the airator alone, the shape of my pond is 161' long by 67' wide. when completed my pond should be about 1/3 surface acre. my questions at this point is are there anythings i should look out for during the renovation? i have tried to work through all the details with the contractor but i am sure there are things that i have not thought of. any advice, suggestions ar welcome. this sight has been extreamly valuable to me and i really appriciate the forum.

Duane welcome to the PB forum. Glad you posted. One thing to be sure of is that by going in you don't cause a leak in the pond bottom or side. If you have good clay in your location you should be ok.

WRT the total pond area (surroundings) think about what it will be/look like 5 and 10 years from now and plan for plants , trees, trails, paths , areas to sit or stand , sun and shade etc.

ewest thanks for your imput. the looks of the pond ie cleaning up the edges and some erosion control landscapeing have kind of been the goal all along. our pond is less than 1oo' from our back deck so it is the focal point of the back yard. i am not sure how old the pond is but i know its 20+ years old. i have come to the conclusion that it has to have some springs in it since it has not dropped more than 8-12" per season over the past 4 years that we have lived here. there are no inlet streams so water quality can become an issue in the summer. i just started running a single membrane defuser in july and it seems to be helping clear quite a bit in the middle but the edges still look pretty messy. i am running the airator in the evenings and shutting off at about 10:00 am to try and hold the water temps down. after lowering the water levels yesterday i see alot of muck arround the edges i am not sure what percentage is silt and what is decaying material. i assume that the areas still covered by water have just as much. are there any suggestions or opinions on how much of this to have the track hoe pull out without concern of losing the pond seal? thanks again.

Duane your situation sounds a lot like ours. I am a novice pond owner and ours is a little bigger than yours. This year its been awful hot and dry and the pond is down about 3 feet. there seems to be a lot of muck and such up near the banks which surprised me as i thought the muck would drift to the bottom. With the drop in water level it is now apparent that we need to deepen the pond. There doesnt seem to be any fish and we were going to have an excavator dig out an additional 3 or 4 feet in the deep area, now about 5 feet deep, normally 8 feet ...we didnt know whether or not the water had to be drained. Is it absolutely necesary to drain the water as that would add a lot of time to the project. The pond is about 250 miles from our home and seems if we drain it it could fill back up before the excavator could excavate.
What was your thought process and research.

Thanks

yoli i have read a few books on pond building this summer but have gained most of my information on this site. i have read where some people have used a dredge to clean out and deepen there ponds. we opted not to go that route but maybe some of the pond experts on this site can tell of there experinces with dregeing. i was concerned with losing the seal and not having the pond fill back up or leak. you could deepen it with just a back hoe if they can get close enough. we rented a 8 hp gas pump to lower are pond so the equipment could clean up the edges, it did not take that long to draw it down. i am hopeing that airation will start eating away at some of the muck and over time it will be considerably less. i have seen claims of ponds using both airation and bacteria say you can lose as much as 5" of muck per year. my guess is more like 1-2" sounds reasonable. hope this is of some help to you this is my first experience with ponds so i am learning as i go as well.

Thanks Duane, sounds like i should post a general question and hope that someone with more experiance than we have can give us some free advise.
We have read many books too and read here at pond boss but there were no exact situations, ponds seem to be like DNA or fingerprints ie no two are alike. Ours is a sort of soft sand soil so there doesnt seem to be much of what I have read as being a seal...almost seems like water moves up and down, there are springs down there...but this heat and dry weather have evaporated a lot of water.
Good luck to you on your project