Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site To dam or not to dam??? Nightmare location?

200 ton of linestone rock delivered to be put on the shelf to stop any muskrats from digging holes for their homes. Stagged part of it around the pond and have been manually installing by hand.

Phase 1 includes cutting and laying out fabric on the liner where the rocks will be located and then "stacking" the front of the 3 ft down shelf like a wall about 1 1/2 ft (leaning the weight towards the bank). Then I use smaller rocks to cover the bottom and about 1/3 of the way on the up the self to protect the fabric and liner for phase 2.

Phase 2 includes using a skidsteer to carefully dump (get the bucket as low as possible and control the output from the bucket) the chips, gravel, smaller rocks, dust, etc... to fill the void between the inital shelf wall and the final 45 degree grade to the pond bank (minus about 3 inches of height). Then I collect medium sized rocks and place them on top of the fill to hold down the fill and give it a more finished look.

Overall it takes me about 4-5 hrs to finish a 12ft wide section completely. So with the length being around 700ft approx., it will take me around 291 hrs to complete the rock shelf. Ouch!

Let's see 2 hrs every afternoon + 8 hrs is about 18 hrs a week. Which means it will will take me about 4 months to complete the project. *sigh*

UV light is not good to have on the liner and will cause it to become brittle and crack, so I will need to stop the rock work and get the fabric down as a priority soon to keep the sun off the liner itself for longevity purposes.

Right now it's no too much of a problem because of the low UV index and the short fall days. I think every 3rd afternoon I will take a break from moving rocks and put down fabric instead. That will allow me to rest up a little before working the rock again.

This would be alot easier if there wasn't a liner involved, but I can't take the chance of having some retard that may put a hole in it behind the rock shelf and not tell me. It would be impossible to find out where the leak was coming from afterwards.

I need to get the pictures posted in case someone wants to see the progress.

I'm figuring it will take around 400 tons of limestone rock to complete the project.