Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Building a dam Market Survey on Bentonite Sources

Hi!
Background:
I am the unfortunate in Fannin County with the bumper crop of cattails below the dam where there never were any before. The CAT jocky, Mr. Hale, apparently ignored the basics, ref: USDA/NCRS pond manual http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showthreaded&Number=118460&gonew=1#UNREAD . I used salt per the NCRS Pond manual last year before I put in the fish and could draw down to the original grade. This slowed the leak but I still have those 2 acres of cattails.

That is the history, now for the current info.
Mike Otto was very helpful. I walked the dam, described what I saw, and the need to stop the leak without killing the large population of fish. he recommended the "sprinkle method" with "granular bentonite" and gave me the number of Western Bentonite. As with any commodity, the market fluctuates, so I consider this snapshot as a jumping off point.
TX:
Western Bentonite: Only handles the powder form. Only has one distribution warehouse <http://www.completeproduction.com/txd/western.htm> call the Aledo office
Texas Sodium Bentonite: Handles powder and granular through distributors or at HQ. <http://www.texassodiumbentonite.com/contact_TSB.cfm> Call their main number for local distributors.
Baker Chemical: 713-649-4200?
South Western Materials <http://www.southwesternmaterials.com/>

OK
Seminole Mud <http://www.seminolemud.com/>


Sizes:
50 lb bags; 100 lb bags; 3,000 lb bulk bags; and bulk loads (not all products available in all sizes)
Types:
powder and granular. Know what you want and read the bags when you buy. Not all sources carry both.

pricing: as of 17 June 2008
$10.00/hundred pound bag and
$5.75-$6.00/50 pound bag

I called all of the TX companies. and was very pleasantly surprised by a local distributor that is very local (McKinney, Tx). I got the contacts from references and by typing "bentonite" on Google Maps, for "TX". Once you get used to bad numbers, and numbers that the ringer was disabled by the office folks, et.al. this works well,

Good follow up keep the info coming.

OTTO

In Oklahoma, I used http://www.seminolemud.com/

Real easy to work with. Unfortunately, a couple of tons of bentonite did not solve my problem.

cheezy 1963

The sealing of a water hole is talked about a lot tell us what happened.

OTTO

I wouldn't even know where to start. I can say that if you don't know where the leak/seepage is, then you would probably be wasting your time applying bentonite with the sprinkle method. And as far as I understand, there is no current method/device of determining where water seepage is occurring within a pond. Would be really nice if there were a device that could locate a leak and atleast get a person in the ballpark of where the seepage is occurring. Such a device would be similar to what is used to detect holes in pool liners.

If you can see water on the back of a dam , or around the pipe you have a start but that is not usually the case.
Most of our water loss comes from poor soils.
Otto