Anbody have pics on what they installed in a ditch that feeds a pond to stop silt?
Pullo,
I have to apologize for not getting photos. My job doesn't let me get home very often anymore. This past weekend was such a wonderful weekend with friends and family, I just never got to getting new photos.
I've got some photos from last winter, they just don't show things as well as they could. The grass is covered over with snow.
Water, mud, and lots of leaves and leaf mold flowed into the pond every time it rained when we first bought this pond.
One of my early actions was to install a 12-inch culvert to help control this inflow. I dug out a small bowl shaped hole in the seasonal creek -- about 8-foot diameter, and about a foot deeper than the pond level. I installed the culvert, and filled around the culvert with big rocks, smaller rocks, gravel, and then soil. I covered the whole thing with a few more inches of good soil. I got grass growing over the top of the culvert.
At the entrance to the culvert I used some old fencing to hold out big items. Behind the fencing, I placed a bunch of rocks that were 5-10 inches in diameter. On the top side of this little pond, I built a small rock wall across the creek where it entered my little settling pond. Leaves collect in the little holding pond and behind the upper rock wall. I remove them once a year. This setup collects about 99% if the leaves coming down the mountain. The little pond slows the flow considerably, so silt settles out unless the water goes over the culvert. I leave the grass cut fairly high over the 16-foot culvert. The grass collects a lot of the silt, and just makes the grass grow even better.
End of culvert that flows into main pond:
Here is the little settling pond. Near the bottom of the photo, you can see the fence "filter" and the rocks behind it. At the top of the picture you can see the rock wall that stops most of the leaves and leaf mold. Since this little pond holds about 18 inches of water before going over the top, the water stays in here long enough to take out a lot of the heavier particles in the water.
Tomorrow night I'll try to post the upper settling pond, which is about 20-25 feet in diameter and about six foot deep.
Ken
