Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Second pond?

I remember four years ago when I began building my pond. It was a soggy, high water table area, that held water and was unusable. After excavation, the surrounding area dried out, and has become a beautiful yard.

The pond has an overflow pipe and overflows slightly downhill about 100 yards to the back of my property to another soggy, high water table area that is about 2 acres and is currently unusable. Only about two months out of the year can you walk around or operate a tractor back there without sinking. I've done some clearing, and there is a small wet season creek that borders the back of my property.

I'd like to do the same thing I did before. Excavate a small pond in the lowest part of the 2 acres and use the spoil to build up the area around it. I know it will fill with water, probably even faster than my first pond did since it's a few feet lower topographically.

I wonder though if I could get by without doing a dam or overflow, and just letting the pond regulate itself with the surrounding water table and wet season creek.

It seems like a simple plan, but I wonder if I'm missing something.

VA

If you build up the surrounding soil, then won't the water level rise too? My pond is a water table pond, rising and ebbing with the water in the ground. It will vary greatly, I've seen 6' of fluctuation from Spring to Fall. Here's what happens when the water is low: Structure that is placed in the pond is out of the water by the Fall. Areas where the slopes are 3:1 or greater are impossible to walk on without risking sliding and falling. There is a wide band of visible pond bottom around the perimiter of the pond on the areas that are less than 3:1. It was hard getting Marginal plants established and for a pond that is going on 4 years old I'm still not happy with how the shoreline looks compared to a pond where the water level stays static the whole year.

My current pond is a spring fed / water table / significant runoff pond that stays pretty full all the time. I suppose there will be some watershed as well to the second pond, with the overflow pipe of the higher pond running down the overflow trench into the second pond.

I'm more concerned about what will happen to the water once it gets into the second pond. Will it regulate with the water table, or will it overflow and flood the whole area down there, in which case, I'm would be no better off than I am now...

That's a good question that I can't answer!

If you capture all the water that is coming from uphill so it goes into the pond, then you might dry out the area. If you build up a berm around the pond, line the upper portion of the pond basin with packed clay, leaving the bottom of the basin porous, theoretically the water would be forced out the bottom of the pond into the water table. Whether or not the water table will stay below the ground surface outside of the pond is another question.