Hi BirdD@wg, to answer your questions;

1) I added clean clay to the top of the dam to make it bigger. When we hauled the clay in it was a little moist.

2) We actually compacted it in 3 to 6 inch layers on the new dam

3) I did peel some of the old dam off, mostly because there were tree stumps I had to remove. The existing dam had been there for more than 30 years.

4) This is where is gets somewhat screwy. In November when we were finishing the dam we recieved a large rainfall that filled the pond to the orignal dam height. The slope on the water side is close to 2:1 and I put large flat 6" thick slaps of concrete from nearly the bottom to the top. When we added the new clay I was not able to pack the water side slope only the top as I was laying it down. The backside of the dam is actually about a 1:3 slope up.

At first we thought maybe we had dug below the key on the original dam and it was going under the dam. But we really didn't take much out of the bottom of the old pond and the builder thought he originally made the pond around 15' deep. When we drained the pond it was about 10' deep.

This spring with all of the rain the pond filled quickly, 8' overnight and was coming out of my 12" discharge pipe quickly about 3/4 pipe full. At the end of the year last year we did not have time to put our down pipes in on the backside of the dam. The water coming out of the pipe cut about a 5' deep chanel in the backside of the dam. When we were putting the pipes in and finishing the backside out is when we came up with the theory that the water was coming between the old dam and the new. About halfway down the cutout the clay was moist about 6"s below the dirt surface. We figured that the water was traveling down the backside of the dam underground until it got to the bottom of the dam and had nowhere to go but up and out.

They are very minor leaks, but I would prefer to fix them if need be. I really don't want to pump water the rest of my life if I don't need too. Thanks again!