Hi all, I'm new here... looking for input with my situation. I bought 80+ acres in upstate NY that is divided pretty much in half by a gully with a consistent flow of clear, cool spring water. The previous owner had a 36" culvert pipe he planned to put in the bottom & build a road over the gully, it's too steep to easily cross otherwise. I decided to attempt a dam & put the pipe near the top of it instead in order to have a trout pond. We hit a great patch of clay near the top (inlet) part of the pond that we used as the foundation of the dam. I made a ball of this clay & it hardened like lead and is about as dense. The footer is about 4 feet under the creek bed & about 8 feet high overall. The clay ended about halfway (pond was dug to be about 100' long, 50' wide at the dam, tapering narrower as you go to the inlet) where the soil became sandy. We dug down about 18' in front of the dam and it gradually gets shallower as you go to the inlet. It is spring water that is flowing, it doesn't run higher, even with a 1" rainfall but consistently runs about the volume of 3 or 4 garden hoses running full blast. It filled to within about 5' of the outlet pipe last week then slowly dropped about 8 inches to where it has remained at that level. 6' to the outlet is a lot of water left to fill but it is obviously seeping out somewhere pretty badly. My questions...
A) Might it still seal & fill?
b)If not, can I dump a bunch of clay in next year without draining it and butter the whole thing with a foot or two of clay without draining the pond first?
I'm thinking the level it dropped to is the area where most of the seepage is occurring, there is NO water at all getting by the dam, the old creek bed is bone dry. I'm leaving on vacation in a couple hours with no internet access, look forward to your input when I get back... thank you!
Filling up...
View from inlet...
Level where it's settled after a week... not much different than previous pic, just clearer water.
