Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations quarry dust for sealing a leaking pond

Perhaps try an experiment to test your scenario:

1. Get 5-gallon bucket.
2. Drill many 1/8 holes across the bottom. Maybe some other sizes as well? Others please chime in. Depending on soil, you may need to put some screen across the bottom of the bucket to keep the clay from oozing out of drill holes.
3. Pack your soil in tight into the bucket, fill maybe 1/4 of the way or so?
4. Gently pour in water and observe leakage as to not disturb soil too much.
5. Observe leakage if any.
6. Add materials to test to see if leakage stops/slows.

Try another test with 1/4 of table salt on the surface of the soil, just from grins. That would be an ion exchange test to see if the clay packs tighter once ions are exchanged.

Through this you can test things like the PH rise, effectiveness, clay lining material leakage and so on. You could set up several buckets this way and test a bunch of different things. Just make sure to have one bucket to be your control so you can compare to untreated soils.