Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Soil questions Fix it or forget it?

Ponds,

Your thread seeking options(as in d above) other than the SB has taken a turn to discussion of the relative merits or demerits of a bulldozer for compacting clay.

As you requested, I tried to offer an alternative option to SB in the form of the clay, which you indicated was resident in good quality at your site. If the option is still relevant, here�s my logic for suggesting it:

The leak game is to some extent a game of probabilities vs costs. The suggestion for two feet of clay packed with a dozer provided by your original operator was intended to be my best-shot at the most favorable probabilities vs costs trade. Good quality clay at the site is the best, cheapest form of leak protection you can get, IMHO. The suggestion to make the request of your original operator to fix the problem was aimed at minimizing the costs to you. I assumed the original construction was with a dozer, but if a sheepsfoot roller was also used in the original construction and available for the repair, certainly that is a better compaction tool than a dozer alone as pointed out above.

The approach for the clay packing in a repair like yours with a dozer alone that I have seen successfully applied is to mound up two feet of clay over the subject area... a little bit of clay at a time. The mounding not only offers good leak protection, but also makes the best use of the dozer�s packing abilities, concentrating the weight on a smaller area on top of the mound. Build up the mound gradually while running the dozer back and forth over the mounded area and you will get adequate compaction assuming you have sufficient moisture in the clay.

Certainly, other equipment options are available for this approach including a back-hoe or farmall tractor with box blade. My thought was that the use of your site good quality clay was/is your best option and the best way to get it in place was with your original operator and his equipment.

It will be very interesting to get your perspective down the road a bit on the SB. I sincerely hope you get great results and report on those results to other Forum readers.


Relative to the discussion on the demerits of a dozer for clay compaction, I certainly agree that a sheepsfoot roller is superior, but is a bulldozer unacceptable as perhaps implied in above posts?

Hundreds, no thousands of ponds have been built in my area with nothing more than a bulldozer, including 4 on my place, none of which leak. One pond that I renovated with only a dozer did leak because of previously undetected animal damage and my own misjudgment of not applying enough clay thickness in one corner area of the dam. The dozer alone fixed both of those problems as well.

A bulldozer, even a small one like mine, is not optimal for compaction, but it can certainly offer a reliable means of building a leak free pond in my area.