Rainman made me think about what I said about sealing the back side of the dam. He makes good points. You could seal from the back side, but essentially you would need to basically create nearly a whole new dam. One with enough physical structure that it could hold the water pressure and seal all the way down as far as needed.
In most cases this would not be practical, but in certain situations it could be. For example, I just dug a sediment pond ahead of my main pond. It was a complete "dug" pond so everything that came out of it became a big pile of excavation material. Since I was near the top of the hill and we have a clay pan soil, it is nearly all clay. Had I needed clay for some purpose, I have nearly a quarter acre of it 7'+ deep.
So if you happen to have a place you need a hole dug and the hole happens to have plentiful clay, fixing a dam from the back side "could" be done, but in most cases will not be the best route for the amount of material to be moved. It is one of those situations that happens so very often on PBF, "it all depends". Lots of things can be done in certain situations that may not apply to "most" situations, and getting someone who knows what they are doing with ponds and working with soils and construction equipment for your particular situation is the best route.
My old pond that I refurbished had enough clay from the new addition portion of the excavation that I basically built a complete new dam on the back side of the old breeched, skinny one. It has held..........so far. Now I have a nice, wide, gently sloping dam that is easy to mow. It was fixed in the breech area and then the back side, but the back side has enough material to have made a complete new additional skinny dam.
As far as simply putting a patch or plug from the back side of the dam, it likely would not work for reasons Rainman stated. It would take a lot more in the way of material to do the job from the back side than from the front side.
Last edited by snrub; 06/02/14 11:09 AM.
