Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Soil questions What is considered a leak?

I might have asked this before but I didn't see it in my past posts, so I'll ask again. Quick history. Pond is about 6 years old and has leaked since it was built. The higher the water level goes the faster the leak. Last fall I drained it and completely cleaned the entire pond out and while I was doing this I noticed a sand vein about 1/4" to 1/2" thick by about 30 feet long. I dug a trench as wide as the bobcat bucket across the entire thing and filled with good clay cutting the sand vein so the water didn't have a direct path out of the pond. We had a lot of rain since and it is about 5 feet from full pool. At this level before I would probably be losing about an inch or more a day if I remember correctly. I put a ruler in the pond yesterday and checked it 24 hours later. The pond had only gone down 3/16" to 1/4". Evaporation in a container I had sitting out showed about 1/16". My question is am I just splitting hairs here? Is it even possible to have a pond not drop at all over 24 hrs? Or is it still leaking and should I try to get a hoe over here to dig another trench farther out from the pond? It still has 5 ft to be full so I will know more once it fills but it has never been full yet and I think it should now with it holding so much better. I think if it fills and still only goes down less than a 1/4" a day I could live with that. Any thoughts or ideas?

Jason, ALL earthen ponds leak, period. Personally to me, what is considered a "leak", is whatever amount over evaporation you just can't tolerate.

I'd like to leak less than 1/16" inch a day, but give things a while since you made a repair....maybe it will self seal at this new, lower flow leakage rate.

Soil floc did wonders for me. Others have had luck in ground water ponds with this product.

Jason,

On my ponds if the water has been down for a long time and it fills up again the water will soak into the soil for several days. After that the only losses are to evaporation. You might be experiencing that. I'd give it a little while and see if it stabilizes.

Yeah I have talked to TJ about the soilfloc and still considering it. The project I did last fall was kind of a last option before trying the soilfloc. I'm glad I did it though. I have slowed the leak down to almost nothing compared to what it was. Also, I removed so much muck and sediment that I am not sure if the soilfloc would have made it to where it needs to go. I'm going to give until midsummer and see what happens. I will check water loss rates as it fills I guess. I am hoping the water loss doesn't increase as the water level goes up. It has about 4 or 5 feet to go. That's only about 2psi more pressure.

It is amazing how much one can loose in evaporation if you have lots of wind and aeration.

Bare in mind that a 5 gallon bucket used to compare evaporation will only get kinda close. The deeper sides and low surface area of the bucket will lose less water than your pond because the bucket water is "protected" from wind and much of the sun the lower the water is in the bucket. A brown feeder pan will be much closer to what the pond loses.

I must be the only one here who considers water loss and replacement a good thing. I'm happy that my pond loses several inches a day, after a few days I fill with fresh clean water which lowers the nitrite levels, in my opinion fish have better growth rates, less prone to stunting, cleaner water, nearly eliminates nitrite poisoning.

Keep in mind that fish do indeed urinate, and defecate and with a large population this equates to hundreds of pounds a year turning your pond into a poisonous cess pool of sorts. Water changes , or constant influxes of fresh water would seem to eliminate this

Jason, if you have anything more than a slight trace of nitrites in your pond, you have seriously bad things going on....a pond is not an aquarium.....

I doubt that I do. But what happens to all the feces and urine?
I have way more aeration than I need. As I understand it aeration and sunlight expels a lot of this .

Hey J,

This kind of explains your question on the Nitrogen cylce

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/pic/article.cfm?articleid=317

i had great success with soilfloc. There was a small learning curve with the soilfloc application, but i would definitely recommend it. TJ was super to work with.

in reference to jason's question about all the crud in the deeper water, i am curious how well my 6' trash rack does by keeping bad water flowing out? only water that leaves my pond pipe is being pulled 6ft below the surface. we had huge rain events this winter, i would think my pond got a good flushing.

as i have mentioned before, my old and my present pond each have a separate 4" pipe thru the dam with a valve on the dry side. i used to open the valve on the old pond a few times a year and let water off the bottom flow for a while. the smell was terrible especially in the summer. i have heard folks mention that they have smelled the same thing at golf courses that use ponds to irrigate.

Scott, do you have aeration?

no i do not have aeration