Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Filling a Pond

I am interested in having my pond built. I am not damning a creek or anything like that. How do u fill a good size pond? I havent figured that out yet after looking through the site.

Usually with runoff from rain. Which means that your pond has to be situated at the bottom of a hill so that you can catch the runoff. You can do a search of other threads concerning how much acreage is needed to fill a particular size pond.

Some top their ponds off with well water, but you have to pay to run the pump. Gravity and rain are free.

Is this what everyone else does? Or are there other ways. Rain alone couldn't fill up a pund more than a few acres could it? This is the only question i still have about building my own pond.

Don,
Yes rain alone can fill a fairly large pond if the watershed is sufficient.

It is mostly about average rainfall and total watershed. The watershed is how much area drains into your pond. I'm pretty sure there are some formulas on the site. You might try a search of "watershed".

Watersheds work both for and against your pond. Too large a watershed area can overwhelm a smaller pond and wash out the dam. To small an area and your pond won't fill. Average rainfall also works in. There was another post here a couple of days ago that gave a great website that shows average monthly rainfall in your city. Here is the link: http://www.city-data.com/ (courtesy lloydian). Also interesting is this link from Eastland: http://www.interwet.psu.edu/R1.htm

In my case rainfall alone keeps one pond full most of the year.

About how long did it take for ur pond to be filled from rain?

Here in SE Texas, with our 4" per hour "showers" it wouldn't take long. My ponds are all small, stock tanks basicly, they don't take a lot of water.

When I built my 3.5 acre pond in 2001 Georgia was in the middle of a drought. The DNR guy said it would take 6 months to fill up. As we were about finished a spring storm was headed out way so we went ahead an shut the valve to catch what we could. The storm came through Georgia and stoped in middle Georgia and spun in a circle.

Next morning full pond.

To answer your question: depends

In Missouri I was told that a 15:1 ratio was typical - (watershed:pond surface acre). Other factors like soil type and topography effect the ratio. I have about 30 acres of watershed and a two acre pond. It took almost two years to fill. I stocked it the first year with minnows and bluegill fingerlings when the pond was only 1/2 full, the fish grew-up as the pond filled.