We do have a hydrant at the well head, is it feasable to try and top it off with a hose? Still seems like that would be a lot of water to get 5' deep acre size? That it would take weeks or months?
Average rate from a garden hose set-up is maybe 7-10 GPM. 5-acre-feet of water is about 1,630,000 gallons. That would be 203,750 minutes of running your hydrant at 8 GPM. Which is 141 continuous days!
I would not add well water unless you go into a deep drought this summer and your water level starts falling significantly, or unless you have a well/pump combination capable of much higher water rates.
Good luck watching your initial fish stocking grow to maturity. Looks like a great start!
That's what I figured is that it would take a long time that way. Even when it has been really dry the pond doesn't seem to go down much at all...again I think because of the size. It has to have millions of gallons of water in it, with some good spring rains it should come up another couple of feet, by next year this time it will be full.
OK, I talked with the guy that dug my pond just to see if he had any ideas on faster fill or if there was a reason mine seems slow to fill.
He said everyone in our area that has had ponds dug in the last two years of any size has been having same thing...slow fill due to lower rainfall and rain being spread out instead of downpours.
He said only way to make it fill faster is to pump water in , either out of a creek or from well.
So I called the guy that dug my well to see what my outside hydrant pressure was, he said 25+ gpm at the hydrant.
So, I read up on how inefficient running through a garden hose would be because of loss of pressure due to friction in a 1" hose the further it has to go. I needed to go 180' from the hydrant. Sooo... I bought 180' of cheap solid 4"plastic tile and ran it from hydrant down to the beach. I have a 6' drop in that 180' also, I used stainless wire to attach to tile with a straight drop so I wouldn't loose any water out the top at hydrant.
In two and a half days the pond has gone up 4" I count that as a win! Even if it takes a month of 24/7 my pond will be full and I am not worried about the electric bill. It does affect the water pressure in my barn.
I will hopefully be posting a pic of it at full level next month.
