Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Soil questions Watershed or Groundwater Pond?

Welcome to the forum. Talk to the NRCS first. That will help determine what route you take. With enough watershed you can have a lined pond to hold the water.

A groundwater pond will be harder to manage. I am in my 3rd year of a drought here, and my pond has been between 6' and 8' low (vertical measurement) for 3 1/2 years now.

#1. Talk to NRCS

#2 Even with pumping you most likely will NOT be able to use a dozer down in the bottom. You could use an excavator to dig it out, swing 180°, put it in an off road dump truck or have a dozer push it out of the way. Even with the dragline (which is the slowest way to move dirt), digging in water doesn't allow you to see what you are doing. You better have a boat on site, with a sonar unit to check depth if you are digging in water.

#3 You will have to run the numbers dollar wise to see if running a dragline is cheaper than running an excavator. NOT a mini excavator, a real one that has a 24' reach or so with a 36" wide bucket.

I'm in the process now of trying to figure out a way to put out a fire. I can't go into too many specific details, but I was contacted to design a 20 acre pond. The property owner decided not to hire us to supervise the project, just do the design/drawing and answer a few questions. After roughly 6 acres were dug, he asked if I could come over and check the pond depth. (the contractor is digging in water - he elected NOT to pump the water out and keep it pumped out as he dug.) The ground is not sand or clay, but peat. The contractor is using a long stick excavator.

The deepest part I found was 5' but the majority of it is roughly 3' deep (checked with sonar). Even though he was digging to the required 18'-20' depth, my opinion is that as he was pulling the bucket up from the bottom, the material was washing out of the bucket and getting distributed back all over the pond.

I was able to contact Mike Otto and told him about the situation. I gave the property owner Mikes contact information and he is supposed to be talking to him yesterday or today. I'd love to get Mike up here and have him put boots on the ground on-site. Time will tell.

Another project that is in the works is a 6.5 acre pond. That dirt contractor told the property owner that if he hit water he would dig a french drain all around the pond site, and make it 10' deeper than the pond max depth. He'd then use solid pipes for risers and connect up dewatering pumps to the french drain and suck water out of the ground to keep the pond site dry. That pond will be 20' deep so he'd go down 30' to install the french drains. That dewatering alone would cost about 25%-33% of the total pond budget. He dug a pond not too far from there that was 5 acres and he had ten 6" pumps running to dewater the area while the pond was constructed.

The test holes showed 6'-8' of loamy dirt with solid blue clay beneath that. He dug test holes down 20 feet. IIRC the excavator he used for the test holes was an 80,000# unit with a 28' or 30' dig depth.