Originally Posted by gehajake
I'm on the opposite side of this debate, I don't know how big your pond or how long the dam is but a mini excavator will work for digging it out but you have to have a place to store the dirt because you will have to dig down and get a clean surface before you start replacing the dirt and compacting it effectively, another area where the mini is not going to be able to get proper compaction unless you spend a huge amount of time whacking with the bucket for compaction, which is still not ideal.

I have fixed a number of holy dams over the years, most of them with little extra room on the top of the dam. I go in with tracked loader and basically cut the top of the dam down to past any burrow or damage that has been done, having to get a bucket full of dirt and backing out to the end of the dam and stockpiling it, usually a pile on both ends of the dam, till you have removed all of the damage.

Then you are ready to bring it back in and spread it thin in lifts and compact it as needed.

I have never used anything but the machine to compact it as the top of the dam does not have nearly as much of a leaking problem as the base of a dam. by the time you run back and forth and get a bucket of dirt on each end to rebuild it you get a pretty good amount of compaction, if need be you can traverse across the top of the dam with a full bucket of dirt to add to the ground pressure of the tracks.

I have never had one to leak doing it this way.

Good Luck!

Good thinking. To elaborate a bit I'd say to start spreading the dirt closest to the pile so you get maximum "driving over" the dirt that you are spreading. If you start spreading on the opposite end of the dam, you will have less times driving over it, correct?

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