Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Building a dam Spillway recovery from record rains

Just FWIW: We have 1xx acres drainage and our pond (about 17 acres main body) spillway started eroding badly fairly quickly after building it. We then installed an 8" siphon with a valve. Whenever weather forecast shows much anticipated rain, we can easily open the valve and suck water off the bottom. We also keep the water level down a little from spillway so that the pond can routinely handle a 2 to 3 inch rain without overflowing. That has worked fairly well and prevented the spillway from again being eroded.

It does require us to monitor weather forecast though and be available to open siphon.

This fall, we plan on digging out the 5 sediment ponds that catch the water before it goes into the main body. We also plan on rebuilding the dam on the largest sediment pond that drains the most area. In the new dam, we plan to have pipes through at three levels to slow the influx of water to the main body so normally drained down to x feet; but gets up to x+ feet before enters second pipe and x++ before third pipe. That sediment pond will probably be about 2 or 3 acres and deep enough to retain a decent amount of water.

We are also exploring putting in some overflow pipes where water would drain into another valley outside the main body about a foot below the spillway. At some point in the future, we plan to dam that valley to create another pond of 5 to 7 acres.

Hoping to provide a failsafe option that could handle the large unexpected rains where we haven't turned on the siphon in advance. We were in California and Hawaii during two very heavy recent rains that could have created issues if relatives hadn't been monitoring and turned on siphon for us.