salth2ocowboy ,

The pond will only be between 7/8 - 1 acre best I can figure from the surveying I've done to this point. I had intended to make it a little larger but when I started shooting the water level I realized I was backing up over a wet weather spring. I don't want the water to be any deeper than 2 ft over the spring. It may not hold that. The shape will be long and narrow, typical valley impoundment.

PondsForFun,

I will keep them coming! I had put it off because I didn't have a photobucket acct.

Dave,

No, in pic 3 I'm still cutting away the old dam, that was a couple months ago. I was slot dozing, because I can push about 25-30% more dirt that way, since the slot walls help keep dirt from spilling off the sides of the blade. You can see the water in the basin to the left. As of about a month and a half ago the entire dam site was stripped away to bare clay in the original hillside. The pond is around 60-70 yrs old and didn't hold any more than a couple feet of water due to large sycamore trees which had infiltrated the dam and basin. When I was a kid though, in the 70's it was full and was a great spot, though it was originally just a stock tank. The new dam will be 8' taller than before. I removed the old dam to keep the basin dry while I'm building and because I wan't an entirely new dam I have faith in. The entire basin was covered in hardwoods and scrub with a lot of big sycamores down near the old waterline. I've cleared all of that save a few trees and am going to pack the entire basin with a sheepsfoot. I have some other pics of the dam gone, piled up on the hillside. And man, do I have a pile of structure.