Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations The digging commences...

Well, the "diggers" are here. Showed up at 8AM.

One guy here with a Hitachi shovel. Trenched and cored the dam and now he's doing something weird... He's digging big holes and then other holes and putting the dirt from one into the other hole. I'm guessing that he's softening it up so the bulldozer can move it out and where it will eventually go much easier and efficiently. Hmmm...seems like a waste of time maybe, I'll have to see how it goes... BTW, I'm getting a LOT of pretty good dirt. Nice stuff finds it's way into valleys...

We hit water in several places at 6-8' deep. When we're not in a drought the water is about 4' higher. Almost like a spring. I've got a natural "wet bowl" where the pond is going. I'm not too worried about water loss. I'm guessing about 1/2 acre pond with over 20 acres drainage area. Here in southeastern Alabama, that should be plenty.

I'm having them build about a 50X50' "shelf" off one side that's 2-3' deep for spawning and maybe to let some aquatic plants grow.

There were 3, 12-20' tall willow trees growing there that I had moved to the upsream edges of the pond, well away from the dam. They should provide some nice shade.

Well...wish me luck! Hope for continued dry weather until next week and then some rain to fill the pond and let the grass seed germinate. What would you recommend I plant? Bahaia grows real well around here.

hopefully not takin you to cleaners! just a friendly word of caution...... go out and ask him. as the pond manager, its really good to lay out the plan as best as possible beforehand and then keep an eye on those guys, if its a time and materials job, it'l rack up quickly. i forget if you mentioned before whether this was a fixed price or T&M job.

this is an exciting time for you, congratulations and good luck!

Dave,

I asked him what and why he was doing that...

Seems he was moving the dirt closer to the dam. Now there's a BIG hole in the middle and a bunch of dirt piled up where the dam will be. I'd guess he's 1/4 of the way done in about 7.5 hours. At that rate it will come in UNDER budget!

The guy seems to be good at what he does. Sometimes I wonder "now WHY is he doing that", only to see him end up doing something BETTER than how I would have thought it should work out. He seems to have a plan of attack. I don't think I'm being taken...

joerocker,

If you did your due diligence and thoroughly checked out your builder in advance, then you should be just fine. He was probably not only moving the dirt closer(to save dozer time) but also mixing the dirt to get the best composition.

If Bahia does well in your area, then I'd go with it myself. If you have trees around or shade the Bahia won't do well..it needs full sun and hot sun. The roots on those plants are something else. To get it started, just buy you some bales of Bahia hay and spread it where you want it to grow. I've done this successfully on several ponds...the hay cuts down the erosion and next spring you will have seed germinating without ever having to buy and spread seed.

The only problem I have with Bahia is if you get good rain and hot conditions, that stuff will grow like crazy and require mowing pretty often. Common bermuda may not require as much mowing, but it also doesn't have to root system of Bahia.

Meadowlark,

I'm pretty confident... This is the guy that the County Extension Office guy recommended and had do his pond. He say's he's done hundreds and never had a "dry hole". He did a "test hole" to see how it looked and said it would be fine. Looks like my middle is going to be about 8-10' deep.

Yes, bahia grows VERY well around here. Will probably germinate immediately. We've got at least a month before the first frost. I'm hoping the goats will help keep it down. The only shade is the willow that I had moved close to a corner of the pond, oh, maybe 5 or so feet from the edge. I gave each tree 30 gallons of water yesterday and will again today hoping to keep them alive.

Thanks for the responses...

joerocker,

Just as a point of comparison. I have both bahia and bermuda grass on my place and I prefer bermuda grass around my pond. As ML mentioned the root system on the bahia is really tough (and in my opinion) is not as smooth a ground cover. My bahia grass tends to clump up and is tough unless you keep it mowed.

Gator

Joe I know what you mean about the dozer guys doing something you never thought of. My buddies dad built my pond nad it was like Bob Ross painting a picture. First you have a bunch of nothing and then bam he had something that I never thought of.

He had a neat trick he used with the dozer. We only had a D5 and the back of the pond to the front was a couple hundred feet. My buddies dad would dig several deep rows in one direction. He said the dirt that piled up on the sides of the blade acted as side walls, and that let him keep a full blade to push from back to front. Hhe would then go at another angle and criss cross all his rows. We dug my pond in 3 days with that D5, probally about 30 hours for the 1 acre pond.

Donnie

Congratulations on starting your pond! Hope the weather gods cooperate for you.

I don't recommend bahia grass unless you want to make hay. I tried it once and found it to be too "weedy". It's very hard to get rid of too!

I highly recommend bermudagrass for the Gulf states. There are low growing seed varities like Sahara and Yuma that require little mowing. If it's just the pond banks, the more expensive Princess77 variety would be even nicer.

My second choice would be centipede seeds mixed with cheap bermuda seeds. The bermuda starts quick for erosion control, and the centipede will take it over in 2 years.

Good luck!

Here are some pictures...

Before any digging.


The "test hole" finding water.


The dam core.


Day 2 moving some dirt for "landscaping".


I'm VERY happy with the way thigs are looking. They're landscaping all around my house (the pond is close, goes around the hill the house is on) and making it look NICE. They're filling in holes and dips in my field and re-contouring some hills smoothing them out. As long as I get some grass growing before a major rain, I'll be VERY happy. The landscaping alone would have cost big bucks, that's a GREAT bonus for me.

It looks like a great project...v cool! You gotta be pumped.
Did they hit water again within the core? What's the plan for packing the soil back into the core?
Paint a picture for us about shape, dimensions, depths, etc. Throw in a couple of reference pics, or use the above pics and fill in the blanks.

Yes, they hit water at the core. What he told me was this: That all the underground water is funneled through this point and slowly flows through. What they will be doing is plugging that water up with the dam core stopping it from flowing through and that will cause it to back up into my pond.

I'm not sure EXACTLY how they're going to do the core. I know he'll have at least two machines, one digging and another dropping in clay very quickly. He said he couldn't do it fast enough with the water...something like that, again, I'm not SURE what the plan is.

Well, it's not huge, at least 1/2 acre, maybe more. It's at least 100ft wide at the dam, more than 200 ft long, and a little shallower area making a "L" or more like a "boot" shape. I've got a big old oak tree laying in the bottom and I'll add some pallets and other stuff too. The shallow area is about 4ft deep and slopes fairly slowly and should make good spawning areas. The rest goes from about 6ft to who know at the dam, 8-10ft? Not really deep but everyone says 6ft is all you need for fish.

I'll post a panorama picture of before and after.

They're make some MAJOR changes to the property!

joe, sounds like they need a trash pump in dam core excavation to help keep water out as they dig and install clay liner......ya might ask them if they've considered pumping until core is completed.

great pics.....thanks, great looking pond site.

The dozer guy probably knows something (maybe a whole lot) that I don't know. I'm not real comfortable with your groundwater (if that's what it is) situation.

Dave,

Please elaborate...

i cant speak for dave (DD1), but the thoughts i had were:

a) (that unless your pond substrate is good thick compacted clay), even if you core the dam at a "downstream" location, after pond fills, the downward hydraulic pressure of your pond water could cause reverse flow of water table upstream of dam and drive water beneath or below your dam and out the other side

b) the high water table conditions would not allow proper compacting of core and could create a soft condition at base of your dam....which could be structurally significant.

i'm just a guy on the internet.....your contractor has built other ponds in area, and should know best, but you might ask him about these couple of concerns.

Joerocker,
If you've already kicked this can, sorry to bother ya. If not, take a look at the Healer, heal thyself thread that I started when I had real concern for proper coring and construction of a dam. I hope it helps.

Brettski,

I read the beginning and last page of that thread.

My guy is doing what you finally had done. They've found good clay and will be laying it into the core. He's got a "strip mine" located "in the pond" that he'll take the clay from and make one continuous core. He uses the excavator to pack it in along with the bulldozer.

Where the problem lies, is the "channel" between the hills of the small valley my dam will be going in, has water. He needs "help" (one guy has done the whole thig so far) to put in the core with the water there.

What I've got is this: A small valley with about 20 acres drainage. It's a very SLIGHT slope to this valley at the pond site. There is water all the time and it raises and lowers. In the "rainy season" I had pools of water on the ground and a small "stream" flowing out. We've been in the worst drought in MANY years, 20?, and the water is about 6 feet underground now.

What the "digger" tells me is this: The sides of the hills are clay. They will hold in the water. The dam will be clay and hold the water. So, all the upstream water will get backed up at the dam and I'll have a pond. I DON'T have a pond now because all that underground water already flowed through the valley. When the dam is complete it will be stopped from flowing through and back up. BTW, MOST of my pond is dug out, the dam is only a few feet higher than the top of the natural "dirt level". So, in reality, just last fall before the drought, the pond site was "full" of underground water right up to the start of the drought.

Like you, I trust him. He comes highly recommended and has done a LOT of local ponds.

Joe, just getting back. D.I.E.D. pretty well said what I an worried about. It sounds like the guy has a plan and appears to know what he is doing. I hope so.

My experience in this regard came from using a backhoe to open up a spring in a small forage pond. Of course, when the pond dried up and the water level in the seep spring dropped, the new hole became a drain. It took a lot of bentonite and clay to undo the damage. Since then, I've not been comfortable with any source of ground water in the pond sides or bottom.

ML, I read some info on Bahiagrass it looks from the zone map that I might be just on the edge of were it will grow. I have Black land "gumbo". Costal and fescue grow well on this property. I'm wandering how the Bahia grass would do in this soil type. It is not well drained. I like your suggestion of spreading the hay out to seed later on.

So what you're saying is you'd rather have a sealed bowl that ONLY catches and holds rain?

Rockytopper,

I have a 20 acre bottom land hay field in Bahia. It's all blackland and without fertilizer and very little rain it produced 103 rolls of bahia hay this year. That is no kidding true.

Bahia is a good news and bad news kind of grass. The good is that it is extremely productive in full, hot sun and high humidity. The hotter the better.

The bad side is kind of the same thing...it grows like crazy sending up seed heads and would require very frequent mowing if used as a "lawn" type grass. Even as a pasture grass, which I have it for also, it requires mowing to keep it palatable for livestock. The root system is incredible which makes it a good choice for me on the backside of my pond dams where I don't mow often and need strong root systems.

Another minus may be in its aggressiveness...it will spread through the root system and the seed heads, especially if grazed by livestock. It will outcompete coastal for growing space...so if you try it, keep that in mind.

It definitely has its +'s and -'s.

JR,
Comforting, ain't it? If your dirt guy TCB's like mine did, you will see high ROI. Here's to chasing another dream; Cheers!
I s'pose that you and the rest of us might feel better when the core is pumped dry and packed tightly with clay from the "strip mine". Is there any explanation as to how he determined how deep to go to terminate the lateral flow? Presumably, the core bottom is at or below the deepest area of the pond basin...correct?

Yep, Joe; I would MUCH rather have only a sealed bowl that catches rain. That's what the majority of ponds are. If you think about it, it is the same concept as a swimming pool; just a different input source. However, you are working with what you have. If the guy is right, and it certainly sounds plausible, you will probably be OK.

Gotta admit, during our last 8 years of drought, I would really like some handy groundwater. Especially flowing into the impoundment rather than out of it.

I think that is what I have, groundwater flowing INTO the impoundment with (hopefully) nowhere else to go. Everything slopes (alibet VERY slightly) towards my "valley". The hills on both sides are full of clay and they should keep the water channeled into my pond.

I'm sure the core will go deeper than the bottom of the pond, hopefully to the clay that's just about everywhere around here.

Bad news...we got a BUNCH of rain today. What has been dug is full of water...well not FULL, about a foot deep. I pushed a stick into the bank where the water line is to see how it does. I guess it will be a while before I see any more action. It's a slick mess out there. I have a few "grand canyons" where the water went flowing into the pond, literally waterfalls. We got 1.75 inches in about an hour or two.

I'm planting rye grass for the winter to get some roots going. In spring I'll go for Bahaia. I want to stop any erosion and don't mind cutting the grass. It gives me a chance to listen to audiobooks. I've got 7.5 acres to cut, it takes about 6 hours.

Well...they're coring the dam as I type. Have the pipe ready to go in and they're layering in the clay.

They had to dig down about 12ft below the old ground level to reach the clay at the bottom of the dam. This is a valley that has filled in with sand. So, now I should have 3 sides and a bottom of good clay. The core is about 1 1/2 times as wide as the bulldozer. They seem to be packing it in pretty well.

They "may" finish it today. Looks like some big storms again tonight. Maybe I'll get another foot of water... The bad thing is the bare soil. I'd like a few weeks of SLOW steady rain until the grass gets established!