Hello everyone! This site has been very informative and interesting for me. I have had a subscription now for a few months to Pondboss and ordered many of the old issues including the ones with Mike Otto's pond building series (which were great!), I have also read Bob Lusk's books (also very good), I even read the USDA Agriculture Handbook 590 on ponds (not such good reading). I live in central Iowa and my wife and I just bought about 65 acres of pasture land that we will be moving to in April '05. Eventually we will be building a new house on the south end of the land and I hope to build a large (6-8 acre) pond near the new house. However this spring I would like to build a pond about 1 acre +/- on the north end of the land by the existing farmhouse. This will be my first pond building experience and I hope to make my mistakes on the small one before I build the big one. I attached a topo map of the area, my land is the blue box and I have drawn in the proposed small pond in pencil and what I think would be my watershed in red. The watershed is approximately 30 acres, most of which is pasture land and a small portion crop land. The pond will basically be an excavated pond fed by surface run off. I plan a spillway on the southeast edge of the pond that will follow the existing water run off path under the highway to the east and eventually to the creek to the south. I had planned to go approximately 10 feet deep in the deepest portion,the USDA handbook recommends at least 7-8 feet in my area. According to the calculations from the USDA handbook that gives me a total capacity of about 4 acre feet (1 surface acre x 10 feet deep x .4) In Iowa the handbook says I need about 7 acres of watershed for each acre foot of storage, so to me it seems the watershed should be good for a 1 acre 10 foot deep pond. FYI in my area the annual rainfall is 35-37 inches a year. I have a soil map of the area and the map states the soil is type 5B, however the map does not have a key and I have not been able to determine what soil type 5B means (is that good or bad for a pond?) In my own digging around in the area there seems to be a fair amount of nice top soil with what seems to me to be good clay underneath. I have contacted a local excavating/construction company and told them of the possible project. I told them that they could have the fill dirt in exchange for excavating the pond. Over the phone they were interested but wanted to come see the area before they agreed. I have not found any "pond building experts" in my area but these guys have built some around here and seem reputable. If I have things figured correctly I think I will end up with a nice 1 acre pond for a minimal cost. What I would like is any input from you guys and your vast experience. Thanks!